Donk bets

[superwomble]

I've read a number of people recently saying that a donk bet on the flop is almost always a bluff, but I haven't noticed this at my levels.

What are your opinions on donk bets?

Also, how about if someone calls your flop c-bet, then donks the turn?

[tikay]

Good afternoon.

You'll probably get a better quality of feedback for this, & your other Thread, also started today, in our PHA Board, so I'll move them across there for you.

Hope you get good response.

[superwomble]

OK thanks for moving them. I assumed they shouldn't go in PHA as they were general poker topics rather than hand analysis but I am new here :-)

[zerofive]

This & and your other threads seem a little vague.

Your best course of action facing a donk bet depends on a multitude of things: board texture, villain's skill level, your history with villain, image, etc.

Do you have a couple of examples including reads/history with villain? It's almost impossible to say "yes it is a bluff" without including a hand history or stats, as it is very situation dependent.

If we want to remain vague though, I tend to find donk bets from bad players to mostly be top pair. EG you raise AJ, villain calls from the blinds and leads on . I would expect to see a bad queen like all the time. This is where the name "donk" bet originates, as bad players tend to cut their value short in spots like this by not analysing ranges etc. but just recognising that they have one pair and they'd like to win with it.

Versus good players, I tend to assign a wider donking range. Let's take the same example. You raise AJ, villain calls from the blinds and leads on . I would very rarely assign a good villain to a one pair type hand, but probably combo draws that lose equity on the turn. for example. These sorts of hands have decent equity on the flop, so even though we might have the "best hand," we're not in great shape, especially if villain mixes up his donking range to include pairs for deception, and I would very rarely make an ace-high call here (in theory at least.)

In short, from my experience, donk bets are very rarely bluffs. But in the next breath, if a good villain picks up on the fact that you fold to every donk bet because zerofive said it wasn't a bluff, then he's probably going to adapt to include air in his donking range.

Hope that kind of helps..?

[SuuPRlim]

to the best of my knowledge, donk leading flops first came popular with the best players for flop spots where they are for sure ahead of the PFR's range, but on textures where people would a) pot control weaker parts of there showdown range and b) would float wider than normal, boards like  for example, might bbe a spot where    would check back, but also a spot where it'll defo float.

Then as the strategy became more popular better players would try make there donk bets a little more deceptive by picking hands from the top of the range to donk as well, and occasionally throwing airballs in as well (when I chose to donk flops with air I usually pick hands with some marginal equity, on , so at least when we get called we can improve our hand and are not just firing into the dark.

I think it's still a flaw in weaker players that they fail to donk with enough strong hands to avoid the strategy of donk-leading any hands to become exploitable, in soft-ish live cash games I very rarely give donk leads credit for super strong hands as people have a genuine urge to c/r when they flop huge. When deciding which of your super strong hands to donk with, i'd go for reaosnably dry high card flops, like TT on KT8r would be a good spot to lead, your oppo's can give you credit for some weaker draws you dont wanna c/c and you dont get credit for AK or KK and smaller pairs that will call often check back.

[superwomble]

Yeah I realise this and the draws thread are a bit vague, as I said in the draws one, but they were meant as a start of a discussion about how players look at donk bets or how people tend to play draws, without any specific hands being involved.

It's interesting that zerofive says that donk bets are rarely bluffs, because this was the viewpoint I was leaning towards, but as I mentioned I have read a few people recently claiming that donk bets are usually weak.

The point SuuPRlim makes about players wanting to C/R good hands instead of donk them is a good one I think though.

Thanks for the replies so far, all viewpoints can be interesting!

[AlexMartin]

to the best of my knowledge, donk leading flops first came popular with the best players for flop spots where they are for sure ahead of the PFR's range, but on textures where people would a) pot control weaker parts of there showdown range and b) would float wider than normal, boards like  for example, might bbe a spot where    would check back, but also a spot where it'll defo float.

Then as the strategy became more popular better players would try make there donk bets a little more deceptive by picking hands from the top of the range to donk as well, and occasionally throwing airballs in as well (when I chose to donk flops with air I usually pick hands with some marginal equity, on , so at least when we get called we can improve our hand and are not just firing into the dark.

I think it's still a flaw in weaker players that they fail to donk with enough strong hands to avoid the strategy of donk-leading any hands to become exploitable, in soft-ish live cash games I very rarely give donk leads credit for super strong hands as people have a genuine urge to c/r when they flop huge. When deciding which of your super strong hands to donk with, i'd go for reaosnably dry high card flops, like TT on KT8r would be a good spot to lead, your oppo's can give you credit for some weaker draws you dont wanna c/c and you dont get credit for AK or KK and smaller pairs that will call often check back.

its interesting, in the games iv played in over the last 12 months, the tendency of donkbets from straightforward 2+2 taggish guys is to donkbet monsters in multiway pots usually versus low cbet inital pfr and usually with at least 1 fish present. They endup being ridic unbalanced however. Its almost never a pure-bluff or medium equity hand.

hu donkbetting is powerful and still underused.

[pleno1]

agree with alex. specially hu rather than multiway

[TommyD]

to the best of my knowledge, donk leading flops first came popular with the best players for flop spots where they are for sure ahead of the PFR's range, but on textures where people would a) pot control weaker parts of there showdown range and b) would float wider than normal, boards like  for example, might bbe a spot where    would check back, but also a spot where it'll defo float.

Then as the strategy became more popular better players would try make there donk bets a little more deceptive by picking hands from the top of the range to donk as well, and occasionally throwing airballs in as well (when I chose to donk flops with air I usually pick hands with some marginal equity, on , so at least when we get called we can improve our hand and are not just firing into the dark.

I think it's still a flaw in weaker players that they fail to donk with enough strong hands to avoid the strategy of donk-leading any hands to become exploitable, in soft-ish live cash games I very rarely give donk leads credit for super strong hands as people have a genuine urge to c/r when they flop huge. When deciding which of your super strong hands to donk with, i'd go for reaosnably dry high card flops, like TT on KT8r would be a good spot to lead, your oppo's can give you credit for some weaker draws you dont wanna c/c and you dont get credit for AK or KK and smaller pairs that will call often check back.

its interesting, in the games iv played in over the last 12 months, the tendency of donkbets from straightforward 2+2 taggish guys is to donkbet monsters in multiway pots usually versus low cbet inital pfr and usually with at least 1 fish present. They endup being ridic unbalanced however. Its almost never a pure-bluff or medium equity hand.

hu donkbetting is powerful and still underused.

I think there is a perfectly good argument that you don't need a balanced range when you are targetting players who are either casual fun time players or pretty bad at noticing your range.  I had a hand earlier tonight with a player who was floating me incessantly.  Every time we were in a pot he would call any flop and bet/raise every turn bet, we were playing a deep table so it was pretty fun.  A rocky reg opens, I call from the SB, my new friend calls from the big.  I flop a house.  I donk, he calls and 500bb goes in on the turn.

The point I'm making for the benefit of the OP is player tendencies are vital to know when donk betting.  You really need to have a fair idea what their range is and how they are going to proceed with it.  And in reference to balancing ranges, also important is how they are going to react to these hands and the information you are giving in the future if they are a reg.  And if they'll even notice.

[SuuPRlim]

Alex/Pleno. would be pretty interesting to see exactly how different our views are in this particular subject, from completely opposite ends of the spectrum.

I think the OP is prolly initially referring to online cash games? which your post will be way more accurate I think - its interesting as well how infeequently you see dokn bets in live poker