August 20, 2008

Defending Against Donk Bets

Lately I've been experimenting with some different lines against donk bets. My standard line in the past has just been to raise them with pretty much any two cards. But lately I've been trying out just calling them down with some good hands. Often times these donk bets are for "information" - that is, the donk bets into you trying to figure out "where he's at" with some middle pair, or sometimes, in the case of an aggressive donk, to set up a 3-b all-in with a draw. One way to give him bad information is to raise when you have the worst hand. Another way is to call when you have the best hand. Of course you can't ALWAYS lie. An observant player will figure out that your information is ALWAYS bad and start calling down your raises lighter, or shutting down when you call. But at least at .25/.50 6-max, it takes a while for anybody to figure anything out. Here's one hand where I got this guy to put in a lot of money with the worst hand but ended up losing on the river:

Seat 1: bruechips (Button) ($105.55)
Seat 3: BB ($56.60)
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bruechips [Kc Ks]
bruechips raises to $1.75
BB calls $1.25

*** FLOP ***
[Jh Qh 2s]
BB bets $2.25 (This is a very drawy board so raising would be the obvious play. However I think this guy would be just shoving all his draws over the top, so raising doesn't really protect my hand at all. Also I think he has some hand like J9 or Q8s a lot of the time, and I want to force him to keep betting later streets because he won't want to check out of position. I really doubt he would lead pocket 2s or QJ. He'd try to check-raise my c-bet instead. But even if he is leading those hands, his range has so much other crap in it that I am easily miles ahead.)
bruechips calls $2.25 (How could I call here with a hand that can take heat on later streets unimproved? I must have like AK, AJ, JT, some weak one-pair like that, right?)

*** TURN *** [Jh Qh 2s] [3s]
BB bets $3.75 (A total blank on the turn, he continues betting. Notice his bet size is small, as if it's kind of a blocker bet to control the pot size.)
bruechips raises to $14 (Now I raise and it looks like I have absolute air and am just responding to his ghey bet size. He probably thinks I have AK, maybe I picked up a spade draw or something like that.)
BB to $52.60, and is all in (This is obviously an instacall)
bruechips calls $38.60
BB shows [6h 2h]

*** RIVER *** [Jh Qh 2s 3s] [4h]

DOH!!! I did everything right except fade the river....

-BRUECHIPS

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