Strategy against donk bets
5/5
~$300 effective
BB - unknown
Hero(BU) 5♠5♣ raises to $20, BB calls
Flop($45) T♥ 6♦ 3♥
BB leads $20, Hero - ?
How do you play against donk bets? I’ve often heard the old-school rule that donk bets shouldn’t be respected, and you should raise and keep betting on the turn and river. But in this case, the donk bet is coming from a short stack. If I decide to raise, he’ll have a pot-sized bet left.
But if I just call, players usually bet small on the turn, and I can see that their range is weak, while my showdown value is also weak, leaving me feeling uncomfortable.
7 Replies
This is easiest fold ever.
Donk bets depend on the donker; so they're donker dependent. For tighter players it's usually protection from a flush coming and others could be testing you to see if you're over cards or AK (which they always put you on) hit the flop.
In this spot if I had more equity (like two overs) I might raise, but in this hand just fold. He likely did you a favor.
So I can literally make notes for the future without ever seeing my opponent's hand? If I notice that someone has been playing tight for several hours and then makes a donk bet on that flop, can I assume the next time he checks that he’s very weak?
So I can literally make notes for the future without ever seeing my opponent's hand? If I notice that someone has been playing tight for several hours and then makes a donk bet on that flop, can I assume the next time he checks that he’s very weak?
You need a bigger sample than one hand, but yes - when you see a player donking x amount of the time, it does indeed mean that their checking range is weaker and you should attack it more often than you would an average player. Whenever a player donks some hands from their range, they remove those hands from their check-raising range. So you can cbet a lot more liberally without the fear of getting check-raised (which is one of the things that prevents you from cbetting at a high frequency). A huge tell of some very bad players in low stakes games is that they donk any time they have top pair or better. So when they check, they can't beat top pair, and you can attack them relentlessly, and continue to do so if they call and the turn is a blank, etc.
Easy fold. We have really poor equity with this hand and he is short stacked.
Donk bets are usually weaker when they are small size on the flop on a range that is not great for the preflop caller. We also like to have a little more equity and stack depth.
I find donk bets are medium strength made hands and strong draws. Here its usually 45, hearts, or KT-T9. You're almost always way behind with 55 here. It's more interesting if you hand 99 or middling hearts imo.
