Flop donks from recreationals

Taking in to account board texture (dry or dynamic, nut/range advantage for the preflop raiser or the field) and the number of players in the hand - the general consensus is that a small sized donk is usually top pair/weak kicker or even second pair. A large size donk is value heavy. My personal belief is that greed and/or fear is the motivation for most donk bets. However the best counter is observation. Case in point:

I just got off a table after this hand occurred: UTG limps, Hero UTG1 iso raise, CO, BUT, BB, UTG call. Flop (30bb) A64r. BB donks pot sized bet. Folds to BUT call. Showdown shows BB with 8c6c (no club on the flop) and BUT with 4xXx.

So I know that I can print money vs BB next time by calling, not raising and letting him hang himself. Will it be higher variance not raising? Yes. But my EV will also be higher.

The guys from Hungry Horse apparently did some mass data analysis and found that heads-up donks (especially when they're small) are usually total BS, and the widespread belief that they're often weak value or decent draws was mostly the result of survivorship bias. The hands that got to showdown tended to be weak value or decent draws, but there were a lot more hands that didn't make it to showdown which were just BS.

On the other hand, donks into multi-way pots, especially when larger and / or on wet or dynamic boards are generally going to be stronger hands betting for value and protection.

How to adjust will depend on what types of opponents you're playing against. If they over-fold to raises, we can raise with our bluffs and just call with our strong value hands. If they tend to be sticky once they start putting money into the pot, we can over-fold our weak value and worst draws, and just continue with our stronger hands.

Also worth paying attention to their tendencies around fast-playing or trapping with their nutted hands. If they tend to be more trappy with the nuts, and donk with weak value, we should be able to exploit them pretty easily.

One of my favorite plays as the PFR in multi-way pots is to iso-raise flop donks with a smallish raise, and then size up on the turn if they check a brick. Alternatively, if they 3B the flop or donk again on a draw-completing turn, and I can't beat value, it's just an easy fold.

Why do people donk with value?
They think you’re not going to bet and they want to build the pot. If you are an aggressive player, this line against you makes no sense.

Why do people donk when they catch a little of the board: Flopped TP bad kicker, or middle pair maybe?
They want you to know they have something, and make you slow down, so they can get to the river.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I think it’s almost always one of these two things. Sometimes the sizing can be a clue. Multiway, a 1/3 pot donk is common and harder to read.

If I’m my usual aggressive self, and get donked into, I assume it’s number 2 and they want me to slow down. A big donk could be a made hand worried about being drawn out on.

Overall, I think you can figure their plan if you can read people at all. There’s a reason the donk is considered a bad play. If a strong, aggressive player donks, I don’t know what to tell you.

Donking is kinda like limping, it happens in some games, mostly ones I can never find. With a couple of aggressive players in the game, you won’t see much of it.

Donks are a rich text, and there's a lot revealed in the size, follow up actions, number of players in the pot and player types.

Starting with the obvious, the bigger their flop bets and the more follow up action comes after it the stronger it is. In particular, two polar bet sizes on the flop and turn is extremely strong from almost any player type except for a maniac (which will be obvious, because you will see them run this line multiple times in a short period.) On the other end of the spectrum, one small stab followed by a check (or followed by a call of your raise and a check) is overwhelmingly weak. In between is in between, obv. Continuous small bets and one big bet followed by a bunch of checks is going to tend toward medium strength.

If all this sounds obvious, that's because it is. That's what I mean by donks being a rich text.

Sizable bets in multiway pots in general should be taken at face value from frankly almost any player, including regs. These are almost always protected pots, at least for the size players tend to use. (Bets that are smaller than B30 are another ball of wax.)

The tighter a player is preflop and the more passive they are postflop, the stronger their donk will tend to be. The postflop passivity part is obvious, but I think preflop range width is under-considered by the vast majority of players. (I also think people's ability to break up player characteristics between preflop and postflop tendencies is hugely lacking.) An 80/10 can have very passive frequencies and still have very low standards for what is worth betting. Someone who's playing very few hands can be as aggressive as they'd like, they essentially have the range advantage and you should give their bets the benefit of the doubt.

So at one end of the spectrum, a B75 turn cbet after a B75 flop lead from a tight preflop / passive postflop player in a 4way pot should make you stifle a grin as you slide TPGK into the muck. On the other end of the spectrum, a very loose player who's aggressive postflop leading B33 into you heads up should essentially get raised by any hand that isn't good enough to call. The worse your cards are, the more inclined you should be to raise.

Again, in between is in between and you should calibrate based on how many factors are at play.

As for indirect exploits, the fact that players donk unbalanced ranges is somewhat redundant with all the other reasons you can profitably cbet and barrel against the field (along with their preflop looseness, slowplaying most boards too infrequently, not finding enough bluff catches on many runouts, etc), so it will usually just make those exploits more pronounced rather than directionally changing your decision making. Then again, I'm not exactly a maven when it comes to indirect exploits, so take that with a grain of salt I guess.

3 points that might add something to the above:

1. Donks from players who are "new" are much more likely medium value +. They don't understand preflop so they'll get to the flop and realize their T9/JJ is a pretty good hand on 972 or whatever so bet. Maybe even 88/87.

2. Donks from mid players who are "experienced" are much more likely to be monsters that want to pile money in.

3. Almost everyone who is donking is then unbalanced with their checking range, so no matter how you respond to their donk the main thing is to remember to bet way more often when they check. Even against a good 2-5 player that is donking HU on a board that's good for them, I'd immediately be sus about their checking range on boards that are better for them.