Should we be donking vs fish+tag?
1/3 9 handed
V1 is a passive fish, limp/call w/ATC but not a 3bet. Has been stacked 3~4 times losing over 1000 tonight.
V2 is normally a tag reg, can get laggy depending on mood/tilt factor. Added on 2~3 times already, maybe down 500ish?
V1 effective 200
V2 effective 500
Hero covers
rock straddle to 5
V1 limps in +1
V2 in mp iso open to 25(he has been isoing the fish all night not going well)
Hero in sb T♠T♣ flats.
We decided to flat to keep the fish in game.
V1 flats.
3way Pot 83
Flop 8♣7♦3♥
Hero?
Should we donk here to get max value from fish? size? Or check?
Hero has nitty/tag image vs V2, we never have played a big hand together. We also just won a huge pot playing set tricky on a dry flop vs a passive rec.
I would donkbet this flop
Yeah I'm always 3b here preflop. We are out of position. Multi-way flop isn't good for us. V1 is 40bb deep eff. Yes V1 is a fish by description but any two overcards here are possible. Put him to the test now.
I think it's much better to 3b and perhaps take it down preflop. If V2 calls, we can range him better. If V2 4b, we can probably fold even given the potential tilt factor.
AP: we are now guessing a little about V2. I prefer to make a polar donk here to deny equity/rep the set. V2's raises are likely to be nutted.
I'm fine with our preflop plan.
I'd donk $50 targeting the fish (where we can trivially play for stacks versus him on the turn). If the fish gets involved then V2's hands will be tied and he'll be forced to play pretty face up. If it ends up HU versus V2 I would continue with caution this deep.
GcluelessNLnoobG
Spoiler
In game flop all check thru.
Turn 2 blank
We bet 50, all fold.
I think it was a lot better donking flop. Even if the tag does call or raise, we can fold later on.
When the tag does cbet this flop, we would be in a world of pain, since his value range has us crushed usually.
There weren't much turn cards we wanted to see as well.
So in hindsight, probably donk bet with any value to get the max from the fish. Not too sure about sizing, maybe 25? or 50? or something in between?
Calling pre and donk betting flop seems much worse than 3b pre.
Isn't it normal to keep weaker player in the game?
3betting gets headsup vs V2 oop. Who we have 0 edge on.
Keeping the weaker player in the game makes this a better +ev line?
Also V2 might or might not be tilted from losing small/medium pots nonstop this session. Can we really navigate postflop on v2 possibly aggro vs us ip?
Anyhow, I'm not blowing out the fish out of the hand when we only have TT.
Agree with OmahaDonk
You lose value dango with the smooth call, and flop check. I feel the comments you make, but it seems more like avoiding risk with the 6th or 7th best pre-flop hand in Hold’em.
With a big hand, you want to bloat the pot pre before the others can find a reason to fold. Almost always an aggressive action is better than a passive one. How do you know the fish won’t come along? I disagree with your reasoning here, but I respect your play and I’m just trying to learn.
It’s straight forward to me, you face an open in the small blind with a strong hand = 3Bet
Info you gain:
If you 3Bet and get called, he caps himself
If you 3Bet and get raised, he’s likely ahead.
The entire idea of letting in the fish is flawed, just like the idea of multi-way pot odds. The truth is the more people involved, the less likely you will win. Why would you want to jump into that situation? You will lose most of the time playing the lottery, but you can buy a ticket.
Read this today from Nathan:
Poker is not about avoiding mistakes.
Poker is about punishing other people’s mistakes.
What mistake of the fish will you exploit to get his $200? How does capping your range improve your situation vs a tag reg? How will your donk bet clarify your situation? What did you gain playing passively? Is it not likely you would have won more 3betting? I think that is the case, but you also lose less when beat from the info you gain.
I think maybe because we have to fold TT so often, we don’t credit it with the strength it deserves. But when everyone misses the flop 68% of the time, getting heads up is a superpower.
Finally, everything I have ever read about poker over many years advocate raise or fold from the small blind. Has this strategy changed and I didn’t hear about it?
I think the instinct to keep the fish in isn't a bad one, but you're in the wrong position. You're setting up V2 to be in the best position to exploit the fish. If you were on the button, your argument for flatting makes a lot more sense because V2 is going to be handcuffed by being stuck in the middle. If he flats the fish, he risks you squeezing, if he raises light he could be in a world of hurt if you wake up with a hand. So if you were BTN, V2 is forced to play fairly honest. But when you are SB, you are the one forced to play honest because you are OOP on the fish and V2.
Just 3!, if V2 calls its betting to play OOP with a lower SPR rather than a higher one and just play poker against V2. If V2 has been isoing too wide, which your read suggests, V2 just has a lot of folds here. And maybe fish has something that will just jam pre when the pot gets big, and V2 can't do anything about it because he has to worry you will jam over the fish. Say fish had 55 here, you just cost yourself a lot of EV.
You want to be IP versus everyone. If the poker gods are rude enough to give you good hands OOP, then don't get cute, just raise them up.
TT is not a good enough hand to care about the “value” lost by not 3betting when there is a fish in the hand who you’d be blowing out.
There is a cutoff where not 3betting is losing too much immediate value but I think TT is below that line.
With the meta of the guy is raising a lot i think it is a pretty clear 3! Pre.
Bring the fish along i can support with many hands but you are sort of hoping to cooler him or outplay him, and hands like AQs or maybe even low PPS can do that.
Rake is always important.
Ye, chunky donk.
I don't mind preflop as much as others.
At this deeper stack depth and no real dead money in the pot, we're not exactly thrilled to isolate ourselves HU OOP to a potentially difficult player with a hand that often flops meh.
We're also cool with bringing in the fish cuz his stack behind is the real dead money we're going after (and we don't want to blow him out of the pot). Plus bringing V1 along handcuffs V2 (as V2 can't really get too out-of-line with V1 in the hand) and this somewhat lessons V2's positional advantage on us.
Overall, you're probably best off taking whatever route you're most comfortable with and think you can handle fine, imo.
GcluelessNLnoobG
TT is not a good enough hand to care about the “value” lost by not 3betting when there is a fish in the hand who you’d be blowing out.
There is a cutoff where not 3betting is losing too much immediate value but I think TT is below that line.
At least 1 over card to our TT will be seen on the flop a majority of the time. By cold calling the preflop raise from the SB with an almost certain call from the limper; this appears to be a bad position to put ourselves in.
3! and taking it down preflop or having V1 fold and V2 giving us a better gauge of his range by how he continues seems to be the better line.
Grunch:
PRE - flatting to keep the fish in works when the raiser is in front of us, we'll have position post flop, and the fish are left to act. That's not the scenario here. The fish has already put dead money into the pot, and our LAG-reg friend has ISO'd from late position, and we're in the SB. This is a spot to put in a squeeze, not to slow-play.
FLOP - Jesus, no. Do not donk. Why would you? Just check and see what happens.
If our read is that V1 is passive, that doesn't mean he's going to call with the LAG behind him. If our read is that V2 is LAG and we think that he thinks we're nitty, that doesn't mean he's going to fold just because we donk into him on 873rb.
If we just demonstrated that we like to slow-play our flopped sets, and we think either V remembers that, are they likely to think we're now fast-playing a set? And if so, is that what we want? Are we TRYING to turn TT into a bluff, to make them fold, or would we be donking for value?
V2 is going to call, a lot, and we'll be guessing on literally EVERY turn card. Like, even if we turn a set, it completes some straight draws he could have. Literally any turn card could potentially improve his hand. I can't think of many hands I'd have as V2 that would fold to a donk here, unless you donk HUGE.
There's almost no scenario / run-out in which we'll donk the flop and feel good barreling. We played our hand like a set-mine or bluff-catcher. We didn't flop a set, so now we're just bluff-catching, unless we improve in a big way.
Pray the run-out / action makes our TT the nuts. Donking multi-way with hands that are too strong to turn into bluffs is madness.
Jesus, what???
1. When the flop checks through, there's a good chance V2 has nothing. We don't really know what V1 may have because he naturally checked in flow on the flop. It's fine to bet, but we don't need to go this large. We want him to call with his worse hands, not fold.
2. Donking this flop multi-way with TT would have been bad. If V2 calls, it's fine. If he raises, it's fine. Maybe we fold later, but I'd be hesitant to fold in this set-up, on certain run-outs. If we're thinking we're going to fold to a raise, either on the flop or on a later street, it should make it obvious why we shouldn't be donking.
3. He doesn't need a strong hand to c-bet the flop as the PFR when we flat pre from the SB, and we check, and the fish checks. His value range could include 99, 66, AK, and a lot of hands that are just range-betting.
4. If there aren't many turn cards we'd want to see, why are we thinking about donking, unless we're thinking about over-betting?
5. There are hands we could donk bet here. Basically 2P / sets that don't mind getting raised. Donk bet small, pray someone spaz-raises.
As played (flatting preflop, which I'm totally cool with), I'm also totally cool with donking this flop. We flatted preflop to bring in the fish stack and see what kind of flop we get. This is about the best non-Tx flop we're gonna get, but our hand is vulnerable and does need protection (laggy V2 is much less likely to cbet air versus two players including a fish). We're just hoping the fish gets a piece of it, and $50 into $83 sets up a trivial turn shove of $125 into $183 versus the fish (our most likely combatant). If things go sideways and V2 continues (where he'll mostly be playing fairly honestly if the fish is still involved), we can then reassess and do our best.
Git'sfine,orattheveryleastnotashorribleassomearemakingitouttobe,imoG
At least 1 over card to our TT will be seen on the flop a majority of the time. By cold calling the preflop raise from the SB with an almost certain call from the limper; this appears to be a bad position to put ourselves in.
3! and taking it down preflop or having V1 fold and V2 giving us a better gauge of his range by how he continues seems to be the better line.
Quite. When the flop comes down K94 or A52 or J87 or whatever, we'd much rather fancy our chances of opponent having missed when there's one opponent not two. Plus the 3bet gets immediate folds from loads of marginal hands that V2 may be using to iso, like AJo or something, that don't want to play for a big pot but can easily outflop TT.
As played I don't hate a donk on a flop which probably checks round a load, is reasonably good for our range and we don't want to give a free card.
No - Donking this flop is ridiculous.
We cannot stand heat - and if we get called, we are gonna bloat a pot where we hate half the turn cards. Your better options would be to check/call or if they all check around - you can bet safe turn cards.
3b pre is fine, but a $25 open is pretty large although there was a straddle. Can't really fault calling though.
Sometimes, I think the advice in this forum is too risk averse, but surprisingly, I think that the discussion is a little too aggro here preflop.
MP ISO range from a "TAG reg" is going to be fairly strong. Pocket Tens are a little weak here to 3bet into a fairly strong range. It would be different if Hero had AK/JJ.
There don't seem to be any strong players behind Hero, so it's not a situation where Hero needs to play 3bets out of the SB to prevent strong players from 3bet squeezing/etc to put us in a tough spot.
IMHO, flatting pre is fine.
As far as the flop discussion on donkbetting or checking, I think this is a clearly good spot for going for an exploitative donkbet into the fish between Hero and the MP PFR. I doubt that the MP PFR will be good/creative enough to punish us for it.
Agree with OmahaDonkYou lose value dango with the smooth call, and flop check. I feel the comments you make, but it seems more like avoiding risk with the 6th or 7th best pre-flop hand in Hold’em.With a big hand, you want to bloat the pot pre before the others can find a reason to fold. Almost always an aggressive a
No offense to FreeCard, but this post might sound like a smart post to a typical 2plus2 audience, but it doesn't really explain why "aggression wins."
Pocket Tens isn't a strong hand versus an MP ISO by a TAG reg. Reraising this "strong hand" with no thought about how strong the MP ISO range is...really just smells like lazy autopilot.
If Hero had changed the HH to Hero having Pocket 99/88 instead of Pocket Tens, I probably would have been fine with Hero just folding preflop. Pocket Tens is too good to fold, but Tens aren't that much stronger than Nines here.
Freecard is just going with the "aggressive poker is winning poker therefore I 3bet" without showing any consideration to the most important preflop thought process. Ranging Villain PFR range and thinking about how Pocket Tens is doing against the PFR range. Hint: Tens aren't that strong against that range.
Not understanding your advice smoola? Are you advocating a smooth call? 3betting with a strong hand is never a big mistake. I can lay down TT to a 4Bet, so my decision becomes more clear.
Are you expecting him to fold to a donk bet? I’m not at all offended, just don’t understand the reasoning. Dude opened for 25, iso is not even a thing.
Did he win anymore waiting until the river? No, everyone folded.
I’m fine with criticism, but not so much without an explanation of a better plan. More money would have been won with a 3bet and probably less money lost if villain has us beat.
FreeCard, I believe what some are saying is that results like blowing the fish out of the hand / being able to fold to a 4bet / playing a bloated pot OOP with a hand that sees a lotta meh flops versus a non-ABC player / etc. may not be the massive coup you think it is (especially with regards to comparing it to results of what may happen using an alternative line).
Like, in this spot here, if we donk and get it HU with the fish (a very likely result), we are *printing gobs* and all with very little risk. Yes, it's not the only result that can happen taking this line, but a lot of the other results aren't necessarily horrendous either.
GcluelessNLnoobG
I don’t think it’s a coup at all, OOP with TT. I don’t mind a call and a donk, I just think a 3bet is a better play.
When you 3bet, I don’t think anyone is going to think, o, he’s got TT. You likely only get one caller, same as you would donking. I don’t mind bloating the pot with villain thinking I’ve got AK. This is not exactly a bluff
I just don’t feel like I’m bloating the pot. You can’t really do that until the turn or river, unless he 4Bets.
If they all fold, we get the same result as op
I really do appreciate what you’re saying. I’m not trying to prove anything, just want to learn.
But so far, I have not been convinced that passive play and donking is a great thing to do.
You're concentrating on this singular thing that just happened to happen in this particular instance; you can't judge/compare based on this one singular result.
But so far, I have not been convinced that passive play and donking is a great thing to do.
In general, we want to play hands against the terrible fish, not the TAG reg (this is obviously going to be more profitable, right?), unless there are some great offsetting reasons to do otherwise (such as position, a better hand, some huge dead money, etc., none of which we have here). I'll let you decide what the best line is to accomplish that.
GknowswheremymoneycomesfromG
