NL10: aggro-donks

Originally Posted by Raoni_Poker

If I raise the flop, he folds his bluffs and some hands that I beat. Could you elaborate on that?

ja, calling isn't terrible obviously. I don't think it's optimal. He has a weak made hand here about 100% of the time and so long as he has seen you raise once or twice preflop already he'll be calling your raise with 55 etc. And then it's two trivial tiny bets to get it in and he'll never be able to fold.

The interesting thing about these hands is their actual holdings in the end. We never assume that a donk is bluffing when we face heat, so we end up folding most of the time. However, they can run 3 street bluffs occasionally and they will make you fold the best hand most of the time. This is not a problem if you have an edge, but it can get very frustrating when you do not extract value from your monsters and end up folding your AK, overpairs and top pairs to these bizarre bluffs.

I'll post the results of each hand and put some comments.

HAND 1: This was by far the most bizarre, because he actually called my shove. He had Kc4d. He limps with this trash hand and decides to call the flop (with a backdoor straight draw and K high!). He flops a 4 on the turn and this is enough for him to vomit his stack to me on the river. This was actually not a bluff...he thought he was good. He believed I was bluffing the 2 on the river and decided to push me out of the pot. He believed so hard that I was bluffing him that he called with 4s. If I'm betting an overpair here for value, I can fold a lot of the times because his raise is strong (especially for a fish).

HAND 2: This was interesting. I opened from the button and BB calls. He fire 3 pot sized barrels. He was quite aggro, he bets more than 50% of pots in the flop, so...I called him down. The funny thing here is that he had 38o!. He was probably intending to make this 3 barrel bluff with anything as I was opening wide on the button. If I have jacks or queens here, he is making me fold a lot on the turn.

HAND 3: this was the most controverse hand. I called him down with A7 assuming that his value range is narrower than his bluff range. He had 7c6c! He did not have any draw whatsoever here and decided to run a 3 barrel bluff assuming (probably) that I was drawing (or weak). Most of us (including myself) would fold the flop here assuming that we're beat. However, his line of limp-calling reveals a lot about his range.

Mental note: fish can be unpredictable as hell.