How to Deal With Donk Bets - The Proven Winning Strategy

Donk bets can be annoying and confusing especially for a new poker player. How should you react to them? What do they mean?

Well here is the short answer:

A donk bet is a poker bet (often small, half pot or less) that goes against the flow of the action. They are most often used by recreational poker players and they do not indicate a very strong hand. You should typically call or raise a donk bet.

What Do Donk Bets Mean?

What a donk bet really means though depends on the player type. As mentioned, donk bets are usually made by bad players.

With bad players (high VPIP and big separation between VPIP and PFR) donk bets can mean a lot of different things. They can be anything from a draw, bottom pair, middle pair, top pair or a complete airball bluff.

However, most of the time, their range is on the weaker side when they make a donk bet. And what I mean by that is that it is rarely the nuts. They prefer to slowplay extremely strong hands.

With tighter players or regulars though (low VPIP and not much separation between VPIP and PFR) a donk bet will often mean one of two things: a weak overpair/top pair type hand or the nuts. Sometimes it will be a big draw also.

In other words, with regs, a donk bet usually indicates a pretty strong range.

By the way, if you're new to poker and you just want to know exactly what hands to play, grab my free poker cheat sheet.

Memorize the charts. Stop guessing. Start winning.

The Best Strategy to Beat Donk Bets

So the best strategy to deal with donk bets is pretty simple then. Most of the time against the fish I am just going to raise them up (or call in position) if I have anything halfway decent or a draw.

Why do I do this?

Because as I said, most of the time they don't have a strong hand themselves. So by raising up their donk bet I am giving myself more ways to win the pot.

Versus the regs I will be a little bit more hesitant to raise them up. This is because as we just discussed, they typically have a stronger range when they make a donk bet.

So versus the regs it is usually a better idea to just call with most of your range. It is ok to mix in a semi-bluff raise sometimes though and you should also be raising with the nuts sometimes as well for balance.

By the way, if you just want to learn my simple no BS system for exactly what hands to play, when to bet, raise and bluff, I cover this all in my brand new training program, Play Fearless Poker.

Memorize the charts. Stop guessing. Start winning.

My new Play Fearless Poker training program includes 12+ hours of advanced poker lessons, 100+ step by step example hands and "cheat sheets" below every single video.

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My Free Poker Cheat Sheet Teaches You How to Make $1000 Per Month in Low Stakes Games

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Check Your HUD First Though

So it is very important to know the player type before you make your decision on how to react versus a donk bet. But if you have actual data on the player, it is always better to check this first.

I will often look at the donk bet stat on my HUD before I act as well. By the way, if you don't know what a HUD is or why it is important, check out this article first where I explain it all.

If their donk bet % is something insanely low of like 10% or less, then I am going to be very careful about raising them up lightly. This is because they have the nuts or a monster draw too often.

In other words, they aren't going anywhere.

If they are donk betting super loose though, 30%+, then I am going to raise them up with a wide range. It should be noted that just calling the donk bet light and outplaying them on the turn or river is a completely fine strategy as well.

Donk Bet Example Hands

So let's look at a few example hands. I am just going to list a bunch of common spots and ask you guys what you would do. I will give my answers later in the comments.

They really are just completely random. I made them up and have no clue what I would do yet. I don't think the stakes really matter. Just assume micro stakes (NL50 or less) and little or no history between you and the opponent.


Example #1

Hero is dealt A♥K♦ in MP, raises 3x, and gets called by a nit in the SB.

The flop comes,

T♠A♣6♦

The nit donks for 1/2 pot.

What should hero do?



Example #2

Hero is dealt 8♣9♣ in LP, raises 3x, and gets called by a fish in the BB.

The flop comes,

3♣7♥K♣

The fish donk bets 1/3 pot.

What should hero do?



Example #3

Hero is dealt J♦T♦ in LP and 3bets an MP TAG opener.

The flop comes,

7♦T♠9♠

The TAG donks 3/4 pot.

What should hero do?



Example #4 

Hero is dealt A♠Q♦ in the BB. An SLP (semi-loose passive) limps the SB. Hero raises 4x.

The flop comes,

3♣5♣7♥

The SLP donks 1/3 pot.

What should hero do?



Example #5 

Hero is dealt A♠2♠ in LP, raises 3x, and gets called by a nit in the SB.

The flop comes,

2♥2♦8♥

The nit donks 1/2 pot.

What should hero do?


Once again I will leave my answers in the comments below. Let me know what you think about these donk bet situations as well.

Lastly, if you want to learn how to start consistently making $1000 per month in low stakes poker games, make sure you grab a copy of my free poker cheat sheet.

Interview: Andrewabc

Hey everyone. Something that I have been wanting to incorporate into this blog is some interviews every once in awhile. I want them to be from a wide range of player types however and not just high stakes ballers and crushers (although I will try and get them as well). I think the majority of people who visit my blog play the microstakes and therefore I will be especially on the lookout for grinders at these levels.

I think the people who grind these stakes come from all walks of life and have all sorts of different reasons for playing. They also come from all over the world as well. Here is a breakdown of the data regarding the top 10 countries that visit this blog.

1.	USA		18.33%
2.	UK		14.25%
3.	Canada		11.18%
4.	Poland		7.57%
5.	Germany		5.20%
6.	Australia		4.11%
7.	Romania		3.41%
8.	France		2.82%
9.	Denmark		2.32%
10.	Russia		2.24%

And the biggest section on the pie chart (the gray section), representing nearly 1/3 of all traffic, is the rest of the world. Were all in this crazy game together. I think that telling the stories of some of these people might help personalize the very impersonal world that online poker can seem at times.

I decided to start with the following person because he is the first one to show me undeniable evidence that my book, Crushing the Microstakes, really works. So this will be a solid brag imo!

I get quite a few emails and pm's from people saying nice things about my book but this guy was the first one to show me a 100k hand graph. That is the minimum amount of hands that I believe is a statistically reliable sample size in poker. And his results are certainly quite impressive.

But I also wanted to interview this guy because I don't know him very well at all (basically just the brief email exchange that we had last week). However we have played a pretty insane amount of hands against each other at NL2 and NL5 I am sure. I remember him well as a solid dedicated grinder.

One final note. Andrew's English is admittedly "terrible" in his own words. I have touched it up where ever necessary at his suggestion.

Interview

Name, age and location?

My name is Andrew. I am 43 years old and I am from Ukraine. I am known as "andrewabc" on Pokerstars. If someone says it's too late to play poker at this age don't believe it. You can draw from live experience with reading your opponents. So if you are 40+ welcome to online poker!

History of your poker playing career?

The first time I saw poker was on TV. It seemed pretty boring at first. But soon I learned more and it interested me so I decided to try playing online. I made my first deposit on Pokerstars and played NL10 and NL25. Predictably I lost all my money in a couple of days. It wasn't such as easy game as I had thought.

So I decided to try again at NL5. I played for several months and was still losing money however. It wasn't the progress that I had hoped for! But I didn't like all these river coolers and bad beats so I decided to go play at Party Poker for awhile. Once I lost my bankroll there I finally realized that it wasn't the site that I was playing on that was the problem, it was my game.

So I decided to start all over again at NL2 and really learn poker.

How many tables do you play at once?

These days I am playing 20-22 full ring tables but normal speed ones only. Pokerstars has an enormous selection so it is pretty easy.

Do you play for fun? Side income? Full income?

I'd like to become a poker pro one day. Can I or not? That is the question!

How many hands have you played in total?

I have played a total of 723k hands at NL2 and NL5 according to my Hold'em Manager data. 

What made you decide to purchase Crushing the Microstakes?

When I began to learn poker I asked myself which book should I read. There are tons of good books out there but when a NL200 pro writes about how to play the lowest limits it doesn't always work out very well. I knew about the outstanding results of BlackRain79 at these limits so I couldn't pass up on getting this book.

How has it helped your game?

I bought the book in December and read it twice. January 2012 is the first full month of putting it into practice. I have had my best month ever in more than a year of poker. Last year my best month was 5.8bb/100. My winrate has doubled! I know everything in this book works. My graph and stats prove it.

Click to view

What are your future plans in poker?

This year I would like to get to NL25. As Nathan said "moving up in stakes can be a big deal." I will move up to the next level when I am crushing my current one. I think I still make a lot of mistakes and want to improve more. And maybe some day I will be able to go for SNE at NL200-NL600. Who knows?

----------------------

I would like to thank Andrew for taking the time to do this interview and congratulate him on the outstanding improvements to his game.

I hope you all enjoyed this. I have never conducted an interview before. I plan to be more in depth in future ones. I think there are many more interesting questions that I could have asked. If you have any comments or suggestions on who you would like to see in future interviews please let me know below.

And if you have any questions for Andrew I am sure that he would be happy to answer them below. Ask soon though because he told me he is going on vacation in two days!

If you enjoyed this article please "Like" or "Tweet" it below!

Poker Math: Pot Odds, Hand Odds and Implied Odds

Let me first start off by admitting that math is not my specialty. In fact I think I only took it to the grade 11 level. It isn't that I am terrible at it, I just am not that well versed in it.

I just know the basics like most people. And as it relates to poker I do use some math but I guess I would classify myself more as the "feel" or "intuitive" type of player.

I have never thought that success in no limit hold'em cash games truly requires that much in depth knowledge of the math though. I think that as long as you understand a few of the basics such as pot odds, implied odds and hand odds, you will be fine.

By the way, if you're new to poker and you just want to know exactly what hands to play, grab my free poker cheat sheet.

Memorize the charts. Stop guessing. Start winning.

And the easiest player for me to point to to prove my case is Dusty "Leatherass" Schmidt. He has famously made millions grinding online mid and high stakes cash games. He has said on numerous occasions that he doesn't really approach the game from a mathematical perspective either. He made these comments for instance a little over a year ago on his Cardplayer blog,

"I am a very intuitive player. I have only on and off used a HUD when playing and make a lot more plays by feel more so than by numbers."

Now I wouldn't go that far. I use my HUD all the time. Keep in mind though that he plays high stakes cash games where the player pool is much smaller than in the microstakes games that I play in. Therefore it is much easier to just go off memory. I don't really use my HUD with the regulars that I have plenty of history with at the micros either. So I can understand where he is coming from.

Basically what I am trying to say here though is that you don't need to get bogged down with stats and odds and percentages to be successful at this game. It works for some people and that is fine. Some people love to Pokerstove huge ranges and use all sorts of equity analysis tools. There is nothing wrong with that. But in my opinion you will be fine if you just stick to the basics as well.

I don't want to talk about HUD setup in this blog entry. Yes I am a minimalist but I absolutely think that you should use one and make frequent reference to it at the micros. For more information on the stats that I use and how to set up your HUD please refer to a pair of articles that I wrote on this subject last year (Part 1 and Part 2).

So I already mentioned above that I think that you should know some basics about pot odds, implied odds and hand odds. Where did I learn about this stuff? I ordered "The Theory of Poker" by David Sklansky from the Pokerstars FPP Store when I was first starting out. It was so long ago that I read this book that I hardly even remember much of it but from what I hear it is actually mostly about limit hold'em.

As if I knew any difference back then!

I think I might have actually been playing limit hold'em at the time though (yes I had a brief career in it lol). But also I have heard that it is actually a very difficult book for beginners.

So I am not specifically recommending that everyone goes out and buys it. I do think it is a legendary book in the poker world, and that is why it is one of the few that I recommend. However a lot of the information might be dated now and frankly a lot of the math in that book you could learn from a simple google search and a couple hours of reading. But it covers the basics well and organizes it nicely.

So let's talk about some of the ideas that it covers.

By the way, if you just want to learn my simple no BS system for exactly what hands to play, when to bet, raise and bluff, I cover this all in my brand new training program, Play Fearless Poker.

Memorize the charts. Stop guessing. Start winning.

My new Play Fearless Poker training program includes 12+ hours of advanced poker lessons, 100+ step by step example hands and "cheat sheets" below every single video.

If you're serious about taking your poker game to the next level, enroll today.

Enroll in Play Fearless Poker

Get $100 OFF Use Code: 100OFF

Pot Odds

What are they? Pot odds are basically the price that you are getting on the pot. Poker is often referred to as gambling of course and that is because there is both risk and reward in almost every action that you take. When the pot has a certain amount of money in it and you are calling a bet often it is with an inferior hand which you hope will be a superior hand should the right cards come your way on future streets.

So you look at the current size of the pot plus the bet in front of you (always remember that once somebody makes a bet in poker it is part of the pot) and determine if it is worth your while to call. That is, do you have the correct mathematical odds to call.

Example #1:

There is $1 in the middle and your opponent has bet $1. You have to call $1 in order to win a $2 pot ($1 in the middle plus his $1 bet). In order to get your pot odds you simply take the size of the pot and divide it by what you have to call. In this case 2 to 1.


Example #2:

There is $3 in the middle and your opponent bets $1.50.

$3 + $1.50 = $4.50,

$4.50/ $1.50 = 3 to 1 pot odds.

Hand Odds

So how do these pot odds relate to our decisions at the poker table? Well you take those pot odds (2 to 1, 3 to 1 etc) and compare them to your odds to make your hand. Now there is an important point to be aware of here. Should you make you hand you need to be highly certain that it will be the best hand. This is why for instance you should always try and make sure that your draw is to the nuts or near it.

There is a whole other type of odds in poker referred to as reverse implied odds which while outside the scope of this article basically refers to getting yourself into a situation where should you make your hand, it will be second best. Therefore your "prize" for making your hand is to lose a big pot. Fish are experts at this.

Back to hand odds however. So the easiest way to find out what your hand odds are is to find a chart on the internet. I just did a simple google search for "poker outs" and found this one,

http://casinogambling.about.com/library/weekly/aa050103.htm

What this chart will tell you is what your odds against hitting your hand are on the flop and turn depending on the number of outs that you have. Now an in depth discussion of counting outs will also be outside the scope of this article but it basically just refers to finding the number of cards remaining in the deck that will improve your hand to the best one.

You should spend some time and commit all of the outs and percentages with various draws to memory. So for instance a gutshot always has 4 outs, an open ended straight draw has 8 etc. And then make sure you roughly memorize the percentages to hit.

Make sure that you remember that there is a big difference between 2 cards to come (the flop) and 1 card to come (the turn). Many people make the mistake of forgetting just how much their equity decreases on the turn as compared to the flop. This is why it is often much better to play your draw in an aggressive manner on the flop than on the turn.

So how do we tie all of this together? Well we can make a simple comparison of our pot odds as compared to our hand odds and make some easy decisions.

Example #1:

You have a flush draw on the flop and your pot odds are 4 to 1. Since we know that a flush draw on the flop is roughly only a 3 to 1 dog to get there by the river we can profitably call in this spot because we are getting better than those odds on the pot.


Example #2:

You have bottom pair and a flush draw on the turn and your pot odds are 2 to 1. Since we know that our hand has roughly 30% equity or is a nearly 3 to 1 dog versus a top pair type hand we know that we cannot profitably continue in this spot. The price that we are getting on the pot just isn't good enough when compared to the odds of making our hand.

Implied Odds

Now if we were playing limit hold'em this article would basically be over at this point. But the great thing about no limit hold'em is that the stacks are often really deep and of course you can bet as much as you have in front of you at any given time.

So while it is not an exact science we need to roughly ask ourselves how much we think we can get out of our opponent should we hit our hand. Is this the type of opponent that is a strong player who is capable of making the tough fold when the obvious draw comes in? Or is it a recreational player who will perhaps moan and complain but pay you off in the end?

If it is the latter we can probably depend on getting a big bet out of him on the river which might change our decision in example #2 above from a fold to a call. However versus the disciplined regular who will not pay us off, we should still fold.

Implied odds are a difficult thing to quantify like pot odds and hand odds because there are so many different factors involved. For instance a big consideration is the likely strength of your opponent's hand.

By the way, I just made a brand new video talking all about how to figure out your implied odds.

If you are up against the type of opponent that only bets when they have an extremely strong hand, then maybe you can make a fairly loose call with a longshot draw because you know that they will be in a very difficult situation (and likely to make the crying call) should you hit.

On the flip side, a big mistake that I see a lot of players at the micros making is misjudging their implied odds against aggressive opponents. For instance I am a big advocate of raising a ton of hands from late position. I just made two videos for my blog about it in fact (Part 1 and Part 2).

I am raising upwards of 50% of my hands in some cases from the cutoff and button positions. Set-mining me out of the blinds would not make much sense because the vast majority of the time I will have absolutely nothing to pay you off with when you finally hit.

Lastly, there are considerations with implied odds to be made concerning the deceptiveness and strength of your draw.

If you have,

K5

for instance on a board like,

346A

probably even the greenest of villains isn't likely to pay you off much because the draw is so obvious when it comes in. Also your draw is not to the nuts. Somebody could have 58 and you will lose a big pot should you hit.

However if you have a hand like,

KJ

on a board like,

TQ83

your draw is much stronger because it is far better hidden when it comes in. You always want to  consider what your opponent can have as well. In this case there are many more likely two pair hands that he could have or will make should the 9 or A come (people just play big cards more often than small cards).

Finally, our draw is to the nuts both ways. And we have a chance to cooler somebody that has a jack by making a higher straight should the 9 come.

I hope this discussion has been helpful for you all. As you can see I am no math expert. I consider myself around average in my knowledge of it. And at the poker table I use it sparingly. However it is important to know a few of the fundamental principles. And you should try your best to know them by memory.

If you are off by a little bit don't worry about it though. A flush draw will roughly hit 1 in 3 times from the flop and 1 in 5 times from the turn. See that chart that I linked above if you are a true nerd and want to know the exact values!

If you want to know my step by step strategy for crushing small and mid stakes poker games, grab a copy of my free poker cheat sheet.

Please leave your comments or questions below. If you enjoyed this article please "Like" or "Tweet" it below!