Donk Leading

I've been watching a lot of videos lately of 100nl on grinderschool and the people making them are pretty much saying that donk leading is a weak play(calling a raise out of position and leading into the raiser). On the other hand, one of the points Doyle Brunson makes in Supersystem is that when you make a strong hand to lead into the raiser. Here is an example I just made up. A player makes a raise and for whatever reason you are sure he has aces. He raises 4x and you call in the small blind with 55. The flop comes 58Q rainbow. Now if you lead into the raiser here, he is most likely going to reraise you because of the dry texture of the board and you will have an opportunity to win a big pot. Is the criticism of this play because when people make this move it is generally not with strong hands? or do you just generally not like this play? Id appreciate if Spenda would comment because I can remember a few times on his videos he will raise a donk lead, not giving it much credit.

I don´t think any play is "weak" by itself.

If you´re donk leading sets+ you gotta lead weak hands/draws as well, otherwise most people will catch up quickly what you´re doing there.

Beside that, in your example it would be pretty bad to raise your flop lead from the PFR perspective imo. Your bet pretty much reps 55/88/QJs+/KQo/89/A8 and thats it, where raising will stop weaker hands from firing. If you decide to lead a strong hand, pick a wet board, where u can represent lots of draws versus which loads of tight players will mash their raise button to "protect" their overpair.

donk leading with air or very weak holdings is a very common feature of low/micro stakes poker games. in higher stakes donkbetting is a valuable tool of many winning players because their ranges are far more balanced and the spots they choose to lead are more refined.

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Originally Posted by nutsinho

donk leading with air or very weak holdings is a very common feature of low/micro stakes poker games. in higher stakes donkbetting is a valuable tool of many winning players because their ranges are far more balanced and the spots they choose to lead are more refined.

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I noticed this. At 2nl people are either bettors of the supposed value of their hands, or they're opposite bettors. And very often they don't go to any great lengths to disguise their play.

I will openly admit that at 200nl FR I experience donk leads on both ends of the extremes. When a weak player donks into me, I'm very likely to raise hands without SD value as a bluff, and call with hands that can legitmately win a showdown. I haven't looked into my HEM DB to know if this is profiting for me, but I'm almost certain it is. Bad players, as nutsinho said, are just so often donk leading hands they just aren't sure how to play if they check and you bet. Instead of thinking how to get maximum value out of your range or lose the least, they are thinking I have a small pp on this board, I need to bet to protect from getting sucked out on, or he likely missed, so I need to bet.

However, the decent regs at 200nl are generally donking a stronger range. And I give it much more credit.

But tbh, I don't incorporate donk leading into my game effectively enough. I rarely see situations in which a donk lead would perform better than a check/raise or check/call type line, except for when the pot is multiway. Maybe someone could enlighten me on the underlying concepts of when and why you donk lead, and maybe elude to some of those more refined spots.

I've started donk leading quite a bit the last several months.

I mostly just look at donk leading when:

-The preflop raiser is unlikely to continuation bet himself, and I have a strong hand on the flop (as a value or semi bluff)
-The flop goes multiway (which is related to above, since a lot of times the PFR will be less likely to continuation bet)
-Villain has a hand that he might wanna call down but will probably just drop to a flop c/r (ie: villain has a weak ace, A6 on an AT5 flop or something, he might fold to the c/r but will potentially call 2 or 3 donks if I have AQ)
-Villain does not have a hand, but might think I'm full of it, and bluff raise (also possible vs an aggro on a board like AT5 when we have AQ). ie: Villain is spazzo, and spaz raises donk leads

If you ask Spenda in the GS forum you're guaranteed to get him to answer. I'll go ahead and point him here and he can explain himself but I dont know how often he browses the SHNL forum.

The main problem (like I'm sure nuts said although I didn't read his post) is that people aren't donking a balanced range at lower stakes. If someone's "leading" range is unbalanced it's fairly easy to play against. Basically we can call with hands that have mediocre showdown value, and raise with our air. Board texture means a lot, as on a more draw-heavy board texture the amount of hands the donker will be 3bet jamming increases. If he/she bet/3bets all-in on a dry board texture their range is polarized to big hands and bluffs. On a more draw-heavy board texture it could be big hands, bluffs, draws, medium strength hands, etc...

As per your 55 example, leading vs. c/r'ing or c/c'ing. The one thing I don't like is just snap-putting him on AA. He has an entire range, it might be 88+,AJ+ in this instance. We can almost forget about QQ+,88 as the money is more than likely going to go in regardless of the line we take. Therefore we can choose the line that gets the most value out of the middle-to-bottom of his range, i.e. AQ, 99-JJ and AK/AJ. Let's analyze what might happen

leading:

-he calls with a hand w/ mediocre showdown value that would have checked back the flop. This allows us to build a pot. Think JJ/TT. We have a bigger pot on the turn however we're not more than likely to get one more street of value.

-he folds a hand he would have continuation bet that has little SD value and less chance to improve to a better hand. Think AK/AJ. These hands will never improve to a better hand on the turn (and v. unlikely to improve to a better hand by the river) but they will improve (just not enough to win the pot) from time to time, enough for us to win a bigger pot. Also he's going to be continuation betting these hands a ton on this flop, therefore it would seem we could get more value from c/c or c/r.

-He'll raise with the air portion of his range, which is pretty much non-existent as it seems we have a read his is a tight opener. He might tend to raise AK/AJ on this flop if we lead, or he might float with AK.

The question then becomes what's the most +EV play? A lot of it will depend on our opponent. Is he aggressive? Have we seen him react aggressively or passively to leads in the past? Is he stationy, will he call a river bet with 99 if the turn goes check-check? Does he continuation bet a hand like TT here?