Mid/High Stakes Limit Hold'em Poker Forums

I'd rather 3 bet the guy a ton until he adapts. I'm not really a big fan of donkbetting against anyone.

Well I did 3bet a ton.

I dont like donking out either, but this guy cbet less than 50% so checkraising becomes less profitable by definition / you lose value compared to donking. And this guy would still fold (even though I 3bet a lot) like a nit vs bluffdonks on highcard boards.

define a ton? I'm thinking you could get away with 3 betting your whole range.

Could you expand on why you think 3betting like 80% pre is superior to 3betting, say, 35% and donkbetting exploitatively?

b/c you want to donk every flop. If you 3b lead instead of donk, the pot is 1sb bigger.

Here is how I adapted:
- 3bet lite
- fire 100% contibets; tighter turn valuebet range
- no thin 3 barrel value bets
- bet/fold marginal hands on flop and turn
- make some laydowns with MHs vs his 2 or 3 barrels

here is the big one:
- donk out made hands for value; donkbluff / semidonkbluff a lot on high card / Axx boards (mostly 1 barrels or 2 barrels with strong draws)

I generally like this. I don't like 3betting 80%+ of hands against this opponent type because I think it's too likely he does one of two things: (1) adjusts by being more randomly aggressive and less foldy -- while he may still be exploitable in doing that, he might end up playing significantly better than this current (very bad) strategy; or (2) he might simply get frustrated and quit.

When you have such a good thing going, I'd just bleed him dry and try to keep him oblivious to what I am doing for as long as possible. I prefer 3betting as much as you can get away with, probably in the 30-40% range. Since he is 3betting 25% (a pretty high amount), I think you can get away with close to 40% without him thinking you're being too unreasonable and convincing himself he needs to make adjustments. I also think you should be capping his 3bets a fair amount, because I expect he'll probably play fit/foldy when you do this. You'll have to figure out whether to double barrel a lot in this situation or not (i.e. will he peel missed overcard hands on flops and fold them on the turn? or will he only peel the flop with a range of hands that is very showdown bound?).

As far as donking, I like starting out with your plan of betting out on dryish hard card flops with air (and giving up if he continues) and also betting out with value hands. I think you should be inclined to bet out with vulnerable made hands and still try for check/raises on hands that are strong enough to be ahead of his value range and not very vulnerable to free cards. So for example, I'd lead out with K 8 on a flop of 8 7 3 because you'll get a lot of value out of worse hands but you also don't mind folding out most of his other hands, especially since his strategy will primarily consist of taking free cards and only betting/calling on future streets when he has improved to a hand better than yours. On the other hand, with the same K 8, I'd prefer check/raising a flop K J 6. In addition to getting a little more value out of Jx and 6x and any air he cbets with, we are much more happy to let him take a free card if he has nothing on the flop, since he will often pair up on the turn and lose 2 big bets.

In general, I'd try to play very exploitatively with my value lead out bets and bluff lead out bets based on board texture, figuring that he is unlikely to be capable enough of piecing together how our strategy varies with board texture features.

He sure seems to play bad on many levels and this sounds like a super profitable opponent to be up against.

I don´t get why we should 3B that much. Sure he seems to play bad against 3B but at the same time he seems to play even worse against a call. I would love to take advantage of that fact too and I think donking some could be fine. Now you can really stick it to him. You have more different kinds of weapons to keep him off balance and keep him giving up too much. But this is just my thoughts..

Some other things. He raises slightly less then equilibrium but at the same time play bad post so I think you can play the usual amount of hands in the BB. If the cap is at 50cent you might even want to defend any 2 in the BB vs him (when you have an idea on which hands he does what with post flop.)

In the SB I would definately raise any2. He folds way too often... doesn´t 3B a lot and doesn´t fight back enough post flop. So raise any2 and c-bet flop 100% vs this guy. Play poker on turn.

Other post flop adjustmetns that you mentioned seemed good.

Im not sure why we think its bad if he c-bets 45% after raising preflop? When we call preflop we are out of position with a worse range (since we 3bet some)... we prefer him to be passive, we prefer pot to be small... no?

I like the idea of donking your marginal hands and CR your stronger hands against this player as suggested by SJ. With your stronger hands I like taking a CR flop, bet turn, CR line on brick rivers since the villian is probably betting a made hand on the flop and is capable of value betting light per your read, when you check the river. However, if he is not paying you off then just start betting the river.