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villian was 38/20/4.0 after only 20 hands. what is he representing here? and why does he donk into me? he did that before in a raised pot with AKx and barreld a potsize bet on the turn. what would you do?

Absolute Poker $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players - View hand 595286
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

CO: $29.72
Hero (BTN): $25.51
SB: $28.40
BB: $8.23
UTG: $8.00

UTG posts a big blind ($0)

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is BTN with T T
UTG checks, CO raises to $1.10, Hero raises to $3.90, 3 folds, CO calls $2.80

Flop: ($8.15) A 9 2 (2 players)
CO bets $3.75, Hero ?

You ask what is he reping here.
What are you reping with your 3bet pre flop?
What hands do you want him to fold?
What hands do you want him to call with?
How are you planning to proceed with the han postflop?


Ok as played.
I would treat his donk as weak until he convinces me otherwise.
Id raise the flop to about 8.25 and proceed with extreem caution if he puts another chip in the pot after that.

if we raise here, no worse made hands call so we cant do it for value. if we raise to around 8.25 we give his flush draw type hands good odds so hes calling anyway. Hes probably not folding AQ,AJ.. if hes donking a small pocket pair we are way ahead anyway.

Maybe I'm wrong but i'm happy to call and play the turn in position.

Ok so you call and he bets 8.25 on a blank turn.
Are you folding now?
Wat information did you gain?

I'm not sugesting raising for information.
Your hand is way ahead of this donk range so its for value/protection/ betting controll ... and we get so much needed info all for 8.25.
He can call with a fd or bettor ,thats fine.
If he checks the turn i'm checking behind to get to cheap showdown.
i'l then snap off any bluffs on a non flush river, fold on a flush river.

if we raise here, no worse made hands call so we cant do it for value. if we raise to around 8.25 we give his flush draw type hands good odds so hes calling anyway. Hes probably not folding AQ,AJ.. if hes donking a small pocket pair we are way ahead anyway.

Maybe I'm wrong but i'm happy to call and play the turn in position.

I agree. I agree with Poker Road that generally donk bets are weak. If I had air here I would probably raise. In this case we are pretty much WA/WB. We're going to fold all the hands we are ahead of and he's not going anywhere with his Ax hands.

The pot is fairly big already though and just taking it down has some merit.

[quote]You ask what is he reping here.
What are you reping with your 3bet pre flop?
i rep high cards and high pairs, we dont have too much history so he probably assumes my range is tight.

What hands do you want him to fold?
KK, QQ, JJ, TT - maybe weak Ax, but i dunno if he is ever folding an A.

What hands do you want him to call with?
weaker pairs and draws.

How are you planning to proceed with the han postflop?
well, depends of the flop of course, and his 3bet calling range i
put him on. i was surprised that he donked into me and talked me out of the hand.

thanx, good comment

Ok so you call and he bets 8.25 on a blank turn.
Are you folding now?
Wat information did you gain?

I'm not sugesting raising for information.
Your hand is way ahead of this donk range so its for value/protection/ betting controll ... and we get so much needed info all for 8.25.
He can call with a fd or bettor ,thats fine.
If he checks the turn i'm checking behind to get to cheap showdown.
i'l then snap off any bluffs on a non flush river, fold on a flush river.

This is the part I'm not sure about. I'm not sure we have a good enough read to call the turn in this spot. In that case calling the flop isn't great.

If I knew he was betting 8.25 on the turn. I'd still rather call when he's barreling some of his air then put in 8.25 on the flop and fold all his air. I'm more worried about a pot sized bet on the turn.

I just don't see us getting value very often on a flop raise.

[quote][quote]You ask what is he reping here.
What are you reping with your 3bet pre flop?
i rep high cards and high pairs, we dont have too much history so he probably assumes my range is tight.

What hands do you want him to fold?
KK, QQ, JJ, TT - maybe weak Ax, but i dunno if he is ever folding an A.

What hands do you want him to call with?
weaker pairs and draws.

How are you planning to proceed with the han postflop?
well, depends of the flop of course, and his 3bet calling range i
put him on. i was surprised that he donked into me and talked me out of the hand.

thanx, good comment[/quote]


Ok when your trying to rep a hand like high/cards and high/pairs...you are turning a good hand into a bluff by 3beting TT here.
You hand loses its best value when you 3bet here as your villian is likley to fold all the hands your doing well against and only play back with hands we flip against or hands that crush us.

I dont think he is ever folding a bettor hand so bluffing is quite bad here preflop.

He also is quite unlikley to call with many weaker pairs although he might but will not put any money in on the flop without some equity (ie a set or an overpair to the board...and ofc there issnt much overpairs to the board with an underpair to TT ..if that makes sence)

Post flop is much much easier to play a hand like TT in a single raised pot then it is to 3bet a hand like TT pre and then play well on the flop.

For example .if he had checked the flop ..would you have bet?? again that would have been a bluff.

#The key is to try polorise your 3beting to very strong hands and bluffs that you can fold easy to any heat.
3bet polorised until you have a dynamic where you can 3bet lighter for value (this rarley happens at micro stakes)

For example .if he had checked the flop ..would you have bet?? again that would have been a bluff.

You are betting this flop with TT when he checks to take down dead money and for value against his draws and maybe every now and then when he calls with a low pocket pair.

Its not as if there would be that many better hands in his range that will fold to a single flop bet so this bet can't really be a bluff to fold out better hands.

Poker_Road put me right if you think I'm looking at this in the wrong way.

I'm not sure I agree we can rarely 3 bet TT for value in the micros. I agree with playing a polarized 3 bet range against some that is playing a solid preflop strategy and playing well postflop. But there are lots of people that call way too many 3 bets OOP in the micros (many of which have 38/20 ish stats). Against these guys its a mistake to polarize IMO and we should be 3 betting a value based range.

You are betting this flop with TT when he checks to take down dead money and for value against his draws and maybe every now and then when he calls with a low pocket pair.

Its not as if there would be that many better hands in his range that will fold to a single flop bet so this bet can't really be a bluff to fold out better hands.

Poker_Road put me right if you think I'm looking at this in the wrong way.

If we 3bet preflop, and cbet this flop with TT, then we are bluffing .
Any time we cant say were betting for value...were bluffing.

I'm not saying that everytime we bet with TT on an Axx board were bluffing though.(its ok to take down the pot when there is enough hands we can still get value from in a single raised pot)

I was trying to highlight to op ,that when You start by 3betting TT as a bluff preflop you will be continuing with that bluff when you cbet on an overcard board as were not gona get any value from any worse .
We might actually get fords from hands like JJ/QQ even KK.
but those hands likley 4bet us pre.
Any way my main point was to not 3bet TT pre here..as when you do its a bluff ...and you have to then continue bluffing on many flops.

I'm not sure I agree we can rarely 3 bet TT for value in the micros. I agree with playing a polarized 3 bet range against some that is playing a solid preflop strategy and playing well postflop. But there are lots of people that call way too many 3 bets OOP in the micros (many of which have 38/20 ish stats). Against these guys its a mistake to polarize IMO and we should be 3 betting a value based range.

agree with opening up our value range vrs a 28/20 ..but after 20 hands this guy could be anything .. I wouldnt make preflop changes to my general lines based on 20 hands of a little loose looking play .

Also .even if he is a true 28/20 ..its not certain he is calling 3bets light .. so I wouldnt really start opening up until we see what he's calling with.

Ok so you call and he bets 8.25 on a blank turn.
Are you folding now?
Wat information did you gain?

I'm not sugesting raising for information.
Your hand is way ahead of this donk range so its for value/protection/ betting controll ... and we get so much needed info all for 8.25.
He can call with a fd or bettor ,thats fine.
If he checks the turn i'm checking behind to get to cheap showdown.
i'l then snap off any bluffs on a non flush river, fold on a flush river.

There's a difference between his donking once and donking twice range.

Some opponents would only donk with an A here and they are all probably betting the turn. Others might donk a pair as good as QQ/JJ or a 9 and then give up once you call. A flush draw donking isn't unreasonable either and I think those opponents would sometimes fire another barrel on the turn. There are also some monsters here like sets and Q9 that don't want to slowplay because of the flush draw.

You've already seen the guy do this once with top pair so turning your hand into a bluff seems pretty bad. I would just call flop and fold to any additional barrels unimproved.

@ Poker Road

I think we are agreeing other than assuming a different default player. By default I assume an unknown is bad becuase if he's a reg there is a good chance I have more than 20 hands on him. That coupled with starting on the loose side (although small sample) and the fact that generally micro players are bad is enough for me to assume he's bad here. I'll be surprised some times, but right way more often than wrong.