raise. such a small bet usually wants to take a cheap stab or draw cheaply. if he shoves, you have to call unfortunately. he can do this with a lot of hands that don´t necessarily contain a FD and against which you have good equity.

cheers

s.

Raise all in

Single raise pot with 120 in the pot on the flop.

Villain donks 30, making it 150.

If you call, you will leave 440 - 60 - 30 = 350 behind

and the pot will be 120+30+30 = 180

To get it in on the turn, you will need 350 / 880 ~ 40% equity vs villain's get it in range

It's definitely worth noting that you also have 2 overs to go with your OESD (significant boost to your equity).

You have 8 outs to a straight draw and 6 outs to top pair.

There are a lot of board run outs you're happy to see in position.

We need to guage the range villain donks this board with to this sizing.

It is middling, connected and has a FD. This board hits "standard" villain OOP flatting ranges @ ~15BB VERY HARD.

What is his donking range comprised of?

Does he donk his strong made hands?

Does he donk his draws?

How often does he expect us to cbet if he checks?

Does he have a c/r range?

Is he scared of the draws?

What is his plan if we raise him?

Why did he bet so small?

Is he even thinking about these things? Or is he just a donking fish grinning madly to himself at the thought of you folding?

You said villain is pretty aggro based on a VPIP of 43% ?

Maybe you have other reads on him which you didn't post?

VPIP of 43% is pretty tight heads up ...

So if you also have the read that he's aggressive then I guess we would categorise him as tight, aggressive and expect his bets to be correlated with value (or at least high equity) hands?

Vs this kind of guy with such a low VPIP @ $3.5 game I don't expect him to be donking out with his draws.

Most players at these stakes tend to c/c their draws and have very imbalanced river leading ranges when draws get there.

At the same time, you will see a lot of players protect their hand by betting on wet board textures out of fear of being outdraw.

I would weight his range more to vulnerable made hands - a pair or better.

And I would say he donks because he:

a) doesn't expect you to bet

b) is afraid of the draws

I don't know enough about him to know what his sizing means.

Generally this sizing is polarised around a players psyche:

Category 1: Transparent bet sizing villain - Bets a size correlated to his hand strength (very common at these stakes) => would probably have 2nd or 3rd pair type holding

Category 2: Desperately wants to get paid off villain - Will bet small with strong hands because he projects his own price sensitivity onto his opponents and believes being called more often is better than betting bigger and risking not getting paid

The category 2 villain is also less likely to donk than to check to you and hope you bet because he believes betting might scare you off.

So I'm inclined to think in a readless context, villain is more likely to be category 1 villain holding a weak vulnerable made hand the best play here is to ship it in.

Why?

Against a range which we believe to be comprised mostly of single pair hands, we have a ton of equity (45-55%) but no show down value.

When we ship it, villain will often call, but net of the dead money it is pretty neutral EV.

If he ever folds, we risked (440-60) = 380 to win 150.

If we conservatively have 40% equity vs his donk call range, villain needs to fold:

f(150) + (1-f)(2*440*0.4) - (380) = 0

150f + 352 - 352f - 380 = 0

f = 28 / 202 ~ 14%

=> Villain only needs to fold more than 14% of the time for jamming to be better than folding if we have 40% equity vs his donk call range.

The more villain folds, the more upside we get on the EV neutrality caused by the dead money and our high equity holding.

If villain is donking a lot of weak made hands, he will often fold to our jam and we will realise fold equity worth likely more than calling for the implied value vs his donking range which will become a bluff catcher come the turn or river when we're ready to put the rest of the money in.

Additionally, shipping over his donk has the small metagame bonus of defending the bottom of your range vs subsequent bluff donks.

If we were a bit deeper, say 20-25BB I think I would prefer to call.

i love cdons math and feeling posts

but ya generally at the lower limits a donk bet is a weaker range when its a recreational player

oh ya and shipping it to maximise fold equity with a nice draw stacks are to short to try to set something up by the turn or river

i think if you just call you set the villain up to be pot committed on the turn

I totally agree with Dipl.Kom.