Bet & Win Poker

 Sure enough, he donked off a bunch, then joined the 1/2 game and donked off $300, losing about $200 on this hand:

Heads up (I missed preflop action, wasn’t huge):

Flop: AAK rainbow. Good player checks, donk bets, good player calls.

Turn: low brick, no draw. Good player checks, donk checks.

River: K, making board AAKxK. Good player checks, Donk bets $25, good player min-raises to $50, Donk shoves all in for $135 more. Good player calls.

Good player has the A, donk has the K.

Those are the kinds of hands I was winning from him all the time but he hasn’t played in awhile. The game plays pretty big these days, there was a 5-way hand that went like this the other night:

UTG (very good player): Raise to $8

UTG +1 (best player there): Call

Player 2 (my nemesis, let’s just call him nemesis from here on out): Call

Player 4: Call

Player 5: Call

SB: Raise to $40

UTG: Call

UTG +1: Call

Nemesis: Call

Player 4: Fold

Player 5: Call

Five handed to a 7,6,2 rainbow flop. SB checks, UTG checks, UTG+1 bets $115. Nemesis raises to $250. Player 5 folds, SB folds, UTG tanks and then folds, not realizing he wasn’t heads up, shows 9,9. UTG+1 now tanks but eventually folds. Nemesis wins ($574 pot). He had 10,10. SB had AQ suited, I hate the raise to $40 preflop out of position from the SB against 5 players, including an UTG preflop raiser. UTG+1 didn’t show or say but I think he had something like JJ or 88, probably the latter.  

I thought UTG should have re-popped to ~$100 preflop (though watching is easier than actually playing) because it probably eliminates everyone between him and the SB, who, if he has anything from AK or JJ down, really has to think about getting 4 bet from a guy who is showing big strength with his second preflop raise (which is why I think everyone else probably folds in between too especially b/c they each only had $8 in the pot at that point). It’s a tough play though because if anyone else 5 bets the pot, you have to fold and give away $100. But no one else is likely to since they all merely called the $8 and would have raised previously to thin the field with better hands. Even with a call preflop by the SB you are still in position the rest of the hand. What do you think?”

We’ll follow up with our thoughts in our next post…