[monkiesystem]

I usually interpret a big donk bet on the flop as protecting something. But I wonder what this guy thought he was protecting his holding from. He already had two overcards to his pocket pair. Calling that protection donk was absolutely the right move.

Flop sizing should’ve been bigger, to isolate. I’d consider going for an iso raise as high as 6bb. What I’ve recently started doing is usually after I make the sizeable iso raises a few times I scale the sizing back. If you keep going with the large iso raises you’ll eventually get trapped by a limp-raise. They don’t like that, and they retaliate.

It’s hard to put someone like him on a range when he makes nonsense plays like that flop donk bet. Hopefully you put a good note in your tracker about him.

There’s no doubt he would’ve called your iso raise with that holding. The runout was terribly unlucky for you. It was hard to get away from.

[fivebyfive]

Honestly, this kind of player is one of my least favorite to play against. They are almost never going to get far in a tournament, but at the micro level, they can do a tremendous amount of damage. We know they’re going to give away their stack to someone, but that stack can include a bunch of your chips if you aren’t careful.

I also tend to throw concepts out like MDF against this type of opponent. They don’t have much in the way of strategy except to see flops and play from there. So it limps to us with one overcall. We’re on the button. Is there a reasonable raise size where they will fold much? Not if this is the player type I’m thinking about. But a raise can potentially get us heads up against a wide range, so I think it still has value. I’d overlimp with some smaller pocket pairs and Ax flush draws that can avoid reverse implied odds multiway. This type of hand feels like a clear raise. I agree that you need to go bigger, if only to try to fold out the second limper.

We flop middle pair, backdoor flush/straight draw and they lead out for pot. This is a pretty common tactic from this type of player and speaks to some level of connection with the flop. This player limp/called because they wanted to see a flop. That is what drives them. If they were holding As7s or something like that, they’ve completely whiffed and would rarely make this flop bet. So they are doing this with hands we’re losing to (all their Jx, AT, 44), but also many hands we beat (Hearts, straight draws, worse Tx). I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t normally consider pocket pairs below the T as hands they do this with. Regardless, I think with our backdoor value, we have to call this bet. I’d seriously consider folding KsTs at this point though.

Turn comes Q. Everything that was ahead of us still is, but a decent number of hands that we were ahead on the Flop caught up (Qxhh, QT, 89s, K9s, AK (which I do think can be there with this player type). It’s frustrating because we know they aren’t that much of a thinking player and we know they’ll have some nonsense in this pot-sized bet, but I think we’ll have much better hands to defend with here. We will have so much two pair, sets, straights, and combo heart draws with more equity, that I think we have to let this one go now.

We do raise and get it in and see they did this with 99. This is what notes are for. This player limp called a medium pocket pair and then led out for pot on the flop. If there is a next time against this villain, we can comfortably raise their flop-sized pot bet with top pair.