Poker Donkeys

There are so many ways to be a donkey in poker as you have already seen; in fact it’s so much easier to be a donk than a good poker player. Let’s finish with the oft overlooked metagame donk!

1. Lack of preparation
   Don’t just log on to your computer and start playing poker straight away. If you are a serious sports-person before a big match or a big race, you limber up beforehand, stretching your arms and legs, doing a few sprints and whatnot. If you are a serious poker player you also need to warm up beforehand, while there is no harm in doing physical exercise before you play, the exercises I’m referring to for you as a poker player are mental ones of course. Why not spend even just 5 -10 minutes reading some inspiring poker articles, thinking about your game and how you wish to play, how you wish to react during the session, being mentally prepared to take the rough with the smooth. It’s perhaps the biggest donkey play of all, the one that occurs most often, to just start off a game with no pre-game mental preparation.
2. 2. Showing your cards

1. There are times when showing your cards is a smart move. Say you have made a big bluff on a player who is either bad or has been running bad and you suspect it might send him on tilt. It’s a cruel but very effective time to show your bluff. However most players show their cards in situations which have no positive benefit for them. One of the classic ones is where a player who is playing tightly is getting pounded upon in the blinds, then one time lo and behold no one raises his blind this time, and he shows KK. It’s a feel sorry for me revelation. Well I got news for you guy; poker players don’t feel sorry for other poker players. I guarantee this only brings a smile to other poker players’ faces that they have successfully dodged the one time the guy has a hand in the blinds and will encourage yet more pounding on that player’s blinds.
2. Other times that players show cards reveals a lot of the way they erroneously think about poker. I’ve seen guys showing A3o, K6s in the big blind when no-one calls or raises their blind pre-flop as if they are disappointed! These players are basically revealing that they totally over-value the quality of their hands.

The automaton donk is the player that does not pay due attention to the nuances of the poker game, this player thinks he can win poker playing on auto-pilot. Well automaton, you are wrong! The sharks have you very much on their radars just the same as if you were a poker fish, any donk will do and until you get yourself out of auto mode, you are just that, another poker donkey!

Autoplaying hands
When multi-tabling, it often makes perfect sense, if you intend to fold to pre-select fold before your turn pre-flop.

1. However it is incredibly donktastic to do this when in the big blind, i.e. selecting check/fold. On the flop, if someone has limped in preflop, you have basically given them free information that you have a very weak hand in the big blind, if high cards come on the flop, one of your opponents can now bluff with very little fear of getting called from you. Furthermore, they also know that in future that when you are in the big blind they might be able to do a high value expectation cheap steal in the knowledge that you may have selected autocheck/fold again.
2. Post flop it gets even worse. Autochecking/folding on one round is telling your opponent bet the next round and the pot is yours. Not only that, it is absolutely terrible for your meta game. Why? Well the next time you don’t pre-select your action, your opponent who is aware that if you had a thrash hand you would have preselected check/fold, now this time he knows you have at the minimum a mediocre hand or a draw and he is being told to proceed at caution. That’s just a whole load of free information for your opponent. So don’t be a lazy donk, don’t pre-select check/fold!

Playing too methodically
Poker players can get themselves into trouble when they get too comfortable. When other players become familiar with your game then it’s important to do something unexpected from time to time. Example: Say you have been seen recently doing a couple of blocking bets of around 40% of the pot on the river with good but not great hands – the kind you would fold if facing a serious raise.

The next time you reach the river facing one opponent, if you bet that 40% of pot again if your opponent is observant he will ‘know’ that you are doing a blocking bet. Because he ‘knows’ you are doing a blocking bet the two likeliest responses from your ‘astute’ opponent are fold or raise, his hand-range for a call in this spot is narrow; so this is the very time you should only bet 40% of the pot when in fact you have a monster that welcomes a re-raise or on a stone-cold bluff as there is a high chance that your opponent will fold a mediocre hand as he doesn’t want to pay you off.

Were you to have the same hand that you were making your blocking bet, then depending on circumstances either check or bet a different amount.

The bet donkey or, for his long description, the bet when he should check and check when he should bet donk is another rife form of donk. In fact, even otherwise good players can on occasion fall into this field of donkology.

Not bluffing when there’s a high probability of success
Some of the biggest donkey players are those who commit a lot of money bluffing or semi-bluffing a hand to the turn and not firing a last barrel at the river. Say you bet a straight draw on the flop and turn with a flush draw on board and your opponent is a straightforward player who more often that not would raise to protect his genuine hands, if the board doesn’t bring that flush on the river then given your opponent and the game texture you should almost always bet the river, anything from about 40 to 70% of the pot size should see you take the pot down enough times to make it a profitable bet in the long run.

Not betting when you have everything to gain from betting and everything to lose by checking

One of the worst plays I saw recently was in one of Pokerstars mtt turbo rebuys. It was at the stage of the tournament when even average stacks were low compared to the blinds. In this one particular 2 shortstacks got all-in – with the biggest shortstack having around 3 big blinds, two loose players also called, one in mid-position and the other on the button, the small blind folded, the big blind with the highest stack of all and relatively high odds to call- elected to call. Flop came A98 rainbow, big-blind checked, so do the two remaining players, turn card is a 2, all players check again, river is a 7, the big blind checks again, mid-position guy bets the rest of his stack, about half the pot, the button folds and big blind calls showing AK and loses to the mid-position player who spiked a 7 on the river to hit a set of sevens. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

a)         The pre-flop play is bad for starters, the guy rightly is not folding with his AK, but at this stage with the blinds so high it doesn’t make sense to just call, he might as well just get all his chips in the middle there and then, it’s perhaps unlikely that he can get one of the other 2 players to fold, but if somehow he does then that’s great, and if he doesn’t well he’s still in a good position, he’s ahead of many of the type of hands his opponents might have such as a weaker ace or KQ.

b)         There is an argument for checking on the flop, if the other opponents are maniacal, but against typical opponents the smarter play is to just bet, his opponents almost definitely are not going to put him on AK and might even think he’s betting something like 9 high, so there is every chance that he gets paid off if one of his opponents has a weak ace or even a high pair like JJ.

c)          If the check on the flop was bad, the check on the turn was downright awful, there’s a big pot out there, you simply don’t give free cards to your opponents without very good reason when that is the case. It’s quite clear that neither of his two remaining opponents are going to bet, the only thing he is achieving by checking is giving them another free card, he simply must bet, yes he probably isn’t going to get called now, but there is a big enough pot there to warrant protection.

d)         And of course then the river where mid-position guy’s gift card comes along courtesy of our donk, again uber weak-tight can’t even bring himself to bet the river, really what the hell was he waiting for all along. Donkey!

Betting or raising on the river when only hands that beat you will call. Bad or lazy players do not make the effort to take into account the circumstances of the situation they are in an instead of thinking what their opponents they have and what their likely responses will be, they instead just think about what their hand is. Such players you will often see betting or raising on the river with mediocre hands, purely because they believe they are ahead, whereas what they are actually doing is putting themselves in a lose-lose scenario. If they are first to act and strongly suspect they are ahead, then a check might induce a bluff from which they can profit from, whereas if they bet their opponent can easily choose to fold their hand. A bet also gives the opportunity for the opponent to raise either with a genuine hand or a bluff, thereby presenting the player with a tricky unwelcome decision where they will probably have to fold. A check in such circumstances is clearly the percentage play

A donkey poker player is synonymous with being a fish, so much so that the two are often confused as one and the same thing, so let us start off our exploration into the world of donkology with a close up of our favorite poker donk – The Fish.

1. Calling too often. The fish is the guy that every poker player cherishes, the guy who can’t fold a hand, the guy who can’t be bluffed. This is the guy who because he knows that there is the possibility that he might be getting bluffed in the game of poker, can’t bring himself to fold mediocre hands, even though everything points to the fact that he is being beat. These guys can be frustrating to play when you know you need the goods to beat them. When facing a fish just stay patient and wait until you have a hand and go right ahead and bet it as normal when facing this guy. To avoid making fishy plays yourself, you must not be afraid of being bluffed, it is essential part of poker, sometimes when everything point to the fact that you are behind, more often that not you are and it is correct to fold, at times of course bluffs slip through, but that’s the game, remember, only bad players can’t be bluffed!

1. But they were suited
   Some of the biggest donks out there, can’t fold suited cards preflop almost no matter what the raising action. There are indeed times when playing suited cards preflop are profitable. Suited connectors such as 76s can be profitable to play under certain favorable conditions, however even these should not be played out of position or when facing one or more large preflop raises, the odds and indeed the implied odds are just not good enough to justify it. As for suited thrash like T3s, just because it is suited does not change the fact that it is a thrash hand. Muck it or be the donk that loses your stack to the suited ace. Fish are notorious for liking suited cards.
2. Any ace will do
   Routinely calling preflop with a hand that contains any ace is another big mistake poker donks make. Say you call preflop with a hand like A3 offsuit, what are you hoping to achieve here? If an ace comes chances are you will either win a big pot or lose a small pot. Why? Well most players who don’t have an ace will be very wary about continuing in the hand, so it’s not likely you will get much if any action, and if you do get action it is likely to come from another ace where of course you are outkicked. It is too much to expect that you will hit a dream flop like A3x or 542 and even then chances are you won’t get paid off the way you would like.

One of the greatest benefits of the growth in online poker is the ease with which players can now enter a game of poker.

In the pre online poker boom days you really needed to be a dedicated player in order to go to the trouble of getting into a decent regular real life card game. Not so anymore; now you don’t even need to be dressed to sit into a game.

Of course, it is just as easy for someone who should not be playing poker for cash to get into a game.

These players are usually referred to as ‘Poker Donkeys‘ or ‘Poker Fish‘.

And the growth in online poker has also led to a growth in the number of online poker ’sharks’ – and they feed mainly on poker fish (or donkeys).

If you have been called a donkey by some player at an online card table, and you don’t know why, then check out some of the different types of poker donkey that we have discussed here. If you recognize any of those plays in your online game then maybe you need to rethink your game.

Of course, it often happens that a bad player will call a good play a donkey, too. Good players can get lucky, and they can make mistakes just like anybody else. The difference between a good player making a mistake, and a bad player doing the same thing, is that the good player probably knows what they did wrong, whereas a bad player probably doesn’t.

It is an integral part of the online game that other players may be abusive to you when you beat them, either unfairly so or otherwise.

If you want to know what you can do to stop that, the answer is – nothing.  Losers will always whine.

If that is your only problem, then I can suggest that you turn off the chat function when you are playing online. Better advice would be to simply ignore players like that, or report them to the site admin. Or do both. Certainly do not let them bother you to the extent that it affects your game (which can be their intention).