A few of us (okay me and one other player) got yelled at (er.....sternly spoken to) for donk betting.

Admittedly, when I did it (I was the first to get caught), it was a stupid move. I have done it before.....often because I have not been paying attention d/t multitabling or watching tv and I cannot remember what the preflop action was. I was obviously careful not to do that again while Captain Checky was there

I understand that checking to the preflop raiser gives us the chance to check raise, but I was thinking (as another player repeatedly got spoken to for donk betting) that I know that there are times when I would purposely do it. Is it ever okay to do ?

A specific situation that I have been in many times is this :
I'm in the small blind or big blind with 2 suited cards. The preflop raiser is on the button. It's a family pot. The flop brings 2 cards of my suit. I want to build the pot. If I check, and everyone else checks to the preflop raiser, if I check raise I don't think the 4 others will call 2 bets cold. If I bet the flop, hopefully those 4 will call one bet, then the preflop raiser will raise it for me and some of the others will call just one more bet. Is that bad ?

Another scenario...........everyone is in the same spot. This time, I flop bottom 2 pair in the sb. Obviously, I could go for the flop cr. Wouldn't it be even better to bet it out, hopefully get some of the others to put some money in there, and when the pfr'er raises it, I could 3 bet. Would it be okay then ?

I guess what I'm trying to say is.......it was implied that betting into the pfr'er should never be done. Do you agree ? To be fair.....it is possible that the players who noticed us doing this could have been "dumbing it down" for those who were obviously less skilled. I did not get the chance to ask directly if they meant never to do it or just that I shouldn't be doing it at this stage.

All thoughts and comments are welcome !

I think most of these people who told you not to donk were talking about hu pots, but even then there has to be some situations when its best.

I donkbet all the time, esp when I flop a set out of the blinds. Also in wa/ wb situations, I c/c, c/c, b/f and wolud consider the river bet to be a donkbet.

If we're just talking about the flop, then here's the basics behind the donkbet.

In multiway pots, it's correct very often to donk out, in order to manipulate our relative position. Sometimes we do this with a strong hand, sometimes with a draw, it all depends on what we want to accomplish.

In HU pots though, I find it's very very rare that donking can be better than c/r'ing. It's going to take a specific type of villain for donking to be best, imho.

First of all, let's examine what happens if we flop like top pair with something like JTo out of the BB in a heads up pot. If we check, villain is going to bet basically 100% of his range, right? At least 98% of villains are. There are very few people left who will check behind when they miss. So anyways, he bets 100% of his range, so we get 1 bet from a ton of hands that would fold to our donk bet. If he would have just called our donk bet with some sort of weak draw (one overcard, etc), he's certainly going to peel for one more after the raise, most of the time, so we get 2 bets from those hands, instead of 1.

If he has a super strong hand, of course, our c/r gets 3-bet, and we're stuck putting in 3 bets, but super strong hands are a relatively small portion of his range. If we donk, most of the time he'd be raising, so we'd be putting in 2 bets in that case.

Now basically, looking at it from the villain's perspective, he gets to basically play perfect poker against us (especially if we don't mix in donkbet bluffs, assuming he'd be smart enough to notice both donkbet bluffs, and donks with made hands). He can fold his air (instead of cbet/folding), he can just peel with his weaker draws (instead of bet/calling), and he can raise his strong hands and force us to pay.

Against most opponents, c/r is a superior play, for these reasons. Fwiw, I also tend to balance out my c/r ranges by c/r bluffing some flops, assuming villains are capable of noticing this type of stuff.

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Now, what conditions must hold true for donkbetting to be better?

Aside from villain being the type to check behind lots of flops with draws or weak made hands (where we'd gain value from betting), a few things need to happen. I sorta disregard this trait because it is so rare.

For donking out with a strong hand to be the best play, we need to find a villain who will raise these donks very liberally. Basically, if we donk out with JT on a T83 flop, and villain raises, against probably a vast majority of the players out there, we aren't in good shape. If villain is willing to raise with hands we crush though, then donking starts to look a lot better.

So, basically, we just need to know that villain is going to raise with a very wide range of hands, because we'd beed to be able to 3-bet often enough to make up for the extra bets we'd have gotten in when we c/r against pure air, or weak drawing hands (where we get one additional bet each).

I'm all over the place here, but do we follow?

Turn and river donk bets are a completely different story. Wa/wb lines are obviously a standard example, as looshle said, and sometimes river donking is just easily the best value line when we hit a draw, or whatever.

for the record, they were mostly HU pots .

donkbetting isn't always a bad thing, as zach and looshle have said (i do it too, sometimes, actually!), but in most of the places that i was commenting on in the monday night thing, the donkbetting from out of position was costing you guys value when it's entirely reasonable to expect the villain to bet 100% of the time. if you're at a tight table and can frequently mix in profitable donkbet bluffs because you're donkbetting made hands, that's one thing, but your first and foremost concern when you're learning LHE should be maximizing value when you're ahead and minimizing losses when you're behind. most of the time, c/ring is a lot better option for the former, and that's a longer way of saying what i was talking about before. hope that makes a little more sense now, and sorry if i came off at all condescending or whatever during the monday thing. blame the weed.