Pooh Bah Post. Flop min-bet Theorem

[Fiasco]

I didnt like your reply either (nothing personal)

micro NL is all about playing exploitively rather than optimally. The whole point of playing that small is that youre noticing your opponents tendencies and they arent noticing yours. And they make donk moves.


AS FOR OP: I too knew of the minbet phenomenon and what it meant, I think a useful addition to your post would be on how to put minbetters off their hand, or how to handle it when they mindonk the turn again. Something factoring in the fact that it may often be a draw.

The funny thing about raising them with air is that the type of player who will make this weak lead is often willing to try and get to showdown with their trash hand.

I donk know how much good this info does if it doesnt actually win us money. How much profit did you make in those 17 hands?

EDIT: Looks like you won about $30 over 17 hands where you KNEW (except for one case) that your opponent was weak, and you sometimes had a premium holding, and you always had position, and it was always a raised pot. So you see my point, I agree that you know what a mindonkbet means, but maybe we need to investigate what to do with that info.

[Mike Kelley]

[ QUOTE ]
I didnt like your reply either (nothing personal)

micro NL is all about playing exploitively rather than optimally. The whole point of playing that small is that youre noticing your opponents tendencies and they arent noticing yours. And they make donk moves.


AS FOR OP: I too knew of the minbet phenomenon and what it meant, I think a useful addition to your post would be on how to put minbetters off their hand, or how to handle it when they mindonk the turn again. Something factoring in the fact that it may often be a draw.

The funny thing about raising them with air is that the type of player who will make this weak lead is often willing to try and get to showdown with their trash hand.

I donk know how much good this info does if it doesnt actually win us money. How much profit did you make in those 17 hands?

EDIT: Looks like you won about $30 over 17 hands where you KNEW (except for one case) that your opponent was weak, and you sometimes had a premium holding, and you always had position, and it was always a raised pot. So you see my point, I agree that you know what a mindonkbet means, but maybe we need to investigate what to do with that info.

[/ QUOTE ]

This was the first 17 hands AKs, AKo, and AQs. I have evidence across the entire spectrum of hands that I have played, a whole bunch of aces, all my pocket pairs and probably also times when I called in position and got min bet donked into that the filter didn't pick up. I didn't think that it was important to show all the hands since 17 with 1 mis-step makes a pretty good case. I am confident that if I keep researching the read will be about 95% reliable. I almost always jam the pot again on the turn and I know that I have won hands with just ace high when villains couldn't let go of their j4s. The cool thing is on the river when they miss again you can usually fire the last $2.00 into the pot and they will fold their busted flush draw and you don't have to show them that you you were abusing them with A high.

[threads13]

[ QUOTE ]
I didnt like your reply either (nothing personal)

micro NL is all about playing exploitively rather than optimally. The whole point of playing that small is that youre noticing your opponents tendencies and they arent noticing yours. And they make donk moves.


[/ QUOTE ]

Poker is always about exploiting opponents mistakes and, as a corollary, not making as many mistakes as they are making. If your opponent makes bigger and more frequent mistakes than you do then you win. It isn't that you stop playing good exploitive poker when you move up, it just becomes that your opponents can exploit you more frequently as well. At that point some game theory type strategies start carrying more weight, but you still are trying to exploit your opponent but you cannot be as aggressive doing this as it leaves holes through which you can be exploited(although I think many players overestimate how often they are exploited and conversely underestimate how much more exploitive they could be).

[ActionStan]

I think exploitability (in the sense of making fine adjustments, not exploiting bad play ...edit...)is highly overrated in the small limits. Bad players aren't going to adjust. The better players are playing so many tables that it's very hard to keep track of this sort of textured situation. It doesn't come up all that much. The action has to proceed a particular way, etc, etc. You can't take advantage of a lot of these situations for the same reason stud will never take off on the internet the hold 'em has. You have to pay too much attention to the details and you just can't do that playing 6+ tables.

[A_C_Slater]

I usually just pretend the min bet is a check and play against it the same way. The only time I won't treat it as a check is if I open 7 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]7 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] in and flop comes K [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] Q [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] J [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] or something then I will just fold.

[Mike Kelley]

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I usually just pretend the min bet is a check and play against it the same way. The only time I won't treat it as a check is if I open 7 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]7 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] in and flop comes K [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] Q [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] J [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] or something then I will just fold.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's better than a check imo, it announces that the opponent is weak, you rarely get reraised from by a flop min-better.

[VegasRunner]

"When most players [flop] a Set with a small Pair (or [flop] Two-Pair with small connecting cards)...they do the obvious. They check...waiting for the raiser to bet. And then they put in a raise."

"That's the wrong way to play it. That way they give the raiser the opportunity to get away from his hand at a minimum loss. But, if you lead into him...and he raises--there's no savings. He's almost committed to get the rest of his money in the pot."

--Super System p.438


I realize that we are talking about micro limits and I'm not condoning anything like a min bet, but when I flop two pair or better and the preflop raiser is behind me, I almost always make a weak lead into him (about 30% of the pot, so it looks like a feeler). When he reraises me with his overpair, he is screwed.

I think you need to consider the source of the small lead because when the villian doesn't know me, I regularly exploit people who play by your theorem.

[diebitter]

Indeed. At lower levels it's a probe bet mostly, sometimes a blocking bet to pot control, and usually the best play is to come over the top if you have anything decent (a 6+ out draw down to middle pair, off the top of my head).

At higher levels, it still often means this, but how you handle it becomes more exploited. Don't always come over the top with decent and call or fold with lesser holdings, mix it up something like 25/75. (75% do the thing you'd usually do, 25% do the other).

[ranka]

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Not saying that it aint true, but if you're gonna repop it every time then you become pretty exploitable.


It's probably often true, but I wouldn't make a theorem out of it.

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I think these minbets are biggest problems at micros. NL25, NL10 and NL50 and there most of players dont think and they even dont know how to exploit their opponent(s). They are donks and these minraises indicates that.

And if you are good/bad regular at table and trying to abuse another regular - you are catched in first time. Minbeting vs good regular - good regular realizing that something is wrong. Conclusion: MINBETS are DONKbets, you cant exploit your opponent with donkbet but opponent can easily exploit you. It means donkbets == -EV in longrun.

Very good post Mike Kelly, very good post.

[Northern]

[ QUOTE ]
There has been some discussion about this lately. I've seen 3 or 4 post where the op wondered what caused villains to make such a strange bet. So here is the Theorem.

A minbet (1bb or 2bb) on the flop by OOP villain after Hero is the preflop aggressor = weak hand, straight or flush draw.


[/ QUOTE ]

Mike Kelly,

Excellent post, I appreciate all of the HH's as proof. I made a similar post about this a week or so ago and hoped for some good discussion but the post died fairly quickly.

To add to your findings when I see someone donk minbets there is a target that appears on them as I will watch what they are playing and after a few times I will get a basic read as to if they are doing this to get raised or if they're jsut a donk.

Although I have seen many players put in another raise after you raise their minbet but once that happens I am pretty quick to muck my hand. Most of the time as you pointed it's a miss use of a blocking bet or pot control by a less than average player and you can exploit it.

I will follow this thread and see others comments