$11 6 max on stars, what to do against donk?

[LuckyLloyd]

Fold both preflop. Though opening 1 is better than 2 because you are a little deeper. When you drift down to 20 BBs or so you need to significantly tighten your opening range and loosen the range of hands you are willing to 3 bet shove.

As played:

1) With this guys image why not just bet call off on the turn? Sounds like there are plenty of things you beat which he isn't folding. I station the river in these spots all the time and hate myself for it. You are like never, ever good especially since the most obvious draw completed.

2) Just give up on the flop.

[auc hincloss]

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ace-rag is a trouble hand early in any MTT. Fold both of them.

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^^^^

[BigZag]

Well according to your own list of villains range. Most of it got there on hand #1, this would be a crying call in the worst sense. Even though he's a donk he's almost never bluffing here.

Hand #2 is image dependent i think. If you've been playing relatively loosely this is not a spot u want to open raise with approx 13bbs behind and have to fold to a 3 bet. The flop shove isn't too pretty either.

[JoeyJoJo Shabadu]

I'm confused... which player is the donk in this example?

[Jon_AK]

I would go with everyone elses comments and say that both are a fold preflop. Hand 1 is probably a flush and hand 2 is not playable regardless of stack size when you know that your opponents are calling stations.

A3 in late pos is good when the blinds are tight and medium stacked, and your stack is large enough to bust them (this induces more fear than if you are a short stack and they may only have to call off 20%-30% of their stack to get all your money in).

I am very careful about how I play my positional hands when I know the blinds are very loose. In these situations, instead of feeling desperate and feeling like you need to start accumulating chips, wait for a solid, strong hand that the calling stations to your left will gladly double you up with. The pots you can accumulate with monster hands will more than compensate for all the marginal holdings you folded off (against players who simply dont fold).

[SengioKang]

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I'm confused... which player is the donk in this example?

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LOL JOJO

Hand 2 - a shove is much better than putting 25% of your stack in against people who have you severely outchipped. Your M is still 9 tho... and you're not horribly desperate yet. So I'd fold probably anything less than A8.

Hand 1 - Crying call. u've probably ran into a set, but u gotta pay it off. don't think he hit the flush unless it's a biggie like KJ or KQ. He could just be bluffing after you didn't follow up on your cbet on the turn, but I think you avoided a check raise on the turn... good job.

Post the resolution please [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[AMT]

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Thanks for the response AMT, I was just wondering if you could critique my thought process am I thinking through hands well especially the first one. What do you put villian on, we are getting decent odds on the river.

Hand 2: I think you are right, I am pissed about the way I played it, defintly should have shoved especially with the way villians were playing. I just thought that I might get more value this way since opponents are calling with such a large range and are going to miss the flop often.

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My reasoning behind checking was that I may be able to encourage a bet from a misguided bluff on the river, or a lesser pair, and also minimizing my losses by calling a smaller bet on river because his bets are generally small. Thoughts? Is my thinking process right?

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if you weight his range to draws (this board and your read would probably put a lot of draws in there), you need to decide if the protection factor combined with stacks at this point in the tournament outweighs the need to get to showdown. that said, if you do bet the turn you have to have made the decision to play a big pot with top pair vs a really bad player on a drawy board (or vice versa).

you can make a strong argument for checking the turn and calling blank rivers vs bad poorly-timed-bluffing villains, but when his most likely draws fill on dangerous board and you face a bet like this, the argument dwindles.

So really the points in your thought process are ok, but you need to make sure they fit with your read on the villain. if hes a calling station and will call flop with anything, it may not be appropriate to assume that he just tosses out river bluffs (it looks like this might be a closer to accurate read in this specific hand?). on the other hand, if hes just a stupid lag, maybe checking the turn is best because you cant stand a c/r and you cant really weight his range enough to draws and the need to play a big pot to conclude that betting is ok, but you may be able to say "well i can check the turn for the above reasons, and now i can call a river bet from this bad lag because of it", in that itll change the dynamic of the hand. so really we have a lot of different scenarios that will develop and lead you to draw appropriate conclusions, you just need to make sure you're assesing and weighting the appropriate factors.

as others have pointed out, this type of a hand could easily be a fold pf because youre either going to be way behind or slightly ahead when lots of money goes in the pot, and ace-rag just doesnt play too well in general, but the more comfortable you are post flop, the more the stack sizes allow, and the worse the opponent, the more you can justify opening ranges. post flop, you just need to assess the above to decide what thought processes seem appropriate.

[Coz]

Alright guys thank you for the responses, I have been trying to pick up my aggression in tourneys and it mostly has been paying off but I guess I just need a better balance. This is defiently going to help my play, however, I probably wouldn't go so far as calling myself a donk for raising A3o on the button.

For those who are curious, on the first hand villian had A2o, he spiked the second pair on the river. In the second hand villian had J8o