Should we worry about donk leads with top pair?

Barry Carter butchers a strong hand after the bubble by letting an old school live poker mentality cloud his judgement, thankfully the Chip Race guys are on hand to correct his thinking.

Last month our friends Dara and David from The Chip Race reviewed a session played by Barry Carter in the €100 SuperNova on Unibet. Today we take a deeper look at one of the key hands. If you missed the first deep dives you can find them here and here.

The bubble has burst, everyone has relaxed a bit. I have 59k in Middle Position with the blinds at 1,600/3,200. I have A 8 and open with it, as I would any suited Ace. Do you agree?

David Lappin: I think so, it's not your best hand but it's not your worst. 

Dara O'Kearney: I would tighten up the unsuited stuff and open most of the suited Aces. It's a cheap way to give yourself board coverage. There are only four combos of each suited Ace, so if you open all of them it's only a quarter of the Ax combos but you have every board covered. Plus you can flop a flush draw and bluff with it.

The Big Blind calls. The flop comes 7 A 5. The Big Blind leads out for 6,400 into an 18,000 pot. My old school live poker mentality sees donk leads like this as being strong set type hands a lot of the time. Am I worrying too much here?

Dara O'Kearney: David has good population reads on the players at Unibet, what do you see this donk lead as meaning?

David Lappin: If I go back in time ten years, donk leads were always weak then, and whether you had it or not you pounced on them. These days players are better than that, but I still think, particularly on this board texture, it gives away he is a weak player. The question is if he is a player who has it or who doesn't. Sometimes this will be nonsense lead with a hand like JTo. 

The fact we don't have AJ-AK makes me think we shouldn't raise. Also our 8 blocks a 4-6 if he is trying to draw to, it makes 6-8 less likely. It's hard to range somebody when they do something weird like this. 

Dara O'Kearney: This looks to me like what I used to call a 'let's keep it friendly' bet. They've hit something, don't love it and throw out a blocker type bet. I would not be surprised to see a 7 or 5 do this to stop you betting bigger. You said you are worried about a set, but why would a set bet on an Ace high board, you are supposed to bet here so he would check. This is more often than not a weak hand that doesn't have equity against us, so I agree with David we want to call here. Also when we don't have the Ace we don't want to overfold here, so calling with stronger hands makes sense here. 

We call, the turn is a 2 and he bets 9,600 into a 30,800 pot. In game I still was worried he donked a big hand but should we be pouncing on this now?

Dara O'Kearney: Again I don't see the point in coming over the top of him, if we do we fold out all his worst hands and if he has a monster we are not folding the river anyway. I think his range is weakish middley hands with the occassional monster. 

I'm afraid I folded. I think it's because I play lower stakes games on Unibet where I more often see a bigger hand here. 

David Lappin: Psychologically when I see that donk lead on the flop there are not many runouts where I don't think I'll buckle up and hit the call button on all three streets. He is massively exploiting us if he can lead 1/3rd flop, 1/3rd turn and make us fold an OK Ace. That is not a good enough minimum defence frequency. You have gone a little meta and are probably worrying about facing a river shove, you'll fold then so you may as well fold now. I don't like folding to bets that haven't been made yet and I think I'd call a lot of rivers. He could have two pair, when somebody does something they are not supposed to do we are in a bit of a guessing game. 

Dara O'Kearney: Yeah folding turn to avoid calling river is an old school mentality. I could see myself potentially folding the river there, if I called and the river bricked and he shoved. The essence of good balanced poker is there has to be hands in your range that would call this bet but fold to a river bet. A lot of people think that's weak but it's the correct way to play. A8 was a a perfect hand to call the turn then reassess the river. 

In case you missed it you can see the whole session right here:

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