Why Do Donks Do Well In Freerolls?
Posted by: Jake // Category: Freeroll tournament, Overall strategyWe’ve all experienced it: A lousy player (a donk) makes stupid bets that go against all odds, and then hit their set, their straight, or their flush on the river, winning a huge pot. It is frustrating, and I have even written about these bad beats in earlier posts. But in reading over Matthew Hilger’s fantastic Texas Hold’em Odds And Probabilities you start to see why this works. The answer is effective implied odds.
The nuance that many people miss (including myself) is that betting down someone using pot odds is wrong. If the player is reasonably confident of pulling you into an all-in scenario, the odds aren’t pegged to the pot, but to your stack. Look at it this way: If my stack is $1,000 and I have a hand that I’m confident is the best, and I’m playing against a typical freeroll maniac, even pot-sized bets of $100 or more may not get them off drawing to a flush or straight. Why? Because if they hit, they will possible get my whole stack. This puts their implied odds much higher than the 2:1 odds that the pot shows. They are closer to 10:1, which is well worth drawing into for many big hands, from a set to a flush.
This is one of the reasons that freerolls are so hard to play. The implied pot odds can become staggeringly complex. Whether you can you draw this player into an all-in is actually in important question you need to answer when assessing preflop, as well as post-flop decisions. It also makes it quite lucrative to play much looser than you normally would, especially in early play.
Generally speaking I’m a tight player. But in early freeroll play, the implied odds are off the scale with players willing to go all-in at the drop of a hat. I would normally fold 22 or 33, but I’ve started playing those solely for the possibility of hitting a set. Why? The odds of hitting the set are 7.5 to 1, which is generally stupid for most pots pre-flop. But when you do hit the set, if you can ambush someone into an all-in, your odds are very much in your favor. I never thought of this until I read Hilger’s book.
What’s quite interesting is that last night I played 33 and hit a set on the flop. I called some big bets and called an all-in push on the turn. I ended winning his whole stack. These opportunities were completely lost to me before I started thinking this way.
The downside is that you can use the concept of effective implied odds to justify playing practically any hand at any time, which is a pretty big mistake. First of all, you aren’t going to get everyone to stumble into an all-in when you hit a set. Post-flop play thus becomes key. If a player bets high enough, you may have some very difficult decisions: It is quite possible that calling makes sense if he is going to risk his stack but doesn’t make sense if he gets out against a big raise. Secondly, stack size is also important. Taking a flyer on hitting a set is not the best way to use your chips if you’re stack is dwindling. Thirdly, position is important. Leading into someone is not as good as having position on them. You want them to feel like they are the aggressor and setting the tone. Otherwise, it will be harder to trap them into an all-in.
But let’s go back to those maniac donks who appear with massive stacks early in freerolls. Is that a good strategy? Well, it is in early rounds. When you consider practically any hand can win with significant (although not always good) odds, a donk only needs to catch 2 or 3 all ins in a row before they start rolling. If they hit 3 all ins, bet through and miss on 3 large (but not full stack) donk bets in a row, and then catch another all in, pretty soon they are making significant progress based solely on their stack size and the massive effective implied odds of people willing to go all-in.
Ironically, the best friend of donks are 1) other donks and 2) tight players who don’t appreciate the effective implied odds of a freeroll. It’s the second category that can really fuel a donk through the middle of a tournament. Powering through long odd bets after long odd bets against good players for the payoff of one all-in win is a strategy that can work.
Many decent players won’t respect the power of a draw and will just assume the donk is playing a middle pair or top pair with weak kicker. They are foolishly hoping for an all-in, thinking that when the river finally comes they can earn their payoff. When that third suit hits the table or a potential straight draw card falls, they convince themselves that this couldn’t possible be what the donk was aiming for. After all, the odds were soooooo long against it. So they go all-in and find that, indeed, the long draw was exactly what the donk was hoping for.
I did this a lot over the past few weeks, so I’ve experienced it firsthand.
What stops a donk? Well, when all the other donks start falling out of the tournament, the donk all-in bets will start to go against real hands and their stacks start to collapse. Also, when you get toward the mid to late part of a tourney those all-in bets with flush draws and straight draws on the board start to go away. As a result, the effective implied odds of a donk strategy plummet, and they start bleeding chips.
How about starting out with a totally donk strategy for the first 30 minutes or hour of a tournament and then converting to a tight solid play strategy? Well, there are places where I’ve seen this actually recommended. This is actually a decent idea for beginners, but a much better play is to use actual strategy and probability to guide your decisions. Make each decision tactical and dependent on the situation.
But that’s not easy to do.