Much has been said in the press about Pluribus Poker AI donk bets. In their press release, Facebook says “ Pluribus disagrees with the folk wisdom that donk betting (starting a round by betting when one ended the previous betting round with a call) is a mistake; Pluribus does this far more often than professional humans do. ” So is it the case, how much, and in what specific context ?

Carnegie Mellon University published 10K hands played by Pluribus against the pros. So we can have a deep look at donk betting by Pluribus, but also by the pros. I’ll focus only on single raised pots, ie when there is only an open and a call preflop and no reraise/3bets. 3bet pots have a very different dynamic and there are less of them to look at.

As a reminder a donk bet is a bet where the preflop defender (player who just called) is out of position and leads the betting on the flop. This has traditionally been considered as bad play, hence the name “donk”.

Pluribus was in a position to donk bet 568 times and did it 11 times, so 1.9%. This is twice as much as the pros who did 1% of the times they had the opportunity to, but not huge either. Let’s look at every single one:

Every Pluribus Donk Bet in SRP

• Strikingly, Pluribus has only donk bet in multiway pots. Interestingly Thomas Pinnock does mention multiway pots as one spot where donk bets “could” make sense as there is less a need to protect the checking range. This is because every player will need to be less agressive on the flop with lower equity.
• If we’re donk betting, we need to protect that range. Pluribus here does 5 bets with very strong hands and 5 “bluffs” so it looks pretty balanced.
• Maybe we can use this in live games that have many multiway pots with a decent frequency of value to bluff. We can’t go crazy on frequency, but Pluribus does it almost at 10% frequency (donk on multiway pots).
• As with c betting, Pluribus varies bet sizes including some overbets.

A donk-bet in poker is when you take the initiative by betting out of position (OOP) against the aggressor of the prior betting-round. Back then, when nobody knew better, every player that donk-betted was labelled as a Donk, which was an insult, used to degrade the capabilities of the opposing player. A standard donk bet is usually a turn bet against the flop-raiser out of position. You might consider donk betting on the turn as part of a betting sequence in two cases: You have a strong hand and are heads-up against an aggressive opponent who was the flop-aggressor.

Donk Bet Poker Strategy

The poker term 'donk bet' was actually coined relatively recently, only coming into prominence over the last decade or so.

It started out as a somewhat derogatory way of describing a bad play (strategically speaking), although over time the term has been used more generically to describe a specific type of postflop bet.

PokerNews recently caught up with 888Poker Ambassador Dominik Nitsche who offered a quick explanation of donk betting and how the move fits into larger strategic concerns in no-limit hold'em.

As Nitsche explains, a 'donk bet' refers to a postflop bet in which a player who is out of position is 'leading into the preflop aggressor.'

Donk Bet Poker Significado

In other words, say a player in late position raises before the flop and another defends the big blind with a call. Then after the flop the player in the big blind leads out with a bet — called a 'donk bet' because (as Nitsche explains) 'usually inexperienced players would do it,' not realizing the importance of position when making that leading bet.

Donk Bet Poker

'Typically this is thought of as a bad play, but there's a lot more to it,' explains Nitsche, who goes on to distinguish between situations when leading with a so-called 'donk bet' can actually be a good play and times when it clearly is not. Take a look:

Donk Bet Poker Strategie

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