Why the Donkey is Whipping You - Chris "Fox" Wallace

One of the most common complaints I hear comes from tight-aggressive players who keep losing money to players they believe are donkeys. Why aren't you whipping the donkey instead of pulling the cart while he whips you? I'll go over a few reasons and ways to prevent those scars on your back and hopefully you'll riding in style while the donkey pulls the cart and you whip him mercilessly (No animals were harmed in the writing of this article).

Reason #1 - You may not be as good as you think you are. Many players hear a few platitudes about beating loose players and how poker should be played and they think they should be rolling in money every time they sit down with a player who plays too many hands. Yes you need to isolate the maniac when you have a big hand, and you need to punish them when you can, but you must worry only about your own chips and stop worrying about his. There are more than enough donkeys to go around and if someone breaks this one another will be along in a minute or two. Work on your own game and your own play before you start throwing things around the room.

Reason #2 - Even donkeys learn from experience. Online a player can see so many hands in such a short period of time that the donkey your trying to beat may have come up with a style that works better than you give him credit for. When a player sees too many flops what do think he will become good at? That's right he will play the flop and the later streets fairly well. He may have unconsciously developed a feel for finding hidden outs and knowing which hands are better to chase with, and he may not be making as many mistakes as you think he is.

I played in a game this summer in a small native casino in Northern Michigan that illustrates this point perfectly. The area around the casino is very poor and the literacy rates are some of the lowest in the country, alcoholism rates are very high, and the local bookstore had only two poker books on their shelves. Sounds like a great place to play doesn't it? In the evenings the games were pretty good, but during the day there was a game running that was filled with senior citizens with at least 60% of the players seeing every flop. It just sounds better and better doesn't it?

Unfortunately the "day game" wasn't actually very good at all. All the players had been playing for many years, and after 20 years of seeing way too many flops these people played almost perfect poker after the flop. Sometimes that meant that the J8o they played to my raise was a winner and I would cringe as my KK flew into the muck. After the first hour or so I got a handle on things and began to give these old folks some respect after the flop or I could have sailed off for a big loss. One other new player who walked in didn't do so well.

A kid about 19 walked in and began talking about playing online. Most of the old folks had never played online and ignored the kid as he talked about the books he had read and I could see him licking his lips as he saw trash hands being turned over hand after hand. Within an hour the kid was steaming and had lost $300 because he simply could not imagine that his big starting hand had been cracked. I even started to play more hands against him because he was giving wonderful implied odds if you happened to outflop him. He paid off bets and lamented his bad luck for a few hours and even got pretty grumpy with some of the other players who "sucked out" on him.

My point here is that play after the flop is very important, and a lot of people you see playing too many hands will play very well after the flop. If you don't play well after the flop you'll end pulling the cart with a "donkey" behind you holding a whip.

Reason #3 - Tilt. Like the kid in reason #2 you may be playing badly after a few bad beats. Many of us have played a few extra hands because we know a specific opponent will go on tilt if we manage a "suck out" on one of their big hands. In this case the implied odds are in future hands instead of the current hand, but the profit is still going to come. Don't lose your mind when a loose player catches a hand against you and you will still have chips when your time comes.

Remember donkeys learn too, and one of the things they learn how to deal with is a textbook player who is now on tilt. They see it all the time because textbook players who invariably go on tilt because of a few bad beats are constantly chasing them from table to table.

Reason #4 - Implied odds. While the implied odds might not be good enough for the hand that donkey just called your bet on the turn with, you certainly helped him lose money more slowly when you paid off his river bet. If you knew you were going to be paid off handsomely any time you hit a hand you would play a ton of hands, and the donkey knows all about that. Implied odds are all he has because he is behind at the start of the hand most of the time, so he loves to see you paying him off because you simply can't believe he made another flush.

Reason #5 - Loosening up too much. You have a donkey on your right who plays 45% of his hands and raises with 25% of them, so what do you do? You try to isolate him. You have the perfect position and knowledge of his game, so you figure you can reraise him with AJs right? Not so fast.

You may be ahead of the average hand he plays with AJs, but there is a good chance this play is a loser. First of all he is going to have you badly dominated about 1 D4 of the time with either a bigger ace or a big pair. Second he knows that you have two big cards or a big pair, but you know very little about his hand, giving him a chance to extract a mountain of chips from you, while you can only win a few chips from him.
Another factor to consider is how far ahead you may be versus how far behind you might be. Unless he has a rag ace you really aren't that far ahead, and let's not forget that he may play very well after the flop. If you are behind here you are way behind, but if you're ahead you aren't very far ahead. That is a bad situation to be in, especially against an opponent who's hand is disguised and who has a pretty good idea about the strength of your hand.

You may also be reraised by another player down the line. AJs simply isn't a good hand to get in a big fight with unless you are in very late position, and if there are more than two or three people left to act the chances of running into a really big hand are too high to make the small profit you make taking AJs against a loose player profitable. I see a lot of otherwise solid players losing money by loosening up and overvaluing hands against players they think are very weak.

Now picture how all these reasons work together. You sit down and see a very loose player to your right. You expect to make a pile of money, but you pay him off when his trash out flops your big starting hand and a cycle starts. You go on tilt because you got sucked out on and you're losing money to a donkey. He begins to take advantage of your tilted situation because that's what he's good at doing, and he plays well after the flop anyway. This only makes your tilt worse and soon you are trying to isolate him with hands that aren't strong enough and paying him off every time he hits a flop. An hour later you're down $350 and you're on the forums at pokerfox.net telling everyone that you are switching games because you can't beat the donkeys that call all the time.

I hope that helped you understand a little more about playing against loose players and why you might be having so much trouble. Tigthen up, stay cool, and don't pay them off when they flop a monster, and soon you'll have that whip back in your hand.

Examples:

Example #1:

Maniac is 44% VP$IP and 28% PFR in a full 5/10 fixed limit game.

Maniac raises.

Hero holds ATs in the cutoff seat, with the maniac immediately to his left and noone else in the pot yet.

Hero reraises in an attempt to isolate the maniac with a hand that should be ahead.

SB reraises and maniac caps it as he has usually been doing.

Now our hero must call because of the pot odds and the fact that he holds a suited ace, but he is certainly behind and will probably have to dump his hand on the flop.

Flop is A89 rainbow.

SB checks and maniac bets.

Hero raises and SB reraises.

Maniac folds and hero folds as well, certain that he is facing AK after investing 6 small bets into a pot where he was never ahead.

Example #2:

Maniac is 48% VP$IP and 32% PFR in a 6 handed 1/2 no-limit game. Maniac has $403.

Hero is three seats to the left of the maniac with $230 in front of him and is on the button.

Table folds around to the maniac who simply calls.

The next two players fold and our Hero looks down at KK and raises to $10 to punish the maniac and make sure he is not facing multiple opponents.

The rest of the table folds and the maniac calls.

Flop is 7h9h3s

Maniac checks and Hero bets $20 into a $23 pot.

Maniac calls.

Turn is the Js

Maniac checks and our Hero bets $75 into the $63 pot, certain that his opponent is on a draw and wanting to end the hand now or punish his opponent for calling.

Maniac calls, pot is now $213

River is the 2s and the maniac bets $140 to put our Hero all-in.

Hero having seen the maniac bluff more than a few times calls and loses when the Maniac shows the 68 of spades for a flush.

Hero promptly goes apeshit and throws his keyboards across the room, not realising that he was beaten by a savvy LAG who has read Super/System 6 times and loves Doyle's style of play.

"Frickin donkey!" he yells as his mouse sails out the window...

Our Hero's real mistake here is assuming that his opponnent is an idiot after the hand instead of looking at it from the LAG's perspective and realizing that calling a raise preflop with 68s might be profitable agaisnt a player like himself who is willing to give away his whole stack with a pair of kings. The LAG here was basically being given 20 to 1 implied odds because a raise that size preflop from some players (our Hero is one of them) means "If you hit your hand you can have all my chips".

Example #3:

Fish is 44% VP$IP and 3% PFR in a 10 handed 1/2 no-limit game. Fish has $103.

Hero is three seats to the left of the maniac with $$341 in front of him and is in the cutoff seat.

Table folds around to the Fish who simply calls.

The next two players fold and our Hero looks down at AJs and raises to $10 to punish the fish and make sure he is not facing multiple opponents.

BB (who is only 3% PFR and 19% VP$IP) reraises to $30

Fish mucks

Hero knows he is beaten and folds, losing $10 on a hand he had no business getting so excited about. If our Hero had been more confident in his play after the flop he could have limped along or raised less and been willing to play deeper into the hand to let his skill work against the fish. His desire to isolate with a mediocre hand cost him more money than it needed to.

A smart BB may have even stolen this one if he had seen our Hero raising far too often to try to get the fish to himself. A bluff raise here wouldn't be a bad play from the BB because the fish will leave facing such a large reraise and our Hero can't call unless he holds AA, KK and possibly AK or QQ. If our hero was in a slightly different situation where he limped and the BB made a steal sized raise he could have made a large reraise and probably won the pot.

The lesson in this hand - Either have strength and get your opponents to call or do a damn good job of appearing to have strength and make your opponents fold. Raising a maniac does neither of those things and people will know that your raising requirements aren't as high against the weak player that you are trying to isolate.

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