DONKING

Lately I have been playing a lot of poker, both online and house games, for money of course. For house games I typically play either at my buddy Zach’s house or my friend Josh’s. Whenever we play at Zach’s, there are two or three guys there who love trying to “donk” people. “Donking” is when you play a bad hand that would typically not be played because it is not a very strong starting hand. When these kinds of hands are played, the person is typically trying to get really lucky or “suck out” on the other players by either catching two straight cards in a row or hitting one of their only four outs. A lot of people believe that poker is pure luck and has no skill involved. Although having luck is important in poker, there are many other aspects that are involved, such as, reading other people, knowing your winning odds, and playing pot odds.  Knowing your winning odds is where “donking” comes into play. Sometimes “donkers” will continue in a hand even though they only have about a 10% chance of getting the card they need to win. This is found by subtracting the number of cards in the deck by the number of cards each player that is in the hand is holding and then subtracting that number by however many cards are visible on the table. Now the player would determine how many cards would give him the best possible hand and divide that by the number determined earlier. Unfortunately, “donking” is sometimes effective and players should look out for donkey players. My friends who play “donk” poker do it all the time and it is sometimes frustrating. However, the number of “donk” players online definitely exceeds how many donkeys we play with. This can cause “tight” players to get extremely frustrated and play badly.