Poker Term Donk

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

Donk is short for donkey, the pack animal. Donkey was used in chat boxes at online poker rooms because they started censoring the terms ass, jackass etc. So when a player made a play that another thought was out of line and wanted to swear, they just called the player a donkey, and this naturally got shortened to donk. If they lead with draws, raise with most ofyour range. If they lead with junk, raise with all your hands worse than top pair and call with top pair and better. Poker is easy when your opponents play in an unbalanced, predictable manner. Today though, some donk bettors are a bit more sophisticated.

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.

Poker Term Donk 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.

Poker Term Donkey

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.'

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.

'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:

Poker Terms Fish Donkey

• Tags

  cash game strategytournament strategyno-limit hold’empostflop strategypositionimagedonk bettingDominik Nitschevideo

• Related Room

  888poker

• Related Players

  Dominik Nitsche