Foucault said:

I slogged 🙂

First off, some corrections:

“He's talking about a situation where we assume V to be either donking with a balanced range or with a very weak range attempting to exploit our tendency to fold too often (and he makes that assumption against Brian Hastings in video #5 in the series and calls down with a marginal hand vs Hastings' triple barrel).”

The Villain in that hand was not Hastings. He seemed decent enough, but not nearly as good as Hastings.

I'm not making any assumptions. The point of looking for unexploitable continuing ranges is so that you don't have to make assumptions about Villain's range and what he might or might not be trying to accomplish.

I think your post is very good and I think you're right that in many situations, possibly including this one, it's better to make some assumptions about Villain's donking strategy and then craft an exploitive counter-strategy. But realize that a balanced response will work reasonably well no matter what Villain's actual strategy – it's not something that only works against a particular type of player or range.

Thanks for the slogging and sorry for my mistakes and misrepresentations.  I considered going back and making sure I had my attributions correct before posting but I had already spent too much time writing the damn thing – I would make a bad journalist. 

I probably don't need to clarify this, but I wasn't criticizing your play vs not-Hastings – well, I think I don't like your river call but (A) that's not that relevant to what I'm posting about and (B) I think you're maybe ambivalent about it anyway and (C) my “not liking” a poker decision you make is a pretty amusing concept right off the bat.  I'm mostly writing this out to clarify it for myself and to get your and others' feedback.  If there's any dissent in my writings it is my claim that, with the current state of donk-betting in the range of tournaments I play (which overlap somewhat with yours but are mostly a rung or so down the buyin ladder), constructing an unexploitable continuing range is maybe not the best first criteria to apply when facing an unknown (and presumably un-elite) opponent's donk bet.  I don't expect the High Priest of Balance to openly agree with that claim – I'll settle for not being summarily excommunicated.

(Maybe some day Han Darrington will write a book espousing the virtues of donk-betting – renaming it “CHAMP-betting” – and everyone will start doing it, and I'll have to start fretting about getting exploited. Until then I'll keep whistling my exploitative tune – most of the time)

I keep thinking of a parallel/corollary – I'm not sure it quite fits or supports my point all that well, but it seems at least interesting:  

You argue very well the value of calling small opens out of the BB because of the excellent immediate odds presented. I think I was doing that already, but something that you (or possibly Nate in the TP premium podcast) said has helped me to clarify the situation and avoid spewing a lot more chips after the flop – namely that because I was getting such good odds on the preflop call, it was OK to just check-fold a pretty high percentage of that weak range on the flop. It might feel like I'm getting exploited because the opener may well have a wide C-bet range, but taken jointly the decisions to defend my BB very wide and then continue on the flop seemingly tightly will be profitable overall, and if I start continuing more on the flop out of fear of getting exploited, then I introduce painful reverse implied odds to the prior decision to defend preflop.  

That seems similar to what I'm arguing about responding to donk bets – if, for example, I'm opening from late position against a too-tight BB, I'm getting a great price on my steal attempt so I can do so very wide, possibly with ATC (even more profitable if the BB folds too much to my C-bets). In that spot it seems OK to fold pretty tightly when the BB deviates from my desired script and donk-bets me, because (A) taken jointly the two decisions are still working out great and (B) if I start calling his donk bets out of fear of exploitation I'm likely to wipe out the profitability of my open & C-bet routine.  Obviously if he's smart enough to figure out that I'm folding to his donks, AND that in order to donk more he's going to have to defend more, then I'm screwed, but in my experience players who fold their BB way too much are rarely capable of making one – let alone both – of those adjustments.

(I recognize a possible logical fallacy in my “taken jointly they're profitable” concept – I don't want to be making excuses for losing money on one street because I played the last street so awesomely – but the parallel still seems right to me)

How often do you (Andrew, or anyone else reading this) donk bet, and under what circumstances?  How well would you escape my donk-bet-profiling if I faced you at a WSOP table (and you were wearing a kick-ass 60-year-old man disguise)? 

I think it would be fun & useful to dive into donk-bet data from one of the big(ish)-data poker projects, even if it was from cash games. I'd love to know whether my guesses bear any resemblance to reality in terms of how often players donk with weak or marginal hands, how distinct & varied individual players' ranges are, and how much that correlates to stakes, board texture, bet sizing, etc. If you know any way I could attempt that without Herculean effort or non-nitcast expense, let me know.

-HugeDonk