NL50 PF BU ATo, post flop vs donk bets

I dislike the donkbet from his POV.

This is a dry flop and the PFR is going to cbet bluff here really often. It is silly to donkbet when your opponent is likely to bet here 70-80% of the time when checked to.

Of course he could play it exploitively and donkbet only bluffs if you fold a lot, and value if you don't ever fold.

Anyway, here you should just use basic game theory concepts to aid you in your decision making. Here, we don't know how often he's bluffing or not, so look to defend the top ~60% of your range, which should include all pairs and every Ace high, maybe some King highs too. Folding the turn is fine, I think most people shut down with their pure bluffs and only continue barreling value and semi bluffs.

Can you please explain which boards do you think are good vs reg?

Imo, good boards are high boards where we hit more 3streets value hands than usuall, on which villian is likely to pot control many hands which would he otherwise call us down if we donk.
E.g. KcQc9s where we can donk vs late position some combos KQ, 99, JT, and on this board villan wille.g from BU pot ontrol many Kx, 2nd pairs and will bet strong hands for value 3 streets.
Probably we could donk all value hands, and fold 100% of time when we check.
Maybe Another example TcTsKc.
Bad boards would be boards where villian hits many more strong hands than us, so we would be vlnerable vs raises, and cant bet many hands value 3 streets. So the board in this hand is perfect examle for bad board to donk.

I am not sure which is best way to balance donk range. Imo it could be the best to donk e.g 90% strong range which we can balanced play for stacks (overbet if needed), so this way we get max value with strong range, and minimize positional advantage of villian, and we check 10% top range to prevent villian overbetting us together with other hands?

I would prefer middling boards. On KQ9 I guess you can have all combos of JT which is great but you cannot have KQ/QQ/KK/99 (I 3bet KQ always vs 50%+ button raise).

Of course that's dependent on positions, I would have 99/KQ vs a CO open from the BB.

Then I would just balance it with some backdoor equity type of hand. But so far I almost always check 98-100% of the time, my own approach is to use huge turn overbets (either by leading or check/raising) to make up for missed flop value

I'm sure incorporating a strategy involving some donkbets on flops where you have good nut equity + decent equity edge (or maybe even equity vs the preflop raiser) is going to be better than my approach, having more strategic options (as long as you properly balance them) is usually better.

Oh yes overbets should fix this problem vs flop checks. Why do you think that donking is better than your approch? I guess the hands which check back flop in villian range are unlikely to outdraw our hand, because villian bets almost all draws. He can though outdraws us with weak pair hitting trips. But the advantage is that we can easier defend with your approch. So i cant see clear advantage of donk vs your approach?

having more options is always a good thing.

For example in a HU match, being able to come up with perfectly balanced raise sizes of 1-4BB is probably best, compared to min-raising everything from the SB.

However, for practical reasons, I would minraise everything. Same goes for flop play here - I think it's much easier to construct balanced ranges like that. But I'm sure having a Flop leading strategy (another strategic option) that is sound will only serve to improve our overall expectation.

Now it sounds to me like you are saying more options increase our EV? I guess we should have donk range if it increases Sum of EVs of all hands in range, and not just because it is more options.
And my question was how to know if having donk range is higher EV than approach you use (no donks but overbet turn). I mean, if we could come to conclusion that your approach is better than we dont need to have donk range at all, who cares about having more options. Otherwise if dink range is better, then i would consider donking.

I ask this, because your approach is simpler and i dont see clear advantage of using donk range. So if you could explaine why having donk range is better than your approach, than i will consider developing donk strategy. If we cant explain it, then we likely cant say which one is better so in that case i would use your approach because it is simpler.

Let me give you a very simple example

On the River

1. You can only bet half pot with all your value hands, and you balance that with bluffs
2. You can bet pot with strong hands, overbet 2X pot with nuts, and halfpot with thin value hands. Of course, all bet sizes are appropriately balanced

Which do you think is the higher EV option?

Having multiple lines and more options almost certainly increases your EV. Whether you are able to balance that properly is another matter altogether.

Having a leading range with some nutted hands will allow you to put in more money into the pot on average, and also deny your opponent from seeing a free Turn card. Checking allows him to realize more equity on average.

And it's going to be hard to balance 1.5X/2X/3X/4X overbets on the Turn. I mostly use 1.5X and 2X only cos of the difficulty of balancing multiple bet sizes.

Ok, thanks, it makes sense