Haunted by Donkeys

Like the movie, "The Sixth Sense", I am haunted by donkeys everywhere. At the Legion tournament last night my problems began when I agreed to deal as well as play. It is very distracting to me, and I never cash when I deal. Nonetheless, no one else wanted to, so I took the $10 playing discount and the 3 free drink tickets and dealt table 2. I took a couple of early pots, so I imagined the curse was off (did I mention the date? Friday the 13th). My first problem was limping in with 8/9 offsuit...one of my favorites. The flop had a 9 & 10 with two of a suit. It was checked to me and I bet second pair with the button, immediately to my right calling me. The turn was a blank, so I bet again, with another call. When the third diamond hit the river....thanks dealer (oops, that's me), I checked. The caller bet $400 into the $600 pot and I suspected a missed straight draw (turned out that was true), so I check raised to $1200 which he called with the Q/J of diamonds. He was on a straight (flush) draw, and made the flush. He didn't reraise me without the nuts, but it left me with only $1000 in chips. Here is where the donkey part comes in, though one could argue that my check raise was a donkey play. We broke one of the tables and went down to the final 2. A couple of plays into it, with 100/200 blinds, I pushed with QJ offsuit. Yes, you could argue that it was a donkey move, but with only 5 times the blind, and opening the pot for an 800 raise, I thought I had a good chance of everyone folding. However, one of the bigger donkeys in our game had a decent stack, not huge, but maybe 5000, and made the call with A/10 offsuit!!! That has got to be a huge donkey call. What is he expecting to see? I will push with many aces, true, but probably with AJ or better, or any pair. As it was, I had 2 live cards, flopped an open ended straight draw, and he had only one overcard...which ended up being the best hand. Rats!

My next donkey story was an online 45 person SNG. We were down to around 18 players, and I had the 5th largest stack, around 6500. The second chip leader was at my table with around 10,000. He had been playing very donkish all along, playing virtually every hand and calling big bets with marginal hands, but getting very lucky. I was under the gun with pocket 10's and I mini-raised the BB (200) up to 400. I realize this is not a huge raise, but an UTG raise from someone who doesn't play many pots is usually a big red flag for everyone. True to form, the donk, on the button, called me which encouraged the small and big blinds to call as well. The flop was excellent, 9 high and rainbow, with no connectors. Check, check, bet pot, call, fold, fold. The turn, another small card, pot bet, raise, reraise allin, call. River pairs the 5 on the board which actually came as some relief to me as I thought he may have flopped two odd pairs and gotten counterfeited, or was holding two overcards hoping to hit. He had called 400 cold with 9/5 suited and flopped two pair, then rivered the full house. I was out. In retrospect, I may have underbet preflop, but got exactly the flop I wanted to get the A/9's, or smaller pocket pair's chips. I still think his call was donkey, even though it was only 4% of his chips.