AK 200 BB deep, all-in pre?

Happy to shove here. It seems like a big shove, but as you mentioned it is only 100 straddles. There is $350 in the middle which is sooo much money. The cold callers are really capped here, Pro #1 should have a lot of hands you are ahead of (AQo, KQs, AXs, etc), and the older guy can't continue without KK+ which you block.

Seems like a decent spot for the limp-raise too. I know it is considered good strategy to limp raise from the blinds in a Button straddle configuration, so UTG makes some sense to me as well. Obviously it's a loose aggressive table too.

GII. No other choice really -- this is why you limped 😉

No it isn’t ridiculous to ship here with AK it’s standard. You can maybe make it like $750 just since it might seem stronger but you’re effectively shipping with any reasonable 4bet size and should be 4betting.

Pretty easy ship, but i doubt limp up front with big hands strat is the move. Also youre actually only 100 BBs deep, and the raise is 3.5x bb rather than gto 2-3 bb making the effective stacks even shorter,

Yeah just shove here you are looking for max fold equity.

I really don't like limp re-raising in general though. Your hand is really face up when you limp-reraise. Here you may get off the hook if you get them to fold when you have AK, but you can already sometimes get them to do that if you open, get 3bet, and throw in a 4bet. You're going to get wrecked by pros when you limp-call or straight open because they are going to narrow your range down a lot.

A lot of times you are going to open with AKo, get a million callers, and you are going to lose. Or you 4bet with AKo and lose. When we put in the extra raise whether it is a 3bet or 4bet, we expect to have 53%-60% equity vs our opponents range. That doesn't entitle us to just win with AK, but sometimes it's okay to push our small edge with this hand, recognizing that we will lose the hand still a fair amount, but overall we will be making money with this play.

Also, I think it is worth noting, "pro" 2 cold calling pro 1's 3bet is a rarely a good move imo. I am playing cold 4bet or fold in that spot with my entire range. There can be exceptions. If the 3bettor was a tilted whale it would be more justifiable. It is usually better to take our fold equity, try to isolate, and give ourselves an uncapped range. When I see pros cold call other pros, I think it might be a sign of weak theory game or overconfidence in postflop edge.

Those are good notes to have on pro 2. A lot of pros may be intimidating, but it is possible to spot big holes in their games. Imo you shouldn't feel like you have to employ a crazy strategy like limp re-raising to combat pros. Just get strong with preflop ranges, knowing what to do vs a 3bet with your range and that will help you a lot. Mix in the 4bets vs pros that light 3bet with hands like AKo, A5s, AQo sometimes.

Easy shove, not a huge fan of the limp reraise, but it worked out for you here.

I guess we should mix in some limp/calls like mid pp’s , decent sc’s if we are gonna adopt a limping strategy.

MLark: OP has stated that the two pros are “several thousand” deep with each other, and that pro 2 is in between pro 1 and the loose fish. Furthermore, OP has limped up front, and we don’t know whether the other players are aware how often this is going to be a reraise.

So in this particular configuration, against these particular players, I would be hesitant to label the cold call as a clear mistake.

This is the first spot I had found at this particular table where I tried the limp-reraise strategy.

I thought it was a bit odd that pro #2 flatted the 3-bet in position. It was actually the first time I'd seen him call instead of raising preflop.

There are a few valid reasons for this guy to consider cold calling, in my opinion. The main one is to allow the fish into the hand. When there is a huge donator in the game, it is generally not a big moneymaker to isolate good players and fold out the bad one.

I don’t think it’s necessarily the case that we can assume he is capped, as we often would in other spots.

I prob 4bet to $400 and shove most/all flops. Gives you two shots for FE and sometimes you can get away when you get 5bet jammed on if you’re fairly certain they aren’t jamming TT+ in the same spot.

The cold callers shouldn't change much since I think Pro 2 would be disincentived to trap when he knows a loose player will act right after him. If I were in Pro 2's position, I would still cold 4b with a strong range (QQ+), recognizing that I'll still get money in from any of the EP raisers and preventing a bloated multiway pot.

So in reality, you just have the older guy and Pro1 to worry about. Unless you have a read where either are ridiculously tight, then shipping it seems standard here, given that the two callers bloated the pot and any raise here would leave you with an awkward shoving size on the flop. Simply calling here is about the worst thing you can do IMO, even folding would be better just to avoid your positional disadvantage multiway.

If the two callers weren't there, then instead of shoving, I'd be raising to $350~.

Results:

I shipped it, everyone except for the fish folded, the board ran out 10 high, I said I have AK and he said you're good.

Excellent result. Nice hand.