$200 NLHE Full Ring: Live, Bad play? looking for ideas.

$200 NL HE Full Ring: Live, Bad play? looking for ideas.

I was recently playing a pretty decent, short stacked 1/2 NL game when the following hand came up. I'm just wondering what other people think about it or what they would do differently and why.

I was in the cut off with about $270.

Short stacked guy under the gun pushes with $41. He was a loose guy that had re bought twice and was pushing all in very often. My read was any Ace, KQ-K10 and QJ-Q10 or any pair.

Folds to me and I see AK off. I take some time and look at the players after me, they don't look too interested in the hand. One of them had about $60 left and the small blind had $160. I decide to just call.

Button pushes all in for $65.
Small Blind thinks for a while and shoves for $160.

Botton was a pretty tight, 40 something women regular. Don't really care what she had, didn't affect my decision making. Small blind was a typical LAG type player and I had him on a any pair down to suited connectors, but not strong because of the time spent thinking and the weakness in the way he pushed his chips in. Hes also the type of guy that would push here with any two live cards or small pair to try to get me to fold.


Main pot was 41x4= $164
side pot 1 was 14x3= $42
SB pot was = $95

Total pot was $301 (- 5 for rake and 1 for bbjp)

I think for a while when it comes back to me, mostly about how I'm not happy I put myself in this position. With that said, this is where I'm looking for comments. I know AK is behind a little here and is a drawing hand, I know I could have raised the original bet (but I didn't want to at the time). There is just so much in the pot that I can't really fold. I was reading the table pretty well and was pretty confident in my reads. I thought I was racing against the SB and one other players and had a better ace than the remaining one. I did think that at least one of my aces was dead.

I make the call for $119 or what ever it was.

UTG shows A3 of hearts,
Button shows A10
SB shows a pair of 8s.

Flop is 3 hearts, I don't get any help after that and lose both pots, what ever.

I'm ok with my reads, I had the SBs hand right on. Not complaining about the beat. I'm just wondering if I made a bad or good call at the end. I'm not happy with it, but I think its more because I lost such a big pot from a position I didn't want to be in. I usually don't value AK like this in cash games, I hate the hand and think that is another reason this hand has gotten me so mad. When I called the original raiser I wasn't happy. Even less happy with the hand reading it again now.

AK vs your reads, if accurate, is a coin flip. So you only need 2:1 odds to make the call here. Getting 2.5:1, you made the right call, just ended up on the wrong side this time. The only thing that makes this call questionable is making the call vs 3 other players. That was largely read dependent, and your reads were correct. But a lot could go wrong there.

Very very easy reraise pre for isolation purposes and to fold out small pairs behind you

As played you should still call, but shouldn't have put yourself in this spot to begin with

What Zybomb says. If a player is all-in for a negligible amount of money in comparison to your stack, raise for isolation. That way when a player jams on you, your decision is that much easier (also A3s probably isn't going to jam in a 3-bet pot, and the 88 might think twice about it, too).

The majority of players aren't jamming in a 3-bet pot with those holdings, however in a 2-bet pot they factor in that you're hand isn't that strong (= fold equity + chance they're ahead), and jamming as a bluff/pot isolator/dead money generator becomes more attractve.