Hi,
Thanks for posting. I'll try help as best as I can. Just looking at this situation, we have a pot of $1200 which is the total blinds and antes before any bets. Most players at the table are pretty deep apart from the big blind and the guy on your left. The first problem I can see here is that you’re using ‘BB’ remaining on your HUD which is giving you a false impression of the stacks at the table. I’m sure you’re aware of Tournament ‘M’? It is a stat that you should definitely have in front of you. I would edit your Hud and replace ‘Big Blinds with ‘Tournament M’ instead. Looking at the table your HUD is telling you this:
SB 35 Big Blinds
BB 21 Big Blinds
UTG 1 27 Big Blinds
UTG 2 (You) 36 Big Blinds
MP1 14 Big Blinds
MP2 62 Big Blinds
HJ 34 Big Blinds
CO 84 Big Blinds
BTN 31 Big Blinds
SB 35 Big Blinds
BB 21 Big Blinds
I won’t go into the exact calculation of M here as it would be too much waffle but you can learn about it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-ratio (sorry if you already know about this, I’m just being thorough). But very basically: The stacks here are a lot shallower than it appears. I’m going to use 2/3rd's just as an estimate. Each of the players at your table has a lot less room to breathe than it seems. Due to the size of the blinds and antes relative to the stacks, the effective big blinds left that everyone has are (approximately):
SB 24 Big Blinds
BB 14 Big Blinds
UTG 1 18 Big Blinds
UTG 2 (You) 24 Big Blinds
MP1 10 Big Blinds
MP2 41 Big Blinds
HJ 22 Big Blinds
CO 60 Big Blinds
BTN 20 Big Blinds
SB 24 Big Blinds
BB 14 Big Blinds
As you can see, at least 3 of the players including the Big Blind are in worse shape than it first appeared and we can expect them to be making a move soon. So opening with ATo in this spot is dangerous. The Big Blind really should have been shoving there with any sort or a decent hand instead of flatting but there ya go. Ok, so you picked up ATo (A reasonable hand but a little too weak in EP at a 9 handed table when you still have 24 effective big blinds left. You are UTG2 and raised $1750 (3.5bb) over a pot of $1200, quite an overbet of the pot. I’m uncertain why you chose this size but I expect it was to induce more folds. A pot sized or 2bb bet would have accomplished the same thing at this depth, and would have controlled the pot/SPR better (you gave yourself no room to breathe). The problem with ATo in this spot is that if no-one calls, then great! But there’s 7 people to get through which means there is a reasonable probability that a better hand will call. Also, the big blind is getting a great price, and an even better price with 1+ more caller (Which is exactly what happened). I was amazed that MP1 didn’t shove but we’ll move on.
So we have the CO who has AK in good position. He knows that a player with your comfortable stack size in early position would not be risking a lot of chips OOP without at least some kind of a strong Ace or Pair. As he has blockers for Aces and Kings, he knows that the combos of hands that beat his are less likely than hands he beats, and at worst he has all of them dominated except AA. He’s also pretty deep and knows he will have good position for the rest of the hand. An easy call. The BB completes as he’s getting a decent price (3:1) on seeing a flop, and isn’t in push of fold territory just yet (but close to it). The pot on the flop is $5050 giving the BB an SPR of 2.
The flop is fairly moist here (Some draws and obviously the Ace) so I think your check was fine as you were only getting called by monsters and good draws. The problem with the check-shove line was that the relative stack sizes meant that you didn’t have much fold equity on the CO. He was was the deepest stack there and was not really that worried about elimination. Your shove of ($16,174) over his ($4500) bet with a total winnable pot of ($26,624) meant that he needed [ ($16,174-$4500) / $26,624 ] 44% equity to make the call. He figured that with AK in his hand, and another A showing on the board, there were not that many combos of hands left that were beating his. The only hands he could really fear were {AA, 55, and 66}. He could already discount the two baby sets as these small pairs wouldn’t have overbet the pot from EP2, and it was hard to put you on AA when there was only 1 combo of this hand available. Adding all of this up, his call was unavoidable.
Given his fishy VPIP/PFR I can understand how you might have assigned him a weaker range than AKo+, but without his positional stats or further tournament context, it’s hard for others to judge. You were there! We weren't. His stats can be explained by possibly being very active during the low levels, stacking a few bums and then nitting up as the blinds increased (giving him the artificial stats a loose maniac). But, basically the most important factor here was the stack sizes. He had you covered twice over and knew that he could chip up for cheap. The best question to ask before that shove would have been “What hand did the CO happily call an EP overbet with and was willing to bet almost pot against multiway with 2 shorter stacks ready to shove”. Answer: A very strong hand. Also despite his loose stats, his low 3Bet% and High F3Bet% tell me that this player does not get involved in big pots unless he’s got a hand, and now you're witnessing him betting almost the size of the pot multiway ... Run away!
Overall though, I think the sizing of your preflop raise put you in a very tough spot on the flop. With an SPR of 3 and an Ace on board you had pretty much pot committed yourself. But the key mistake I think was being in the hand to begin with. Next time, with those relative stacks and poor table position you will know that ATo UTG2 can be folded comfortably while you wait for a better spot. (Pauses for breath .... ) Hope this helped, thanks for reading
G