[wiggs73]

at first glance, i thought a squeeze play might would be good b/c of 'defining your hand' and all that. however, just on instict, i feel like if you do that, you'll get at least 1 caller. so now you take a flop, albeit in position, with a pot that's around 7k and a stack that's around 11k. Not necessarily an ideal situation to be in. you also open yourself up to a stop-n-go of sorts and i hate putting in 1/4 of my stack just to have to fold the flop when i miss.

so after that, i thought i liked a call the best. i probably still do. the way the hand played out, i would have to think about dumping it and only because the button called and you don't have a read on him. readless, i have to assume that after an UTG raise, 2 callers, and a push on top of all of that, he would need 1 of 2 hands to flat call this. utg and utg+1 folding helps (and in hindsight (and ignoring the push and call), maybe a squeeze play would have worked) but I still think it's too likely that your AK is dominated.

one other thought that i had is a simple pre-flop push the first time action is to you. i understand this isn't a $5.50 where AJ and KQ will call you, but with all the dead money in the pot, maybe it isn't horrible...? i still like the call better though. interesting hand.

edit to say: the 2nd time action gets to you, you only have t800 of a t15k stack invested. so getting away leaves you in about the same shape as if you had just folded some random hand PF.