raising AKo

[dopp16]

The games I have been playing live have been super loose passive. I have officially started limping AKo in early middle position and the blinds because I am not seeing the value in the raise. When there are 5 or more people in the pot and it is limped around, I used to always raise but I feel that is -ev. Of course I will three-bet it in a second if there is a raise before me or in position I will raise it also. I know in Sklanskys book he said you should almost always raise AK(even off) But in the "playing in loose games" section he mention the value of the suitd cards.....Any thoughts?

[newhizzle]

i raise AKo 100% of the time, in a super loose game there is an argument for not raising from late position or in the blinds, but there is still value to the raise and it is close, the argument is that you give up a little bit of preflop equity in order to get your very loose opponents to make postflop mistakes by chasing incorrectly in a smallish pot instead of chasing correctly in a large pot, but i think AK has too much value to give up its preflop equity raise, after a lot of limpers i usually just limp with AQ or AJ

i think it is more important to raise from early and middle positions so that you can clear out the field at least a little bit, and if you cant, there is still value to the raise because people will call you with worse hands and you will win more than your fair share of the time

I just ran a couple of things on poker stove. looks lokie AKo wins around 30-35% of the time against 4 random hands. That is a lot of preflop equity and you should raise 100% of the time there.