[Reel Deal]

I had something similar happen at Titan last night, albeit on a lower table ($100 NL)... I got dealt AK UTG and raised to $4, got one caller then the BB reraised to $17 (the guy had been fairly loose but I did think he probably had something like AK, QQ, JJ, TT...). The reraiser only had about $25-30 left in his stack so I decided to gamboool and pushed all-in, caller folds and when it gets back to the BB he types, "unless you have AA or KK you're beat" and then calls. K falls on the flop and I'm sure I've got him now with his QQ... but of course a Q falls on the river and I lose the pot. He proceeds to let me know what a donkey I am for playing AK like that... lol. I said that's fine and I'm sure I'd get it back from him. Of course, one hand later he says, "gotta run."

Penguin, my thoughts on a play like this are (a) I'm not folding AK to that reraise b/c there's now quite a bit of $ in the pot and that reraise looked like he wanted to end it right there (ie, he wasn't holding AA or KK), (b) with his stack size and the size of that reraise, all his $ is probably going in anyway (unless it was a complete bluff, then he's folding and I win a nice pot), (c) with AK I really want to see all 5 cards hit the board, (d) it's a cash game if I miss I can simply reload, (e) I'm playing w/in my bankroll so a hit like this (if I have to take it) won't bother me... so with all that in mind I pushed, caught what I wanted on the flop and then got unlucky on the river. My philosophy in cash games has changed a bit (I too wouldn't have made a play like this in the past) in that I'm willing to take a 50-50 shot at a big pot.