Hi Guys,

Ran into a weird spot last night in a £50+5 Satellit to the Phase 1 £550 PartyPoker Millions.

Blinds 200/400/50A Efc stack 18k

Only played three level but my table has been very active, alot of early opens being 3bet. Not really any other reads on villians.

Hero is in the SB with AKo

Folds to the btn who limps

Hero 2bets to 1100.

BB 3bets to 3500.

Btn folds and the action is back on the hero.

The BB appears to be a middle age LAG player, most of the hands he had played he 3bet. I thinking back on the hand I believer we have two choses, becasue he appears to have a decent size 3betting range we could call to trap but doing this would mean we play the pot oop. The other is 4betting for value and I believe we can take down the pot a decent % of the time pre by 4betting too.

Hero elects to 4bet to 8k.

The BB now goings into the tank for 15-20 sec's (There was a live shot clock of 30sec). BB then shoves for the heros remainding stack.

Hero?

We are getting 1:2 so I believe we need 33% to call profitablily but i'm not to sure if calling is correct as when we fold we still have 25bbs.

We have 6% vs AA, 30% vs KK and are just about fliping vs every other pair.

Looking back at the hand I dislike the 4bet, I believe we should have just called and play the pot oop.

Starting to take poker abit more seriously and work on my pre-flop play at the moment, I seem to find my self in some weird spots pre where I make massive mistakes imo.

You can't 4bet fold, when you 4Bet you're deciding to GII and you can't back out now. This would be what I would do especially given the laggy table and you're in a blind vs blind situation.

If you're not comfortable getting it in with 40BB, then just call the 3Bet.

If the initial action had been hero 3 bet and villain cold 4-bet I might have been more prudent, but you're just iso-ing a limper and villain 3-bets you bvb. Given these dynamics I think you played it fine with this stack depth. I have kicked myself in the past before when I played too cautiously in these dynamics and probably gave up quite a lot of value.
Edit: some live tables are so tight you could almost fold to the 3-bet (I'm exaggerating but you get the jist), but this definitely doesn't look like one of them!

Ok cool, cheers guys. Going back to the open to 1100 should we be increasing the sizing of this to more of 4-4.5BB (1600-1800) to give the limper worse odds to call as we are oop?

At the moment I seem to find myself in small to mistakes MTT's with alot of limpers and I think I maybe missing some value by not opening bigger.

4bet get it in is fine, especially with villains assumes range

Yes initial sizing should be bigger as you said. With multiple limpers it will be difficult anyway though to make it a two way flop. Play smallball in general and go to value town with your good hands.