I'm curious if anyone had any advice to help me play AK. I have been getting my butt kicked with AK. My problem is this, I always raise with AK as is the correct play. But it seems to me that playin this as a coing flip vs a decent player is a negative EV secnario. Say I'm play AK vs JJ. I raise and make it head up I flop my pair only 1 in 3 times. If I do flop a pair there is a dececnt chance that the player with JJ is going to fold to my bet since the A or K on the flop is going to scare him away. The other 2/3 of the time I miss the flop and I am now seriously behind in the hand. I know this is very over simplified and there are other advanatges with AK like playin vs AQ and flopping an A but the last couple of weeks, it seems like I have been winning small pots and losing big ones every time I get AK. Any thoughts?

Monk,

Let's say I'm playing $2/$5 and the table pf norm is a raise to $20 or $25. If I limp with AK and hit TPTK on the flop - even with such a flop as A63 - I can fire $20 or $25 on the flop and get some information then about whether or not my opponent has A6 or A3 and I'm out the same amount of money. In the game I have been playing lately - they are as likely to call a $25 raise with A6 pre-flop but at least on the flop if they hit two pair I'm likely to get raised - my investment stays the same and my aggression (re: table image) isn't in question because I fired on the flop. It is true that you might lose a little equity along the way by not raising pre-flop but it keeps the fluctuations down and that's more important than many realize in these game.

Low limit NL has many playing aspects which mirror a re-buy tournament because of the capped buy-in. If I go all-in pre-flop against a player who has the same $500 in front of him that I do and he flips up KK to my AA - I am much more likely to offer a deal (assuming the house allows deals) that I am in a big game...and a much better deal than I would if I were so inclined in the big game. In a no cap buy-in game I would offer him no more than 22.5% ($225 of a $1000 pot) to muck - in a capped buy-in game I would offer him 30% to muck. The reason is simply that the chips are worth more because they are only partially replaceable....I can only buy-in for $500 if I lose. So in our KK vs AA situation where two people have gone all-in for $500 and created a $1000 pot - my equity holding AA is about $800 and I don't want to gamble with the money I can't replace - namely the $300. So I'll take a sure thing of $250 or even $200 rather than gamble in this situation because the added $200-$250 is worth more than $200 or $250 in rebought chips.

During this last month where I kept records here on btp under the 'for what it's worth' post, I played 19 sessions. Of those 19 sessions, I had to re-buy in 15 sessions - sometimes more than once. However, once I doubled the max buy-in - ie: if I was playing in a $300 max buy-in game and reached $600 or reached $1000 in a $500 max buy-in game - I never looked back and not only did not have to rebuy again but did not book a loss. Having a sizable chip stack has equity in NL - even if your opponents have more than you because you can gain information and pinpoint where you are easier by raising and re-raising without crippling yourself.

TUP

I think the important thing is to mix up your play of AK. I played a hand at Harrah's 120NL last week where I caught AK in the BB. I checked in and flopped a pair of K's. I led out into a field of 5 players and got raised by someone who I thought was a loose/aggressive player. Long story short we ended up getting our stacks in the middle and I doubled up because he couldn't put me on AK and had flopped an inferior K.

On the other extreme, in very loose aggressive games you can try to limp-pop with AK as though it was AA or KK. This should only be done rarely and you need to know that you are playing at the right table to do it and be facing a raise that's not from a rock.

A third tricky way to win a bigger pot with AK when you make a good hand is to try to check-raise your opponent when out of position. He might just put you on QQ if you reraised him before the flop and think that since that A or K beats you he might be able to steal the pot.

And one other important thing... if you're going to play AK aggressively you're going to have to be willing to earn a few pots with it too when you don't flop the A or the K. Think of it this way -- if your opponent misses the flop (and didn't have a pocket pair) you still have the best hand. Obviously be selective about the situations you bluff with it in.

Ok it seems that my plays has been to standard raising with AK and maybe i need to mix it up a little. What I have been trying to do is to open the betting for AK just like I do with a big PP and then bet the flop like I would with a big PP. This way when the rag flop hits my opponants can't tell if I'm playin AA or AK. The one problem that I do have playin AK this way is the rule of thumb is you dont want to lose your stack with TPTK in a deep game, but AK has a very small likelyhood of making anything other than TPTK, yes it makes two pair but so does any hand. The problem I forsee is flopping the A with an A63 flop against player I know like to play any A and differentiating between someone who flopped 2 pair and someone who thinks that because there was no preflop raise that their AJ, or A10 is good. I think I'll try it out and see how I like it.

One of the big switches from my being a break-even NL Ring player to a consisitently winning one is learning how to play AK.

For my first 20,000 ring hands AKo was a significant loser for me (about -0.37BB/hand).

Checking this month it's now running at +2.93BB/hand.

To some extent this is down to just getting better at situational play, but use of PokerTracker to read the rest of the table is by far the most important element.

I will post on this sort of stuff in part 3 of my PT article, but I'm too busy at the moment (with Xmas and earning the Party bonus) to write it for a while.