How to Play Ace-King in No-Limit Texas Hold'em

[jayman2411]

How to Play Ace-King in No-Limit Texas Hold'em

How to Play Ace-King in No-Limit Texas Hold'em
Ace-King, the Big Slick, is a big starting hand in No-Limit Texas Hold'em but it is still a drawing hand. It is a difficult hand to play and for many players, AK is often a big money loser in the long run. In fact, for this reason, some players don't play Ace-King at all.

Ace-King



Preflop Play
The big slick is a starting hand where you go in raising preflop. The best hand that the AK can make after the flop is usually top pair top kicker. Hence, you don't want a bunch of opponents going into the flop as it increases the chance that someone might get lucky, flopping two pair or better. Raising here will make it expensive for mediocre hands to see the flop.

Early Position
When no one has yet raised the pot, make an opening raise of about 4 BB to 5 BB. If the pot has been raised, reraise the pot by the size of the pot.

Middle Position
You should make an opening raise of about 3 BB to 4 BB if no one before you have raised the pot. Again, make a pot-sized reraise if the pot has been raised.

Late Position
With only the blinds and possibly the button behind you, your opening raise can be reduced to about 3 BB. Again, make a pot-sized reraise if the pot has already been raised.

Handling a Preflop Re-reraise
If you get re-reraised preflop, it is often advisable fold since anyone re-reraising here should most likely be holding AA or KK. Of course, they may be holding QQ but its still wiser to fold. The reason is because firstly, most of the time you will be wrong and the re-reraiser is indeed holding AA or KK. When that happens, you are at least 70% dominated. Worse still, you lose even more if you hit the ace or the king on the flop. Secondly, even if you are right and your opponent is only holding QQ, you only have 1/3 chance of hitting your ace or king on the flop. Finally, even if you hit the ace or king, you will not get paid off since your opponent will usually fold his QQ when overcards hit the flop because you have raised preflop and likely to hold the ace or king.

However, if you strongly believe you are playing against an idiot or someone on full tilt, by all means go ahead and call that preflop re-reraise. I say this because poker is a very situational game and on numerous occasions, I have profited by not playing by the book when I have a firm understanding of their playing style.

Playing the Flop
The strength of AK is very dependent on the flop. This hand is usually only playable when you flop an ace or a king, and the probability of that occuring is about 1 in 3.

Flopping an Ace or a King
This flop gives you top pair top kicker, which is very often the best hand. You should bet strong to make your opponents fold or pay dearly to chase their draws.

If they do call, that means either they are drawing or they have hit something. You must know who you are up against. If your opponent is a tight player, there is a possibility he has hit a big hand and is slowplaying you. You may want to check on the turn and see what he does. If your opponent is loose, either he is drawing or he has also hit the top or second pair. In this case, continue to bet on the turn and river to extract the most money out of him. This is how most of the profit comes from playing AK.

Flopping Undercards
If you don't hit the flop, you can still make a continuation bet. Since you have either raised or reraised preflop, your opponents will usually credit you with a big hand. They will fold if they didn't hit the flop. Be prepared to check/fold on the turn and river if your continuation bet is called since you have only 6 outs just to catch a top pair.

Flopping a Nut Flush Draw
If your Ace-King is suited, you will sometimes flop a nut flush draw. A semi-bluff is probably the best move here. If your opponent fold, you win right there. If not, you still have a chance to beat him with an Ace-high flush. However, if you get reraised, then you shouldn't be tempted to gamble and should concede defeat.

Playing The Turn and The River
If you had hit the flop, as long as you don't get reraised, you should continue to bet on the turn and the river as long as the board don't suggest that either a straight or a flush has been hit. If you are reraised here, chances are you are beat and this is where alot of players fail to fold and lose alot of money playing this hand.

Loose Games vs Tight Games
Generally, AK plays better in loose games than in tight games. I believe it's because when games are tighter, players tend not to chase draws and only play hands that can beat top pair top kicker - the best hand that AK can make in most cases.

Cash Game vs Tournament
The power of Ace-King is amplified when playing tournaments. In tournaments, when the blinds are rising fast, players tend to steal blinds by pushing with any starting hand that contains an ace. Since AK is the big daddy of all Ax hands, whenever you go heads up with another player that holds Ax, you have about 70% chance of taking him down. This is good odds when you are trying to take out a smaller stack or doubling up through a big stack.

However, this strategy of playing AK fails miserably in cash games. In cash games, players usually will only push all-in preflop with either AA or KK. Againsts such holdings, AK is a dominated hand with only about 7% chance of winning against AA and about 30% chance of winning against K

[frob23]

I have a question about your advice to fold to a 4 bet pre-flop if it gets that far after we played it like this. If we assume your opponent will only bet 4 hands like that (assume he plays AK like AA -- which can be a smart play in a tournament because it really puts pressure on big pairs) and a lot of players do play like this with AK. The following lists the combinations of ways he can hold those hands.

AK - 9 ways
AA - 3 ways
KK - 3 ways
QQ - 6 ways

Edit: As you can see, even if we limit the hands to AA, KK, and QQ... it's not most of the time he'll have AA or KK... but half the time. Our holding AK makes it much harder for them to have AA or KK.

If it's the first hand of a tournament (on PS just to have a benchmark). I raise 4xBB UTG with AK. The pot is 110 when it gets to him and 190 after his call, so he raises pot back at me and bets 270. It's now 380, and I want to raise the pot... it's 650 after my call... so I make it 920 to go. You should already see the problem developing here. At this point his only option is to raise all-in. We've run out of chips. The pot is now 2,450 and it costs me 580 to call. Do I have the equity to call here?

Fold: has an equity of 580
Call: against AK has an equity of about 1515 * (9/21) [649]
Call: against AA has an equity of about 225 * (3/21) [32]
Call: against KK has an equity of about 909 * (3/21) [130]
Call: against QQ has an equity of about 1298 * (6/21) [371]
**Call: against JJ has an equity of about 1295 [this is for a later calculation but fits best here]

Or a total equity of about 1182 from calling. Since this is larger than 580, calling should be right here. If we remove AK from the list we still have an equity of about 933 from making the call... and it's still better than folding. Against players where we can add JJ to the mix (with AK)... calling becomes even more clear as our equity from calling climbs to 1207.

Basically, after having played the hand this way... 4 betting pot sized bets... even at the deeper stack levels in a tournament... have we put ourselves in a position where we are pot committed? Are we likely behind and in a bad spot? Oh yes. We're in a very ugly spot here and will probably be kicking ourselves for this later. But can we possibly fold?

Edit: I see now that we are talking about a 3 bet here... which I do not believe is enough to limit them to exactly those three big pairs but it's possible. Still, outside of the earliest stages of the tournament or when two large stacks collide with these specific hands, even a 3 bet is likely to be an all-in pre-flop decision.

[JonaBullets]

I agree with some of your comments. and disagree with some.
But none the less. a very nice post jayman. Very well laid out too.
AK sure is a bit*h to play, and like you said in the long run can bring a negitive result.
I prefer my AK to be suited, and hope to the poker gods I flop magic.
Goes back to the old saying, "Anna Kournikova, Looks good but plays like sh*t"
No offense to any Russian players out there.

[allthatremains]

What's great about AK is pre-flop it is very close to or well over 50% against all other starting hands except AA and KK, and as mentioned, you have greatly reduced the chances of someone else holding AA or KK just by holding AK.

What's bad about AK is after the flop it becomes difficult to stay in the hand if someone has raised and you missed.

I raise AK the same as any other raised hands pre-flop. If I am raised pre-flop, sometimes I will call and sometimes I will reraise - just to mix it up a bit. If I just called and the other player raises the flop I can easily get away from it with little lost. If I reraise and get re-reraised pre-flop I will call and re-evaluate on flop.

Because of the fact that every pre-flop is raised by me or someone else when I'm playing AK, I assume I'm mostly playing against weaker aces and pocket pairs, and it makes it a lot easier to play post flop.

One pre-flop situation I avoid AK is when it has been raised and re-raised before I have even bet. This usually means someone has an A(one of your outs) and someone has a pair. Although this is a good situation if you are getting short stacked and can go all-in, possibly forcing one of the raisers out, or taking a chance on tripling up.

[Sydenham]

[quote=jayman2411;17145]How to Play Ace-King in No-Limit Texas Hold'em

How to Play Ace-King in No-Limit Texas Hold'em
Ace-King, the Big Slick, is a big starting hand in No-Limit Texas Hold'em but it is still a drawing hand. It is a difficult hand to play and for many players, AK is often a big money loser in the long run. In fact, for this reason, some players don't play Ace-King at all.

Generally speaking I seldom play cash Hold 'Em, and then only a tiny bit of limit. The problem with AK is that most of the donkeys NEVER fold an ace. If you raise pre-flop with AK and flop an ace with two callers you can bet one of them will have an ace, possibly both, and the chances are you are beat already. You can have a raise and three all-ins in, yet the donkey on the end willl call with ace rag, and if he hits the flop, or even if he doesn't he will chase, chase, chase, and at the end will call just to keep you honest.