Calling an All in with AK

You hold AK on the button with 2 limpers. You raise 5x BB the blinds fold as well as the first limper. The second limper pushes all in and has you covered.
What do you do?

Would you call with the AK? Does this decision change based on your stack size, deep, middle, short?

This happened to me in a MTT, I was a slightly below average stack against another slightly below average stack in the middle of a tournament. I ended up calling with AhKh, he turned over 3c3s. The board ended 2c2s4c7c9c and I was out of the tournament.

You need to supply more information in your posts for people to give you

informed feedback. What were the blinds? What was his stack? what

percentage of your stack had you already commited? ICM helps you here if

you can put him on a range of hands example: if you have commited a fair

chunk of your stack AKs is a premium holding you are flipping against any pair

QQ and below and you still have like 34% pot equity if the Villan has KK! A

mate of mine who grinds MTTs. would say that AKs is a no brainer call here.

Personally 33 limping and then shoving seems like a desperate play from my

standpoint he didn't wont a call obv. what hand is he crushing? If you

comitted maybe 15% of your stack I like the call if you had 15 bbs or less I

think the right move would have been moving in straight away. He probably

would have folded his 33 then don't you think?

All of that extra stuff is great most of the time, but in this one I really think it's overkill.

You have AKs, which is an unmade hand at the moment. You don't know what he has, but he's showing strength. You can pretty much count on a coin flip here, because a shove like this usually means a pp of some type. So your decision is this... Do you want to go broke holding AKs if your flush or an A or K doesn't hit? If not, fold. If you don't mind, call.

100/200 blinds. and the average was 4k and I had 3700 chips than I wanted to pay raise but I am angry and gave all in as I went from a $ 5.50 SNG Bounty

You have like 48% equity vs a pair, and there is 12 ½ big blinds in the pot already.
So its normally a call.

Unmade vs what ? What is unmade anyway ?

See the difference ? We dont have stack sizes, but this is a snap call in most MTT spots.

DG, seriously you need to learn the difference between the two quotes above.

Unmade hand to me a hand that doesn't have a pair or better. OP wanted suggestions on what he should do in his situation and I told him my suggestion. I might not have done so if I knew my suggestion would be put on trial, but okay.


You're suggestion= 52% chance he doesn't get to see the next hand
48% chance he doubles up.

My suggestion (which would be to fold)= 100% chance to see the next hand and wait for a better spot.


I'm not saying your suggestion is wrong, hell I call here as well sometimes. But it's not always the best play as seen in OP's post.

What type of villain are you against he can easily see your raise from the button as a steal and try and be attempting a re-steal with his bigger stack.

If in doubt go with the math, math never lies.

We have 2.7k left and a pot of 5k. We're getting nearly 2:1 to make a call. It is correct to call against any even remotely logical shove range that our opponent could have (i.e. anything wider than only AA/KK). It is a huge mistake to fold. Regardless of who would win the coinflip.


Especially if you knew your opponent had 33, it is always the right play to call here.

The pot was too big for you to fold 300+ 2limpers 400 your 5x bb raise 1000 as

soon as you make that raise you are pot commited the pot stands at 1700 you

have 2700 left he moves in you are getting too good a price to fold. He had

tiny pair and played the hand badly and was lucky it held up.

call AK is only dominated by 2 hands AA and KK and your holding an aces and a king so it is less likely for someone to be holding either of those pairs!

it depends on who you are playing with...and how they have been playing

Recently i lost a big pot
one person has pocket 7
the aggressive person had A,T
And i had A,Q

The aggressive person raised to 500 and i called, but the person with the pocket 7 when all in...the agressive person called it. Then it came to me I though about it for along time then i desiced that to fold. the board came to this 9,T,2,Q,4 the agressive person won the 21,000 pot...that i could of won...but if the Q did not hit on the turn then i would of been in lots of trouble

But to answer your question Ak is a good drawing hand...and can be beat with pocket pair and when the board flops nothing to help you, well your done. If you can affort to take the hit to your chips, then i would call, but if not then just throw then away.

You should be ecstatic that he pushed allin. You should be hitting the call button right after it appears. This is one of the easiest calls in the world. Not only are you getting amazing odds you are actually ahead of his range. If he limp/shoves 33 he is certainly doing that with stuff like AT/KQ/78s maybe/other stuff that we just crush. Sorry you lost, but it's an easy snapcall.

So you prefer to call with 66 here? If so, you be burning money yo.

I think the point most people are missing here is AKs vs a "range of hands" sure

AKs vs 33 is virtual flip but 33 is still only just in the top 49% of hands where as

AKs is top 3% so If this guy plays 33, think of all the junk between that AKs

crushes.AKs is certainly as said by a previous poster well ahead of his range.

All I'm saying is, unimproved it really doesn't matter what the percentages are for whatever hand he might have. I said that I will call in this spot sometimes as well.

But in my first post, I put it up to the OP as to what he wanted to do in this spot. I feel that calling here is more results oriented playing than actually playing all these percentages. Sure, AK is gonna win this a good part of the time, but it can just as easily lose it. Therefore, my suggestion that it is really up to the way you feel at the time is still my suggestion.

Seems like my AK loses to a pp 65% of the time. and idk if its just a coincidence but 10 J is my AK killer, can never win. maybe its just bad luck tho

Other than the math, it was a good call because obviously he didnt have that great of a hand if he limped after someone else limped. I would have put him on a pocket pair right away, but more like 66-99.

Yeah AK is not a good hand when you have to do with the pair. I rarely won with AK vs. 52% and the pair took me 48%. after after it came turn and I had 100% WIN . that's poker

I'd suggest posting the hand in the hand analysis section - you'll get better feedback with all the info. Plus there are numerous threads in there about AKs/o so have a read and see how the advice varies depending on that particular game's variables.

I think you did right calling all in with AK, but unfortunately you got busted. Well, in a long run, with this hand you will won mostly.

Just my $.02

if you don't feel like folding AK to any kind of preflop raises - you'd better simply go all-in preflop in the future. This way most of the time people will fold and you will win the blinds with this great drawing hand.

I am always calling an all-in with AK if below average stack.

Def a call. Before you posted results, with his limp to all-in i guessed that he was holding a hand like JJ or 1010. I'd be happy with my risk/reward there

A limp/shove ussually means two things.

A pocket pair, or a pocket pair, or a chopped pot.

Most players don't limp/shove AK in my experience.

It's a pot isolation move, and by the time action gets back to you, you are getting correct pot odds to call unless your opponent has AA or KK.

I would be calling here all day every day in a cash game unless our villain is particularly tricky. Against a more tricky opponent I have a hard time giving him credit for AA or KK here, so I still call - unless I've seen him make a similar move and think he's doing a repeat.

In a tournament game - weigh the odds against your tournament life. I would call this in most tournaments, knowing I was getting a little better than double my money to flip a coin - if I win I am at almost 2x chip average and get sufficient breathing room. If I lose I made a mathmatically correct play and lost.

This is a 50/50 unless your opponent has AA/KK, in which case it's a WA/WB.

If our villain is terrible he'll pull this move with an A, but I would never expect this.

Call and hope to improve, as you're certainly behind by a couple percent, but math says that's ok, imo.

WG

In my opinion you made the right move, but yet again i'm still a low stakes player who is an alright player. I would have done the same exact move because i'm not good enough to fold AKs on a limp/shove. Well better luck in your future cash games and tourney's.

As someone pointed out AK is not a made hand, a good hand to play, a great hand to hit on the flop.

If the villain has any pocket pair, he is ahead of you.

Now I like playing AK when I can but an all in re-raise usually means some strength and depending on my stack, the blind levels, my place in the tourney and the payout structure, this is NOT a snap call.

A lot depends on the villain, has he been palying tight, loose, is he capable of playing a bluff in this situation?

Sorry you lost.

I rarely lose with AK but now it happened. and anyway I do not what to expect and anyway if i do not get color. I have a pair and beat because I did not have anything that's poker

The one piece of info I'd like to hear is how was the villain playing up to that point? Was he aggressive, stealing a lot or playing tight aggressive? If he'd been stealing/playing aggressive as opposed to playing tight, I'd have to say it would be too hard to fold. Damon789 gave all the points that I like that makes this an easy call. There's not many players that would limp with AA or KK when another limper was in the pot and blinds of 100/200, so you can't be a big dog against any hand he's pushing with. I believe to go far in a tourney, you're going to have to win a race or two. AKs is a hand I would want to have to win a race.

Well it depends on how many ppl were left and what the chip stacks were. I don't really know what i would of done in that spot. It seems like a descent play even though you lost because if you would of won the coin flip you would of had a nice chip stack to play with right? well anyways if you dont think your up against aces or kings you know your 50/50. but if he had you covered do you really want to risk your tournament life on a 50/50 shot? thats up to you to decide and you have to live with the results. see you at the tables

It may have to do with the micro stakes I'm playing at but I see this kind of move not only with pps 22-JJ but with AQ, AJ, A10 and even Ax (or worse lol).

Being slightly behind vs pp doesn't mean that opponent has pp.

Equity - wise it's a call anyway imo.

I'm not saying it's a bad call equity-wise. I basically stated that the OP needs to decide whether he want's to put his tournament life on the line with a hand that is most likely a coin flip.

Here's the options as I see it

Call= 50% chance I win, 50% chance he wins (basically)

Fold= 100% I go further in the tournament

You fail to realise that if op is shoving 33, he is also shoving A9, K10 type hands giving up very substantial EV in this situation. It obviously depends on a lot of factors left out of the op but assuming we have less than 15bb, this is definitely a situation we want our money in.

Okay, I'm bowing out of this conversation.

I'm not saying that calling is -EV, and I'm not saying folding is +EV. I'm just saying that most of the time, I value my tournament life over one hand that only gives me, at best, a 50/50 shot before the hands are turned over. I realize nobody is trying to attack me here, but this is like the "JJ" conversation where just about anything you do can be "right" or "wrong".

But, folding is wrong . BTW, you do not have 50% equity, you have closer to 60% at worst and probably closer to 65. Folding AK here is just plain brutal and if you make that play, you should probably think of another game.

the way villan played the hand i would snap call. lets be serious who limps in with aa or kk. and ak is behind very few hands. i might fold this if i was close to the buble in a mtt. in a cash game i always call an all in with ak, proves its a winning move. but thats just me, the microstakes player.