A-K preflop early position

What do you think is appropriate? Say your playing a semi aggressive relatively deep stacked live 2-5 game (avg. stack size 700-900).

Mid position raises to 25, 5 people call. Your on small blind. Would you flat call here or raise (75 will still probably get 3+ callers and possibly raise from initial raiser, but unlikely) so probably have to bet 150-175 to get down to 1 (4 people calling $100 preflop is pretty regular).

Is it more profitable long term to flat call and hope for an ace and lead out or check raise, or raise deep and try and isolate but having to bet 30 or so blinds to accomplish this typically and could still risk 3-4 callers and have no pot control?

Thanks

Big raise or shove, easy. You have a hand that won't have great implied odds post flop. It's a drawing hand. Your five callers don't have better hands. Only guy to worry about is the one who opened, and there's 100 combos that open middle position at aren't AA.

the best option is to upload a player unless you see the flop is a big plus for someone with AK chances of losing a hand so with only one player less on that hand I think it is the most convenient AA KK QQ 1010 is relatively lower AK AQ preflop raise and is best but if this final position as an all call the big blind

I actually am fine with overcalling here. Let's say you raise, I'd make it $125 to go personally.

So we say one guy calls (we could do two as well doesn't matter much), now the pot's $375 ($125 in calls + the $250 from you two left). Your stack is at $575. Most of the time you're going to miss the flop, now what? This spot sucks. Are you really going to check/fold? That's weak as hell, in that case why'd you 3bet? If you lead out even for 1/2 pot that's about $185, leaving $390 behind and a pot that's at $560. If villain jams over, there's $1135 in the middle and you have to call $390, giving you just under 3:1 meaning you only need to win a little more than 25% to be a correct call. If you need to spike an A or K to win (Protip: At this point you need to hit an A or K unless this dude is out of his mind) then you're not quite getting the direct odds to make the call.

If you'd bet bigger on the flop, say 2/3 this takes care of the odds to make the call when jammed on, but you're still probably putting money in bad when that happens so it's not like it's magically okay now.

If instead we elect to overcall, 7 of us take the flop for $25 giving a pot of $175 and effective stacks of $675. Now if we hit an Ace or King we can play from there. Just need to remain cognizant that so many people took the flop there are lots of potential sets, straights, etc to avoid. I wouldn't be happy hitting TPTK v 5 or 6 villains and getting it in.

Another option I don't mind is making it $100 to go, and expecting multiple callers. Again I'd play this straightforward, but you'll be getting 2:1 or better on your money preflop and you should have more than 33% equity at this point so that's profitable immediately. Then you'll have an easy jam situation when you spike the flop. I ran the numbers in stove, and you would have > 33% v {QQ,TT}, {QQ,T9s} so this is holding true. As more players continue to call, you lose equity, but are contributing a smaller overall % also and you stay in front of the power curve.

I would not be so aggressive with AK out of position.

Maybe 2 will call if I raise and one of them has a pair preflop going to the flop. My equity is Im just second.

After all, AK is a just Ace high, LIVE.

call, reraise ,fold,all action is fine.

Weisssound said:

Big raise or shove, easy. You have a hand that won't have great implied odds post flop. It's a drawing hand. Your five callers don't have better hands. Only guy to worry about is the one who opened, and there's 100 combos that open middle position at aren't AA.

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Most times I prefer AK over AA but in this situation , be careful of the small pocket pairs cause sum1 has them and is sandbagging the rest . Proceed with great caution , hopefully you'll flop and A or K and be sitting pretty:cheers:

100% raise to take it down or get in a huge heads up pot. Raise to 200+ and call shove if you have to by original raiser.

Much more profitable if you raise and everyone folds you are risking 200 to win 175$. If everyone calls it sucks but as long as you make it big enough you will take it down there a large % of the time.

Calling here is extremely weak

i would probably flat there and see whats going on in the flop

A flat call s very very dangerous against many oppenements, you can get your ace or king but another player can easely hit two pairs or a set and you will lost a big amount of cips in this case, if you win the hand every one will fold will fold his ace or king without a nice kicker, so the pot will be in the majority of cases a small one
Definitely i will raise to 150/175 to eliminate oppenements and get just one or a maximum of two.

all-in every time in that situation

Calling is bad. Against 4 players you're AK will likely not be good after the flop if it is good now. Worse you won't know if you are beat on a A56 wet flop. There could easily be two pair or trips betting you TPTK.

There is raise big enough to fold all but 1 or 2 players which will make post flop play much easier.

freeringo said:

all-in every time in that situation

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When we're between 140-180bbs deep nah, I'd put in a substantial raise but I would not shove. An interesting thing to note is that is 5x original raisers standard open size and what type of a player is he, this would help your decision making moving further into the hand.

I would probably just call and see a flop... Because so many people are already in the pot, and ur out of position, u should just be really careful with ak here. Also, think about this... If many people call a raise before you, how many of them do you think have an ace, a king, or a pair? If 2 of them are holding a-rag, and one is holding kq, and one has a pocket pair, then you are way behind and really short on outs. If that many people are calling before you, it's very unlikely you have 3 aces and 3 kings left in the deck as outs.

Tobysonoma said:

What do you think is appropriate? Say your playing a semi aggressive relatively deep stacked live 2-5 game (avg. stack size 700-900).

Mid position raises to 25, 5 people call. Your on small blind. Would you flat call here or raise (75 will still probably get 3+ callers and possibly raise from initial raiser, but unlikely) so probably have to bet 150-175 to get down to 1 (4 people calling $100 preflop is pretty regular).

Is it more profitable long term to flat call and hope for an ace and lead out or check raise, or raise deep and try and isolate but having to bet 30 or so blinds to accomplish this typically and could still risk 3-4 callers and have no pot control?

Thanks

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Like all things poker, it depends. If a pot size raise will thin the crowd make it. If you'll still have 3 or 4 callers join the callpead and hope. AK isn't much better than JT in large multiway pots, IMHO.

I would raise like you said 150-175, that way you get rid of the weaker cards that could easily out flop your a-k and also be able to fold to a reraise if you really think that player has you beat(depends how hes bin playing, limits you to making a read on one player instead of multiple on flop.)

Raise and reraise but should consider fold to 4bet shove IMO.

Here's my argument against overcall. First, your equity is stretched thin from number of callers. Second your OOP. Third your HJ CO and BTN players have an extremely wide range making your OOP very difficult. Fourth, people are particularly wary of big ace hands which makes your value plays less rewarding. Fifth you want to widen up your 3bet range to get value on your big pocket pairs, and AK is a great hand to do it with. Sixth, your post flop play against a single caller is solid with the betting lead. Your most likely against a smaller ace, big suited connectors, or medium pocket pairs. You have decent equity against most of this and fold equity against the rest. You can easily cbet any jack or better board, get value if your ace or king connects against a smaller ace or king by repping a likely second best hand.

Out of position, just calling would be horrible. AK, as noted, won't really play that well 6 way post-flop anyway, but being out of position in the small blind really puts you behind the 8-ball, so to speak.

I'm raising enough to narrow the field to one or two people. And if they both call preflop, they probably have weak enough of a hand that post-flop, you'll be able to c-bet a lot of flops and win the hand.

Yeah I don't know if I misread the original post or was high writing that response or something? Given the nature of 2/5, I still don't really hate the overcall, but I much prefer pumping money in now. I'd put a serious raise in there, something around $250.

Making it $125-$150 to go would be what I'd do as a standard 4b oop vs single villain. I really don't know where I came up with what I said above.

In a cash game, sure it's ok to play conservative and see a flop, Don't go crazy when an a or a k comes out. Try to keep the pot small if you can
In a tournament, jam always

Tournament AK and Cash game AK shouldn't be played the same in my opinion.
You have to approach each game differently. There are many sharks in cash games and someone can easily have you beat with kk or AA

It's either raise or fold. Action depends a lot on the reads you have at the table. If you raise big you can rep aces and take it down preflop against all the guys with middle PP and SC. You might even get QQ to lay down.

Calling and hoping for a <=3 outer to hit is just burning money. And those outs aren't necessarily clean.

The other option is simply folding $2 and wait for a better spot. Depends how rolled you are for NL500. If you can play NL500 like uNL, then by all means raise raise raise.

Raise around 200 to 250 to take the pot there. If the original raiser or BB shoves, you might be facing AA, KK or QQ so think twice. If someone calls other than BB and original raiser, you might be facing pocket pairs, 99 to 22 or AXs or suited connectors. Whatever the flop is, shove.

You are way too deep to overplay this hand in my opinion. AK is just a drawing hand and out of position you will lose more with this hand than you will win. Say the flop comes A 9 3 rainbow you continuation bet and someone shoves..... Shorter stacked this is a definite raise but the real value of AK comes in tourneys where you hope a big raise will have greater fold equity..... in deep stacked cash games a key component is to not overplay hands out of position. No way do I raise here and create a bloated pot.....too many times I have stacked people when I flop a set and they flop top pair top kicker in deep stacked situations. 200 or less in your stack then a big raise will be warranted but not in this situation.

Even a fold is an option, there are many times a skilled cash game player will smooth call with a huge hand preflop hoping the blinds will reraise. As others have said AK is much stronger in tourneys than a cash game. The number of opponents drastically changes how I would play this hand. One raiser and one caller I would play very aggressively but not in the spot you describe.