Pre-flop with AK

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HomeBrewer

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I have a large open wound from playing this hand. I have bled a lot of money to anyone who would play with me. I just have one question when playing AK...should I be looking to get it all in pre if villain is willing?


Seems like every time I have two overs and my opponent has a medium pair I wiff, but when the opponent has two overs they hit. Feels like they are flipping a one sided coin on me...:eek:

NOTE: this is not a vent or anything like that...I just wanted to ask the above question. Any thoughts?
 
BigJamo

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It seems as that may always be the case.

As a rule:

AK, suited should always be played,

AK, off, to me is always played, unless there is a huge raise and im out of position.

So to sum it up, no its not you, these cards always seem to bit me too, mainly when im out of position.
 
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I am more looking at specific spots.

For example: I open for 3x and get three bet from the button. My line?

or

I 3-bet from the BB and get 4-bet. My line?

anyone? oh and I am playing 5NL
 
brank

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Cant give specific advice when you are giving general situations. Do you have PT3 or HEM? Posting hands from there will help more then trying to get a generic one size fits for all types of situations. You need to add things like FR/6 max and what reads u have on opp.
 
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FR no reads. yes i have pt3 and i have a dozen hands that are stored... i guess i should just keep posting in hand analysis.
 
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fx20736

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I am more looking at specific spots.

For example: I open for 3x and get three bet from the button. My line?

or

I 3-bet from the BB and get 4-bet. My line?

anyone? oh and I am playing 5NL

Do you have Poker Tracker?

Impossible to answer this question without knowing villain's 3 bet stats and effective stack sizes. In the following scenarios let's just assume both you and villain start the hand with 100bb stacks.

If a player's 3bet pct is under 3% his range is almost certainly QQ+ AKs AK. Your equity against that range is 38%. If he 3bets you to say 12bb he has 88bb remaining in his stack. Now let's say you shove 97bb here every time and he folds QQ and AKo but calls with AA KK AKs. Since you have one A & one K, he has 3 ways to make AA, 3 ways to make KK, 3 ways to make AKs and 6 ways to make AKo and 6 ways to make QQ. That's a total of 21 combinations and he folds 12 or 57%. So 57% of the time you shove and win 12bb. Now 43% of the time you shove and he calls. Well 25% of the time you win 105bb or 26bb and 75% of the time you lose 96bb or roughly 72bb. So when he calls you lose 46bb. So the total EV is 12bb*.57 (approx 7bb) when he folds minus- the 46bb when he calls or -39bb.

On the other hand if villain has a 3bet range of 6% his range is probably 88+ AJs+ AQo KQs. Your equity against that range is almost exactly 50%. Now let's revise the same scenario, he'll fold everything but AA KK AKs.
His total combination of hands is 48 and he folds all but 9. So 81.25% of the time you win 12bb or roughly 10bb and 18.75% of the time you lose 46bb (roughly 9bb)so your EV is 1bb.

You need to know your villain's stats. When facing an unknown you have a make an estimated guess of his 3bet range based on observation.
 
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That's a great analysis, but I think your calling range is a little narrow for NL5.

Are many NL5 players really folding QQ or even JJ to a preflop shove?
 
WVHillbilly

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That's a great analysis, but I think your calling range is a little narrow for NL5.

Are many NL5 players really folding QQ or even JJ to a preflop shove?

No, Fx is the only one folding anything. He's just going through his ultra nit phase. Don't worry we'll get him out of it and spewing stacks soon enough. :)
 
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That's a great analysis, but I think your calling range is a little narrow for NL5.

Are many NL5 players really folding QQ or even JJ to a preflop shove?

Yeah, I was in an ivory tower last night. That's because yesterday I decided to read about poker instead of playing Poker. Honestly, Owen Gaines is going to hear from me!!!!

Edit: At 2nl many droolers will stack off with 77 at the drop of a hat. :viking:fx

I, on the other hand am smart and have learned to fold these hands like a good boy!! :cool:


No, Fx is the only one folding anything. He's just going through his ultra nit phase. Don't worry we'll get him out of it and spewing stacks soon enough. :)


I resent the use of the word ultra! :D


And now for some statistics!! Notice that I still willingly stack a little too much if AK is soooooooooooted! Also I fell off the wagon a few weeks ago and got all aggro-shovetard and was 3betting and shoving AQ (and 88) which accounts for the -$$$ with AQo. But as you can see I am running above most EV charts for AKo. I usually see estimated EV for AKo of around .5bb. :ridinghor
 

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GotaLovePoke

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My 3 bet range is prety wide because of FX's analysis right there.

I will often enough, against the right vilain, 3bet 99+, AQo+. I will more than often get a fold, and for the times I get shoved on, I still manage to pull + EV out of the hands I raised with. If I get 4bet, I will most likely call with 99+ if I get the right implied odds over a stacked vilain. This has been very profitable for me.

On the button I also 3bet alot, just because having position gives you the edge that your hand does not give you.

Hey, feel free to correct me!


P.S. How are you losing money with AKs, although I am guilty as charged with AQs and AJs
 
bgomez89

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It seems as that may always be the case.

As a rule:

AK, suited should always be played,

AK, off, to me is always played, unless there is a huge raise and im out of position.
So to sum it up, no its not you, these cards always seem to bit me too, mainly when im out of position.
so you're folding AKo to one large raise when you're OOP? What a waste...

P.S. How are you losing money with AKs, although I am guilty as charged with AQs and AJs

He's only had it 94 times and his win percentage is 77%. Maybe he's just taken a couple of bad beats or played a couple hands wrong. Losing a 1.20 isn't so bad and the sample size is really small
 
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I played some NL10 yesterday, and I thought it might be nittier than I am used to, but twice within 25 minutes by two different players, I got 7-bet shoved on by AJo (after I 4-bet cold) and 6-bet shoved on by AKo.
 
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I am new to grinding the cash tables, so I am still trying to work out some of this stuff. I don't think I have a large enough sample to make a decision yet. Thanks for the advice all. I will keep posting in the hand section
 
ben_rhyno

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I am more looking at specific spots.

For example: I open for 3x and get three bet from the button. My line?

or

I 3-bet from the BB and get 4-bet. My line?

anyone? oh and I am playing 5NL
Situation 1: Jam, i don't like to play oop with AK tbh and so often you're dominating or flipping
Situation 2: Probably jam again, at 2NL, where I do my grinding, you're never too far behind even to a 4 bet
 
camtheram13

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I haven't played much Hold'Em lately but... I prefer not to call all-in AK but I will shove if I notice a calling station lingering. But why go all-in with AK when you can out play your opponent on the flop?
 
ben_rhyno

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I haven't played much Hold'Em lately but... I prefer not to call all-in AK but I will shove if I notice a calling station lingering. But why go all-in with AK when you can out play your opponent on the flop?
So get a large raise called out of position/ or call a large raise, miss the flop and your opponent shoves? Your decision is.....?
I prefer to get it all in and avoid this type of tricky situation, or even find a fold if opponent shows massive strength
 
camtheram13

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So get a large raise called out of position/ or call a large raise, miss the flop and your opponent shoves? Your decision is.....?
I prefer to get it all in and avoid this type of tricky situation, or even find a fold if opponent shows massive strength

Okay if you and your opponent already have the all-in mentality, it is to your benefit for them to see the flop, especially with AK. Psychologically coin-flipping with no cards being shown allows the mind to think they have 5 cards to spike that A or K or whatever the situation might be.

If you can see that flop with AK and miss and even if your opponent has AA, if the flop is like Qd, 7c, 8c... Your all-in shove there is going to be harder to call. You could be on a set of Qs, 7s or 8s. Flush draw or open-ended str8 draw. Now it's harder for that AA to call all-in as opposed to calling all-in in the dark pre-flop.
 
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Lately, alot live I have been missing my outs on a regular basis... if you think of it one way... technically you really only have ace high.
 
rssurfer54

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Okay if you and your opponent already have the all-in mentality, it is to your benefit for them to see the flop, especially with AK. Psychologically coin-flipping with no cards being shown allows the mind to think they have 5 cards to spike that A or K or whatever the situation might be.

If you can see that flop with AK and miss and even if your opponent has AA, if the flop is like Qd, 7c, 8c... Your all-in shove there is going to be harder to call. You could be on a set of Qs, 7s or 8s. Flush draw or open-ended str8 draw. Now it's harder for that AA to call all-in as opposed to calling all-in in the dark pre-flop.

You really think your opponent is folding bc you might have a set, in a 3bet pot (if so tell me where they are)? and flush draws and open enders are behind a pair, sooooo why would he be afraid of those hands?
 
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stackedmitri

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For what it's worth I just looked at my stats.

Down $100 with AK over about 3k hands on 25NL... either got stacked preflop by AA or KK or lost to a set with TPTK on "safe" board.. pretty much all the money I've lost is from AK
 
NineLions

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... if you think of it one way... technically you really only have ace high.

Then don't think of it that way. Unless you're also going to look at QQ as only a pair. And you can see AA as only a pair when a passive nit gets aggressive postflop, or you get 3 callers and the flop comes T87 two tone.



This may become one of those threads that should be merged into an accumulated AK thread.
 
NineLions

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For what it's worth I just looked at my stats.

Down $100 with AK over about 3k hands on 25NL... either got stacked preflop by AA or KK or lost to a set with TPTK on "safe" board.. pretty much all the money I've lost is from AK

3K is tiny for looking at any kind of stats. Being down or up at this point doesn't mean that you're playing it well, or playing it poorly.
 
ben_rhyno

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Okay if you and your opponent already have the all-in mentality, it is to your benefit for them to see the flop, especially with AK. Psychologically coin-flipping with no cards being shown allows the mind to think they have 5 cards to spike that A or K or whatever the situation might be.

If you can see that flop with AK and miss and even if your opponent has AA, if the flop is like Qd, 7c, 8c... Your all-in shove there is going to be harder to call. You could be on a set of Qs, 7s or 8s. Flush draw or open-ended str8 draw. Now it's harder for that AA to call all-in as opposed to calling all-in in the dark pre-flop.
I know that in a 3 or 4-bet pot with AA If I don't manage to get it all in pre flop then I certainly will not be afraid to get it in on a Q78 flop. Just get AK AIPF or fold if you have sick reads when oop. Only behind to AA/KK really and flipping with underpairs
 
joe steady

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I played some NL10 yesterday, and I thought it might be nittier than I am used to, but twice within 25 minutes by two different players, I got 7-bet shoved on by AJo (after I 4-bet cold) and 6-bet shoved on by AKo.
Wow. Serious pre-flop action @ NL10:).
 
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