Conventional poker wisdom is that AK is a pf re-raise hand but I'm constantly seeing it pushing and calling all in and winning. And not just KA but QA, too. They're treated like aces and appear to win more often than not. So considering

a) All-in gives a player the best chance to win.
b) Micro stakes players lack the skill to know where they are if they miss the flop.
c) Many at the micro level are pushing all with a wide range

Doesn't it actually make sense to push/call all-in with these hands at the micro stakes?

If you want to be a long term profitable player I would say its not always all in pre when holding these hands. It is however good to know that people play this way alot in micro stakes. Any pocket pair against AK, AQ, AJ ect is still the favorite heads up. Assuming they are not suited that would increase the favorite. They have approx 12%
(50 remaining / 6 AAA KKK) chance to hit either of their cards and take the lead. Not including other outcomes where kicker or 4 card flushes come into play. So long run it is not a profitable way to play those hands. A) Shoving misses out on extracting value from a hand someone may call a smaller bet preflop with. B) You can always fold if you still have chips in your corner if the cards don't fall your way. C) Someone calls with ATC and hits.

The way I see it, if someone was going to call pre flop with a marginal hand. You can probably extract value from them post flop when you have a good feeling you are ahead.

Originally Posted by tazer

Assuming they are not suited that would increase the favorite. They have approx 12%

I'm not sure what you mean by 12%, can you explain?

The way I see it, if someone was going to call pre flop with a marginal hand. You can probably extract value from them post flop when you have a good feeling you are ahead.

The problem is that if a bet comes 2-10, poss even J, micro stakes players (myself included) are unlikely to know if they're ahead of Ax, behind to 2 pair, or dead to trips.

If you play in position you can do 3bet if no one has done it to me. And if I have a small stack then I go to All in.

The thing is- this is villain dependent. There are some players who literally just shove any two cards preflop for 100bb occasionally. They're your ATMs- just wait until you have something reasonable, and call them down. Others won't get all the chips in the middle pre without KK+, AKs: very clearly, against that range you're losing money heavily by getting all in with AKo. Their 3-bet and 4-bet percentages, and notes you have on them, will tell you which type of villain you have.

I would also say that this is very stack depth dependent. Eg- you are playing against a 40bb stack, he opens to 3bb in CO, you 3-bet to 10bb from BB, he shoves. In that situation you're calling off 30 to win 80.5, and only need about 37% pot odds to make the call good. Even if he only shoves QQ+, AK, you're good for the call as you have about 40% equity. The same is definitively not true playing 200bb deep, where there will be a 4-bet and a 5-bet before stacks go in, and where villains' ranges will be commensurately narrower.

Originally Posted by MissVix

I'm not sure what you mean by 12%, can you explain?

The 12% is from a little thing I saw that I liked and ran with. You have 52 cards in the deck, you have 2 hole cards leaving 50 cards left. So say they had 6 cards that could improve their hand above yours each card translates to 2%. So that 2x6=12%. Same goes with flush draws you are 4 cards to a flush with only the river left you can say something along the lines of having a 18% chance to hit your flush on the river card. 9 cards left of the 13 total suit. Say you get dealt KhQh board is JdTc3h. There are 9 hearts that can help your hand to go along with 3 Aces and 3 9s (taking away the heart cards) for a total of 15 cards or 30%. So you can reasonably assume that you have a 30% chance to hit a straight or a flush in the remaining turn and river cards.

I have been playing quite a bit of freerolls and micro since I have not much else to do right now. Shoving AK or AQ is just courting disaster. I have seen far more people that are pushing far more idiotic hands and winning. You have to learn how to play your hands or you lose quickly as you move up stakes. The mentality that pervades the free or microstakes is that you can do whatever you want and it is ok. The difference is that these are only going to work if the rest of the table is following common sense. Instead they are willing to go all in with any card, literally. They consider it a good call on their part because they went all in with 72os and beat a pair of As, when they could have lost their seat a much greater percentage of the time.

So, as a friend told me, start getting the big game mindset quickly or you will die fast in the larger games. I may not have perfected my game just yet, but I am starting to make deeper runs. One of the reasons is because I rarely go all in unless I am short stacked and need to get something moving. Going all in should be after you know you have the winning hand. If you do not know where you are in a flop, most likely the person betting does and he wants to win. You have an A high, which is not going to win most of the time if there is action.

It depends a lot on the specific situation. For example, at 50bb you would rarely want to move allin preflop with any hand (unless there had been significant action before you).

But as a generalization I definitely agree with what you’re saying — hands like AK and AQ are good allin preflop hands in a wide variety of situations.

In my opinion it's never good to go all-in being deep, even with AA
You came to play poker or to gamble?

PS with AA I meant to make a shove, not to call one

It all depends on stack size, table position, whether you are first in or 3 betting, etc. etc.

Originally Posted by Mahdi

In my opinion it's never good to go all-in being deep, even with AA
You came to play poker or to gamble?

PS with AA I meant to make a shove, not to call one

Sorry, have to completely disagree with this. If you get all the money in preflop with AA against any villain, even deep, you're printing money. The outcome of the hand just isn't relevant, as you're miles ahead pre-flop. And we should always want to get all in when we are certain we're ahead, and when we think we're likely to get called. Eg:


Pacific Poker - $0.10 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 101.3 BB
SB: 121.7 BB
BB: 189.5 BB
UTG: 99 BB
Hero (MP): 100 BB
CO: 120.6 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has A♥ A♦

UTG raises to 3 BB, Hero raises to 9 BB, fold, fold, fold, fold, UTG raises to 20 BB, Hero raises to 100 BB and is all-in, UTG calls 79 BB and is all-in

Flop: (199.5 BB, 2 players) 8♠ 9♣ 3♣

Turn: (199.5 BB, 2 players) 3♦

River: (199.5 BB, 2 players) J♠

UTG shows A♠ K♥ (One Pair, Threes)
(Pre 7%, Flop 0.3%, Turn 0%)
Hero shows A♥ A♦ (Two Pair, Aces and Threes)
(Pre 93%, Flop 99.7%, Turn 100%)
Hero wins 189.6 BB

Irrespective of what the run out of the board is, we have EV of +74bb here. We play poker for the long-run not the short run, and without 5-betting all in preflop we never get all villain's chips on that flop. Best case scenario we snap off a cbet. Stack depth is irrelevant here; the only concern is whether villain will call the 5-bet. It feels like you're being results oriented, which is never a good thing in poker. The process is everything.

it is impossible to determine exactly which hand will allow you to give confidence in winning when you go all in.
All in, it's 50-50 Every time. please don't forget that. This is roulette and you don't know what awaits you after the river!

Every time you go all in when you have an AQ or AJ, it's very stupid. Of course, this is a very good hand, but in 50% of hands, you will not get into the table and you will play a bluff against your opponent. Especially on micro-limits, a lot of players play unwisely and the strength of the AQ or AK hand disappears when the opponent makes a stupid call and gets a pair on the table..

It is worth playing aggressively, but do not push every time you see the pictures at table. Do not forget to evaluate your opponents at the table. Sometimes this is much more important than getting AJ or AQ. Poker is of course 70-80% luck, but tactics are no less important and it is necessary to think with your head, not only to put all in, when the card is good.

Originally Posted by DevaCat

Sorry, have to completely disagree with this. If you get all the money in preflop with AA against any villain, even deep, you're printing money. The outcome of the hand just isn't relevant, as you're miles ahead pre-flop. And we should always want to get all in when we are certain we're ahead, and when we think we're likely to get called. It feels like you're being results oriented, which is never a good thing in poker. The process is everything.

I left what is important in quoting. My point there was not that I don't want to push all-in, but that people are missing value from doing 4-5betting only with AA or KK, they don't do it enough with other hands, that's why it's easy to notice during the game and easy folds, where value could be extracted from simple call to a 3bet instead of your first 4bet.

These hands, by themselves, are supposed to get the most value when played. And you need to play them in different ways in each situation, and for good reason!

In freerolls, if I see somebody shove allin/call allin(deep stacked) with AQ, AJ, AT, etc then I definitely make a note and will look to shove AK into them in the future. In buyin games I am not looking to get my AK allin deep unless I have some crazy read that they will call light.

Personally I don't understand why the stakes would affect your playing decisions. Whether it is a $0.10 entry or a $1000.00 entry, the payouts are going to be the same percentage of the entry fee.

Depends on the table and the type of tournament. From the position and size of the stack. These are strong hands. They are higher than most possible hands on the table.

micro stakes have many bingo players..the 2 initial hours are terrible....any time an all in can came

Originally Posted by MissVix

Conventional poker wisdom is that AK is a pf re-raise hand but I'm constantly seeing it pushing and calling all in and winning. And not just KA but QA, too. They're treated like aces and appear to win more often than not. So considering

a) All-in gives a player the best chance to win.
b) Micro stakes players lack the skill to know where they are if they miss the flop.
c) Many at the micro level are pushing all with a wide range

Doesn't it actually make sense to push/call all-in with these hands at the micro stakes?

Don't really agree with all of this:

1. All in gives a player the best chance to win. - That is certainly wrong. Poker generally is a 7 card game. Why would you want to risk everything on only 2 cards. This is a loser.

2. Not knowing where you are in a hand.- this is an advantage to a skilled player that you negate when shoving pre flop.

Generally, playing poker with 2 cards is a loser. It leads to a lot of beats. Most hands are very close, if you have AK and i have any 2 live cards we are 60/40. That is not really where I want to hang my tournament unless I'm short.

If you have AK and miss the flop I don't need to hit, I just need to keep applying pressure . So you also take away the best hand being folded by shoving.

In poker, seeing more flops is winning poker.

AJ is a bad hand for leave to showdown because his domination for AQ AK. Is like KJ for KQ this case.