fanicia

I've been focusing on my preflop game for a while now. back when i was still in 5NL i thought it was okay, but fixing my 3betting frequency and tweeking a bit on how i play the premium cards is pretty much what helped me move to 10NL.

So i thought i'd ask, how aggressively do you guys play AKs and AKo preflop? because i always feel a little torn when i get dealt that hand. I've heard people say that when you get dealt AK you should be happy to just get all in preflop... which i don't really understand, because looking at equilab shows that AK is pretty much behind any pair that people would go all-in with preflop.

A more concrete part of my question is this scenario:

Hero gets dealt AKo UTG in 6max and opens for 3BB
A relatively unkown player is MP and 3bets for 9BB

What does Hero do?

My thought process in this type of situation is basically asking myself: "what is his range for doing this?". The way i look at it is, that if he's relatively reg'y he knows that I open a pretty tight range from UTG. This means that he wouldn't try to pull off too crazy 3bets here to get me to fold, right?. Personally i can't decide if I should 4bet OOP like this or i should call the reraise and see a flop. I think I lean more towards calling and then evaluating my situation. If I 4bet and he shoves, then I feel like i'd be behind.

So yeah, how do you usually play AK preflop? i can't figure out if it should be in my 4bet range OOP or if i should only consider 4beting it IP

Last Post 8 years ago by

fanicia

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It's obviously relative to the villain.
If it's against a recreational player in that scenario I'm 4 betting and happy to shove all day long if they go back over the top and most times I'm ahead.
Again against a more conservative player I look at playing the hand less aggressive taking into consideration any play patterns he has demonstrated so far (have you a HUD?) e.g 3 bet stats/ cbetting/ check raise etc etc.
Sorry it's not a definitive answer to do one thing or the other but it seldom is in this game it's very situation dependant.

Getting all-in with AK becomes increasingly good as ranges get wider. Even at close to 50/50 against any pair calling off with AK is +EV because there's already money in the pot from previous raises. If ranges are wide enough to include stuff like AQ/AJ or some bluffs then AK does very well.

Those wide range spots are typically happening in steal positions such as btn vs blinds or sb vs bb. In the situation you described, UTG vs MP, I think getting AK in preflop would be a mistake. I actually used to do it a ton as well but I don't these days. From these early positions many players are 3betting tight ranges like QQ+ (and maybe some bluffs but probably not at 10NL) and AK doesn't have enough equity to get all-in against such a range.

You also can't just categorize hands by IP or OOP since being OOP UTG vs MP is much different than being out of position SB vs BB.

Everything is player dependent as well but in general, the later the positions are the happier you should be getting AK in pre.

Thanks for the response guys

@Houdini yes i do have a HUD, but these days i play on Unibet, which doesn't allow HUDs (which is both good and bad i think). In my experience a lot of recreational players don't really 3bet like the situation i described though. They either call with anything as high as KK or AA or just shove on your 3BB opening bet. But yeah i see what you mean, against those psycho aggro fish i'll probably shove AK all day too.

Thanks for the response Komo

your explanation makes total sense, so i'll make sure to consider taking the shove on a BB CO steal situation next time

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