Debate on AK off Suite
poker question of the day The great doyle brunson put things in perspective. AK suited is just a Great Drawing hand. Top pair top kicker Broadway all is great as long as you hit the flop. SO the puzzle is if you have AK Off suite in early position, IN A LOW LIMIT POKER Tournament. Most of us know that you will flp a pair one out of 3 flops. The same as anyone else. So ideally to be profitable not including semi bluffs you would need right at 3 to 1 pot odds to be profitable. 2.8 to be exact. So if you get reraised from late position and your pot odds is less than 2 to 1 do you still make the call? I say no with out having any other reads on the player to make a cold call would be unprofitable in the long run. What do you think. I am interested in hearing what others think.
Comments
I would agree with the shove if we was talking about a ring game. The problem i see with it in tourn play is there is more information needed to really make a solid decision here. Level of blinds. Number of players in tourn. Stack count. and a big one is Implied odds Alex was absuletly correct. If the player your heads up against does not have enough to completely double you up, And your under average in the tourn field. You may want to pass on this. In my ipinion. I mostly play tournaments so this is where my mindset is. Dominatly I play DON tourns. (Double or Nothing) I play at the 25 to 75.00 dollar levels and I see way to many people over valueing this hand way to early in the tourns. If you are still under level 4 or 5 of the blinds why would you risk 1200 chips or so in a pot that started with 150 in it. But later in the tourns. I would agree with the 4 bet shove move. Lot of thought in this that is for sure please keep up with the threads this is a great hand to debate about.
Don
I feel sorry for you if you are serious, for a start you are automatically assuming that any time you are 3 bet you are facing a pair and so need to flop a pair to be good, second you are saying that when you are 3 bet with ak your only options are fold or call to try and hit the flop? Might want to check the hand ranking again but ak is a very strong hand that dominates a lot, especially against donks in a low buy in tournament that you mention who often push any ace when shortish, therefore 4betting is a sound option and thirdly you are saying that any time you miss a flop you will automatically give up on the pot?
Post this on 2+2 and see how burned you get lol
i really like ak as a short stack hand. if it was low blinds and i didnt have a read id just call the 3 bet and play post flop. by raising in early position you should get insta-respect especially if youre tight so if someone comes over you from the back i think he has you beat with 10s- qqs....yet, ak is still to strong to dump but yet to weak to come over the top sooo early in a tourney you can find a better spot. from mid blinds on im all in except if i have a big stack as well as my opponent.
so all in all it depends on stacks and blinds.
Wiki13 That is pretty much what i was saying. I totally agree. When i wrote this blog I used AK becouse I have seen so many times people take it to the river and loose all or almost all there chips in the first 10 hands of the Tourney. I think alot of the people who responded to this blog have the mindset of a ring game player. The stacks and the blinds really do dictate this hand in tourn exspecially in DON tourns.
You can't flat-call a 3bet out of position because, like you said, you'll miss the flop too often. There's no possibility to float vs your opponent whilst out of position.
So OOP i would either 4bet it or lay it down, and im probably leaning towards the 4bet if i'm honest. Depends on the table, reads etc but i think raise/folding AK is just horribly passive.
When in position you have more options. You can flat call profitably here because you can outplay your opponent post-flop. Considering that they're not only 3betting big pairs and will probably have hands like AQ a lot which will miss the same flops you do, you can easily float the flop and take the pot from them. You're also not considering implied odds of when the flop comes Kxx and you take an extra continuation bet from your opponent.