Been knocked out of a couple of tournaments lately while all in with A/K, been doing some thinking about it and thought I'd start a thread.
A/K is a strong hand no doubt about it, I can honestly say I've won more with it than I've lost but it's a tricky hand to play. I'm still learning differant nuances of when how to play A/K and when to lay it down.
My main interest is tournament play so my thoughts lie in that direction rather than ring games.
Recent situation I have 19K and it's mid/late stage of a tourney and I have A/K suited and am on the button. The blinds are 1200, 1 caller and one raiser to 2400. When it gets to me I go all in, caller 1 folds, player 2 thinks about it and calls with 10/10.
Flop is Q/K/9 the turn is a 10 and the river a 6. I lost 18,500 on that hand and blinded out soon after.
Another hand in another tournament the night before. Again I'm on the button this time I have A/K unsuited, player 1 raises the 1200 blind to 2400, everyone folds except me I raise it to 5000 and player 1 calls.
The flop is K/2/7 and player 1 goes all-in, I call ... Player 1 has A/A and has my stack covered ... I'm out of the tournament.
Now you could chalk this up to "it's poker" or a bad run of luck and we all know that hindsight is 20/20 but could I have played these hands better?
Yes I think so ... In the first hand rather than going all in I could have just raised the pot one more time to about 5k and seen the flop. with the K on the flop, I could have raised then either all-in or another 5k. the player with the 10/10 would then have to know he's beat and then call based upon a draw for his third 10 ... not a good probablity, and possibly fold.
By going all in before the flop his chances are better in getting his set than on the turn or the river so calling the all-in makes more sense on the flop vs. the turn or river.
In the second hand, I played it a little more smart except I didn't consider the raise after the flop. With a K on the board the player went all-in, I would have to put that player on K/K or A/A because of the confidence of the bet. Unless I had good reason to suspect a bluff or weakness I shouldn't have called that raise with A/K. It was a bad decision and huge mistake on my part.
Tournament play ... I've noticed a lot of players go all-in a LOT! I think it's the WPT syndrome and I admit I've fallen into this frame of mind from time to time myself. I think going all-in is most of the time the wrong thing to do, though you need to be prepared to do so if it's the right thing to do. No need to gamble un-necessarily, it can be advantagous to have a reserve stack of chips to use as leverage in the right situation rather than commit your opponent too early.
Anyway A/K, "Big Slick" is an interesting hand ... I'm still thinking about it.
