Even your Poker Calculator Knows Ace-King is a Drawing Hand.

One of the most common mistakes made by players in the low level buy-in multi-table holdem tournaments online is over-valuing ace king as hole cards. A lot of this has to do with inexperience, impatience and poor judgment, and the fact that ace king just “looks” so darn strong when you look up at your monitor and see them just sitting there for you.

Big slick, as ace king is commonly referred to can be a powerful hand to play aggressively in tournaments but the execution of that aggression requires a whole lot more specificity than you might think.

Now depending on if your AK is suited or not you are looking down at a group 1 or 2 hand as your poker calculator will likely be pointing out to you. If you happen to have Ace King both of hearts, then it is group 1 of the Sklansky hand group rankings. In accordance with that though, careful thought must be taken to know that the groups were categorized with ring game play in mind and also that of the group one hands, AKs is the ONLY drawing hand, where AA, KK, QQ and JJ could be considered “made” hands.

Therein charges your underlying strategy when playing Ace King. It is a drawing hand and during the early stages of a tournament in particular, you should be treating it like most other drawing hands – playing it with at least some help from the flop.

If you always remember that ace king is a drawing hand, it may offer you up a more reasonable strategy for playing it after the flop. Now of course depending on your opponents, the tournament stage, stack size, m zone etc. this could be radically different – even of the flop doesn’t help you. However, there is simply no reason to dump your tournament strategy in an early stage holding AK when the flop come 2-6-9 rainbow.

The utterly ridiculous thing about that very situation is that in the low buy-in multi-table tournaments (and even some high buy-in tournaments), many players will let their tournament stack ride holding AK high when the flop has not helped them. It is purely an unreasonable aggressive move that more often than not will see you on the rail in short order. Sure there are times when you can take the pot down when someone called your pre-flop raise. So what? You made the pot maybe 350 chips when the blinds are still 25 and 50. Now you want to go all in with your remaining 1400 chips to win that 350? It’s not worth it. This is the time to play passively, cautiously, with an eye to preserving your stack, not letting it ride with a drawing hand. If you happen to be using a poker calculator it will be shouting at you that you are likely behind, but players still often ignore this advice.

So when do you push with Ace King? You will get plenty of such opportunities when the blinds are higher, you know your opponents better, and your stack size warrants such a move, until that stage, play it coy and no one will be able to figure your pre-flop call hit two pair on the flop of A-K-9 and you are much more likely to double up with some schmuck being aggressive on you.