Badly Played AK Advice Please

I have been playing only about 12 months and am a complete novice !!. Last night I made it almost to the last table and got busted out eleventh.

5 players on my table everyone folds to me on the button. I have A /images/graemlins/club.gif K /images/graemlins/spade.gif and raise two similar stacked (NB we are all good size stacks)but I get my raise wrong and do not put enough pressure on the BB. (1800 in pot I raise it to 2400 total he calls SB fold BB calls 1200) flop comes KT( /images/graemlins/heart.gif4 /images/graemlins/club.gif BB raised 3000 I come over the top and put him all in. He calls and makes a flush with his 86 /images/graemlins/heart.gif on the river.

Notwithstanding I should have raised more on the button how could I have played the flop situation better and should I have just gone all in preflop regardless. The way the guy was playing a flat call preflop would have induced an all in from the BB.

I am obviously still tired from tossing & turning all night wondering what I should have done. To correct the original post, my pre flop raise was actually 1200 to call the BB plus the 1800 already in the pot. (I intended to raise 1200 Plus 4800, but that is another story and was probably still wrong)

As regards the all in on the flop it was for around 12000 extra chips and would have left the BB with around 1000 left. /images/graemlins/confused.gif

You did the right thing to put him all in on the flop. You got your money in when you were a 61% favorite to win. You can't ask for anything more than that. Your mistake (as you already know) happened pre-flop. You needed to raise more preflop, but don't all-in preflop with AK. You'll usually only get called by hands that dominate you (AA or KK) or at least have a slight edge on you (Any pair). Even 22 is a 53% favorite over AKo.