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Perhaps - but Greg views AK SnG as a viable play (his comments can be found in the MTT Anthology - I'm a new poster and couldn't see immediately how to link it). We could debate the merits in this particular case but I don't think it can be summarily dismissed as a viable play.

Regards,
HC

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There's actually a few different reasons why I don't think a SnG is the right play in this situation. What do you do when the flop comes 3 of a suit you don't have, paired or draw heavy to a straight that fit a lot of calling hands which leave your AK drawing to only a few outs - or perhaps drawing dead. The whole idea is to get your money in when your equity in the hand is high and your opponent can either get away from the hand or call with a (hopefully) lesser hand and double you up. Once the flop comes and completely misses your AKo (which happens 2/3 of the time) is a SnG still the right play? Do you still have the guts to push all your chips in the middle thinking that you could easily be beaten and drawing dead at this point? Often the answer will be no, where a push preflop would still be the correct move as it puts maximum pressure on your opponent and almost requires that he has a "calling" hand or a strong desire to "gamble it up" in order to make the call.

In addition, when you add enough dead money into the pot due to blinds and antes then villain's calling range for a push becomes even wider thanks to the increased pot odds. This will allow you to double through with looser calls from villain where allowing villain to see a flop with a smaller raise lets him get away from the hand when the flop misses him and you miss out on the opportunity to double up through him. I think that this is the more important point here, as you want to force villain to commit more chips to the pot. Letting him see a flop before he makes that decision is a huge mistake since I think you are WAY ahead more often than not here and a raise all-in looks more like a steal attempt.