[Proofrock]

Your example is poorly chosen. You've chosen the situation where you're against a donkey who begs you to take his money once you outflop him. You happen to hit TPTK + the nut flush draw, and donkey with a lower pair min-bets and calls your raise all the way down. This hand becomes much more comfortable for you to play, by the way, since the turn is another ace, eliminating the one hand you would likely be behind.

So sure, against a bad player who you will go to the felt with even less than top pair, you can probably expect to get paid off when your AK hits. So let's pretend you're against a slightly less donkey player (somebody who will only go to the felt with an overpair or TPTK).

So you call a "3-bet" (note: though I'm not sure about the terminology either, i think this would be called a 3-bet in limit hold'em, but in NL when i say 3bet i usually mean open-raise-reraise=3bet) with AK -- in your example, you call 35 to win 63, getting less than 2:1. Let's assume your opponent's reraise preflop = AA-QQ,AKs.

If your opponent holds QQ and will take one stab if you flop an ace or a king, then your preflop call is profitable.

However, if your opponent holds KK, then you'll flop an ace ~1/6 of the time, and your call was not profitable (plus, you may get into big trouble in the unlikely event you hit a king). If your opponent holds AA, then you're in horrible shape.

Even if your opponent holds AK, unless you can get them to fold you're drawing to a split.


All of this is made more complicated by the fact that, if you hit, you're most likely to hit a 1-pair hand, which can be tricky to play and which will only get a lot of action if you're behind. So if you hit, you can expect to either win a small-ish pot, lose a small-ish pot, or lose a large pot. Overall, then, a *call* preflop is -EV.

If I'm going to be playing against a reraise with AK, i'd like to be able to see all 5 cards, so if I want to stay with the hand I figure my best option is to push, though i'd only do this if Villain is an aggressive player and has a WIDE reraising range.

-j.a.