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Hmm. My only concern with that is at 45 chips (assuming no other early limper) that's giving a lot of implied odds to small pairs and suited connectors when there's callers.

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What are you worried about here? Opponents playing crappy hands and then beating you if you hit TPTK and the other 2 cards on the flop happen to nail the opponents hand?

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I agree that cracking smaller aces is where a lot of the value is, but the odds aren't great of having one, an opponent having one and one hitting the flop. In my experience at the $20's (could be skewed I suppose), this situation seldom arises (maybe AQ v. AK or AJ v. AK occasionally).

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If you raise smaller, you will get called by more weak A and weak K who will be so glad that they hit TP that they are going to hand you lots of chips.

I understand your frustration from not "cleaning up" with AK. You will notice that a lot of the posts on here are about playing AK. Why do you think that is? I think that there are two reasons.

One is that it's really not a very easy hand to play, as you've noted.

Secondly, people tend to think of it (or at least react to it emotionally) like AA and KK and QQ. That is, it is part of the very narrow class of hands that you're happy to see in level 1. You have to remember that it is going to lose a lot more often than those hands, and it much harder to play. QQ-AA have strength because you can raise like a maniac and keep on raising and calling raises on every street with those hands and you'll come out pretty good. The same can't be said for AK. To get the value out of AK, you've got get weaker As and Ks to call preflop, and get them to pay you off when they hit their top pair. It's not easy, but I think that you can do better than your current approach which seems to force out a lot of weaker A and weaker K with big preflop raises and then handcuffs you on the flop when the pot is big in relation to your stack. AK is tougher than it looks. I suggest reducing your preflop raises and then trying to manage things on the flop. Post lots of these hands since they're going to tricky. But in the long run you'll turn AK into a valuable level 1 hand, even from early position.