[schwza]

Rah,

playing on low-limit, shallow-stack party, moving in with AK is often a good idea. the thing is, it's a pretty bad idea if you're the first person to raise (and have a reasonable stack) because almost every time you'll just steal the blinds. stealing the blinds isn't bad per se, but you want to make more with AK (and of course you'll occasionally be called by KK or AA).

but if i had 25 and a player i knew to raise a lot made it 4 or 5 to go, i might push. if you add one or two cold-callers, i definitely push. i generally like to reraise AK because people raise with so much garbage (e.g., A6o) that it's good to get more money in before the flop. but if you reraise a reasonable amount, you're putting in 40% of your stack, and it's a disaster to put in 40% of your stack pre-flop and then fold when an A and K don't hit. you might as well push it in that case.

as your stack gets higher above 25, it becomes a worse and worse idea to push with AK. then you run into the problem of winning a small pot or getting called by a coin-flip (TT-QQ) or a big pair (KK-AA).