[teamdonkey]

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how willing are you to take AK to the felt preflop?

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at times, very willing. some conditions obviously apply:

- effective stacks should be small. shoving 20BB in is much different than 200BB
- opponents should be at least somewhat loose. Loose as in their initial bet doesn't automatically mean a premium hand, and loose as in they'll sometimes call me with dominated holdings.
- dead money is good. I expect to be shown mid pocket pairs quite a bit, so if i'm putting 25BB in the pot i want to get at least 60 back when i win.
- fold equity is good. Put another way, i'm more willing to make an all in bet with AK than i am to call one.
- maniacs are fun. some people are so wildly aggressive (read: drunk) that i don't mind calling a relatively large preflop all in bet with AK. they're more apt to do this small pairs so i'd really rather have 1010/JJ here, but AK comes out ahead in the end also.