[TBone]

The problem you have in your justification is that you're ignoring the gap concept and you could lose a lot more money when you're up against another Ace than the money you win when either player has an Ace.

Gap concept means that to call a raise you need to have a better hand than the initial raiser may have had to have to make the initial raise. (not that all players follow this concept, but you should!) So the cold caller in this case _should_ have a better hand than a typical raising hand for this position preflop. That would indicate that he more likely has Ace high or a mid - high pocket pair.

You may be a 68% favorite over that range of hands if you're up against one player, and I personally think that range of hands is far too big. You're not taking into account the percentage of times people would have the individual hands in the range you specify. They're going to have AJ+, maybe KQ, high (AA - JJ) to medium (TT, 99, 88) pocket pairs more often than they will 77 - 44, JTo - 87o, etc. There are also more combinations of non-pocket pairs than there are pairs, so this would indicate that it's even more likely that at least one of you opponents has A-high or KQ as opposed to KK or JJ or something. You're also not a 68% favorite over two players that would have cards in that range of hands.

When an Ace comes on the flop and your opponents don't have an Ace, you're probably going to get checked to or get a continuation bet, raise, and everyone folds unless they're drawing. If an Ace comes on the flop and your opponents do have an Ace and you raise or call them down, you're going to lose significantly more chips than you'll gain when they don't have the Ace. (not all the time mind you and occasionally you'll spike a second pair as well, but the percentage of times that this occurs is small) Hence, this type of play is -chip EV.

In a tournament, where you can spend hours trying to build a stack and accumulate chips, making this kind of play can effectively cripple you from going far. Trust me, I've played tournaments for hours, only to get sucked out on or make a boneheaded move taking a bluff too far at the bubble. Then, I've had to fight for my life just to make the money. And once you're short stacked you're in big trouble.

I'd recommend you read Sklansky's Tournament Poker book and Harrington on Hold Em 1 to learn about some of these concepts as it appears you're not familiar with them.

T