($20) Early AKs

[fnurt]

Your thinking is fuzzy. You assume that they're probably calling no matter what, but then you assume that it's most likely they'll call with a pair. Let's rewind this and reason in the correct order, because otherwise we just fall into the trap of putting the other guy on a pair when we have AK and putting him on AK when we have a pair.

What hands would he be flat-calling the all-in with? Well, if he's a reasonable player, it's either (1) a big hand looking for more customers, or (2) a hand he wants to be able to get away from if necessary. Since this is a low buy-in event we can't be so sure and we have to throw in some other possibilities. Bad players take each decision as it comes; they don't call with the intention of folding, or call with the intention of calling, they just call.

Most of the time he will have a hand worse than AKs when he flat calls. If you push and he incorrectly calls with a hand like AQ, you're happy about his bad play obviously. And if you push and he folds AQ, you're not exactly upset, because you have dead money in the pot now, and you didn't rate to extract more anyway.

Sure, he could have a pair, but that's all the more reason you should want to put pressure on him. If you call and see a flop, you can't continue unless you flop a pair, and you may not get any more money if you do. And if you let him bet you off the hand then you lose your chance to beat the all-in player as well.

I didn't say you should always push with AK no matter what, but the presence of an all-in player who rates to have a worse hand makes it an easy decision here.