AK is the devil's hand

[ZootMurph]

I'm in an afternoon tournament at the Taj. It's $50+$15 with 140 players. We are at level 7 (I think). 500/1000 blinds with 100 ante. I have about 9k in chips and am short stack at the table, after being beaten for my former 2nd place stack with AA vs. AJ where he goes allin on a KQ7 flop and hits a T on the river.

To the hand. I'm 3 off the button and have AKo. Table has been REAL tight, with most raises taking down the pot. I've got 3 of the top 5 chip stacks at my table with 37 players left. 18 pay. UTG and UTG+1 both call, which is very unusual. I just call, as I am hoping for more calls behind giving me great implied odds and a possible huge pot. Guy to my left calls. A middle stack goes all in for about 18k. 2nd largest stack in CO pushes. All fold to me. I think the middle stack is trying to buy it, and I think the big stack thinks that as well and could be pushing to get heads up with a LOT of hands.

What would you do here? Think about it before moving on...






I call, of course, thinking I have the best hand. I'm up against KK and AA respectively, of course. Do I hit my straight to make the luckiest killing ever? No. Looking back, I'm really wondering if I really should have called two allins. My reads had been pretty good most of the tournament, but this hand my reads were WAY off. Looking back at it, I think I should have folded knowing how tight the table had been...

[Flopzilla]

My Friend,
You were destined to lose this hand, raise allin or raise three times the flop, or call or whatever.
Folding AK is not an option in your situation, IMO, unless you are the Great One J.C. (Mr. Chan) [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[schwza]

this is a really easy push pre-flop. limping here is really bad.

once you've painted yourself into an awkward corner, i think i'd still call off the rest of my chips and pray they both have QQ.

[usmfan]

With 9xBB, what else can you do here with AK? I don't mind the stop and go idea. But I'm probably pushing preflop here. The reason? 2 limpers and the blinds are already in the pot. That's 3500 which is a healthy addition to your stack and may let you steal some later. You may even get called by the bigger stacks with good aces or low pp. Here, you're dead no matter what route you take. But in general I'm pushing PF.

[baronzeus]

Once you got raised and reraised, you should have folded.

[AceofSpades]

That's one of the problems I have - not applying my reads to make the big decision. Sometimes, a dominated hand is a dominated hand regardless of how many BB you have.

I busted out of a tournament when I called an all in from a middle stack in EP with AJ. I had 4xBB and the guy had done the same play earlier and shown AK. I debated but rationalized that AJ was probably the best hand I was going to see before the blinds came around again so I called. Villian had AQ.

sometimes your hand looks pretty.....

[TheDrone]

I agree with the others who say easy push when limped to you.

That said, you are getting 3-1 odds in the main pot to call (4k limps + 18k all-ins + ~2k blinds/antes in the pot vs. 8k to call), which means that you need >25% equity to call. You will have better than 30% equity only if both have underpairs or one underpair + AQ. Any KK or AA is bad for you, and another AK + pair is bad too. This looks like a fold given the action.

[Roman]

push when it first gets to you... I dont like AK 3 handed here on a really tight table where I can steal my way back to a good stack, so fold when action gets back to you.