AK is one of the trickier hands to play when playing No Limit Texas Hold’em.  There really is no correct way to play AK but there are many times when players can over play AK and get themselves into a world of trouble.  I am going to give you a couple spots in which I see people over play AK or perhaps ways to avoid losing your stack with AK.  I am going to start with playing lower limits early in a tournament.

When playing in the early stages of poker tournaments I always prefer the conservative side so I can preserve my chips for the later stages where I can make more profitable moves.  Nonetheless when playing in the early stages there are many ways to play to ask without getting yourself into trouble.  First off, when facing a raise from an earlier position it’s not a bad move to just call in these situations.  Lets say the blinds are 15/30 and the initial raiser makes it 90 and you have 3000 chips in front of you; calling in this situation wouldn’t be a terrible idea.  Upon calling you are seeing a cheap flop with not risking a lot of chips and if you completely miss the board you can get easily get away from the hand.  I don’t mind this play at all as a matter of fact and I have been doing it more and more in recent tournaments  Now if you prefer not to call and you would rather raise in this situation then all the power to you.

Some people prefer the raise because maybe with a raise they can take the hand down pre-flop without any worries, they may want to create a certain image at the table or perhaps they don’t know any better or they may even believe once they receive AK they must raise no matter the situation.  When playing online I see a lot of new players raise with the AK and then go broke when they completely miss the flop because they are unable to lay their hand down.  This is what I mean by overplaying the hand and it happens to often.  If you are gong to raise before the flop with AK, this doesn’t mean you have go broke it if you miss the flop.  Too often I see players have AK and when the flop comes Q 10 3 they try to make heroic type plays just to try and win the hand often times its because they have Ak and they don’t know how else to play it.  I really encourage players to evaluate the situation in front of them before they go nuts with Ak and lose their stack when they really don’t need to.

In my next article I am going to discuss the later stages of tournaments of how to play AK and how to mix up your play with this hand so your opponents don’t catch on to your style of play.  Good luck at the tables my friends.