In my previous article I talked a little about the early stages of tournament poker and ways to play AK without getting out of control.  Let’s fast forward if you will to the later stages of tournament poker and go over some AK spots that may arise in late play.  Now a lot of times the way you play AK can depend on the amount of chips you have in front of you.  Lets’ say the blinds are 2,000/4,000 and you have a stack of 100,000.

With the blinds and chip stack I just gave let’s pretend you received AK in middle position on the table with no raisers in front of you.  In this situation I would open almost every time and avoid being the first to limp in the pot.  I say this because with the blinds at this size, you are missing a grand opportunity to take down the blinds before the flop and you can avoid any action.  Now let’s say you are in the same position but there is a raiser in front of you, what to do you may ask?  A lot of people in this situation would probably raise and there is no arguing against this play because more often than not it is the most effective way to play it.  But we are playing the game of poker so there really isn’t a right way to play this hand.

By that I mean a player could call in this spot in hoping of setting a trap.  For instance if the initial raiser raises every hand and barrels the flop every time then you could call behind in hopes of hitting a big flop so you can make your move on him after he makes his post-flop bet.  Another reason for calling in a situation like is because you may provoke some players behind you to try and steal the pot with a raise and then you can pick them off with your AK hand (hopefully).  So if you have a player being active and constantly trying to re-steal the spot then try this move sometime and see how it works out for you.

Before trying this play, make sure you have the chips in front of you to do so.  In both those situations above we had 100,000 and we could call the standard raise of 12,000 and we would still have 88k in chips in front of us.  But if the blinds remain the same and our stack is at 50,000 and we face the same raise there really is no other option but to go all in this situation.  Calling would be a bad idea because you are leaving yourself with less than 10 big blinds and you would cripple your stack if you completely miss the flop.

I hope these tips will pay off and odds are if you have been at the tables before this is going to seem like old news but for the new players out there; beware of Ace Kingy.  GL GL