I would never go to the felt if I limped with AK, AA, KK and never had the opportunity to re-raise big to gain some fold equity.

Only a donk would limp with AA, KK, AK etc… and let himself be felted.

You sound like a newbie to me Bravos.. meet me on full tilt so you can pay some of my bills.

I am a consistent winner on full tilt, and I never said I mis-play AK, but I have seen many many risk the house with AK and always come up short. Go-ahead and continue to over-value your precious AK.

Those guys you played with who got felted limping with AA and KK were donks!

Why would I limp UTG with AK and then re-raise big??? To gain fold equity!! What fold equity do you gain if you raise UTG initially!! NONE!!!

You only hit your flop with AK 33% of the time… it’s only common sense that a huge percentage of your winnings with AK is from fold equity!!! This is all within the scope of early position play.

While I don’t think hand charts and a starting requirement lists are bad, this is the wrong area players should be focusing on.
The money in No Limit Holdem comes from postflop play not your preflop one!

Now I understand why you are creating a Hand Chart. A lot of new players do not know a lot of the concept of poker and tehy make a lot of mistakes. These mistakes usually stem down from their preflop play, and can be avoided by good preflop selection.

However I feel this site is decicating too much time on selecting your preflop hands. The truth is the money (especially in short handed & 6max games) comes from your postflop play.
Essentially it doesnt really matter whether you open up 65s from the CO, or open A9o on the button. Every hand we play we want a positive EV at the end of it. Now some players especially new ones do not profit enough with these marginal hands, however we can increase their profitablity by knowing how to play well postflop.

Understanding a good preflop strategy does needs to be encorporated with your postflop strategy though. We cannot just say we open 65s on the CO everytime for no reason. We have to be knowing why we are doing this. For a lot of player this is not the case – they go about raising 65s in the CO in the essence of just ‘mixing it up’ and when they encounter postflop situation with these marginal hands they play poorly, mostly giving away their chips.

I think for the site to develop the area you should develop upon is oyur postflop one. The one where the big decision are made. Where the most money is won and lost. Does it really matter when you lost 4BB calling a wrong hand preflop, compared to losing a whole buyin on the river because you do not know how to play postflop.

In fairness to Ducks (whose general approach I pretty much disagree with), that could be correct for a couple of reasons. First, reraising AK could be a semibluff to represent AA or KK. If you can get 88-JJ to fold to a limp/reraise, then you’ve pulled off a major coup. Secondly, by reraising you’re making the pot bigger, which makes AK easier to play out of position.

I’ll buy that AK loses more of its value out of position than say AA or KK. But when you get down to QQ, JJ, TT you’re also faced with some tough decisions playing OOP if you miss your set, especially against flopped overcards. I’m not sure that AK is really much tougher OOP than JJ, barring a set. It’s just that being out of position really sucks except for the few hands so powerful that they don’t mind as much.

Board: Ac As 2h
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 22.927% 22.93% 00.00% 11914462 0.00 { AKs, AKo }
Hand 1: 77.073% 77.07% 00.00% 40053208 0.00 { 22 }

I for one am hoping Ed comes back and addresses some of the things posted here.

Limping AK in EP is pretty bad IMO!

What I don’t understand is that you state “I firmly believe AK is the most over-rated hand in poker. the most over-valued and the most over-played…” and then you say that you like to “Limp in early position with it, and then re-raise hard with it to any raises.” LOL.. umm, I love the irony!

BTW, why do you assume that you are gonna stack someone when you hit your set? Even if they hit, a decent (doesn’t even have to be all that good) can get away from TPTK if their opponent is screaming that they have the best hand.

So let’s say that I 4x AK UTG and you flat PF. 6 out of seven times you are gonna miss your set and have given me 6×4BBs = 24BBs. One the 7th time you hit and I miss. So you get 4BBs + ~6BBs from a C-Bet = 10BBs. For you to stack me, I’m gonna have to hit the flop pretty hard as well, as I don’t plan on stacking off w/ TPTK unless I am short, but then I am shoving ANY flop and you can not exploit me.

Yeah, If the flop comes AA2 or even AK2, you may stack me, but w/ a AA2 flop, I’m still gonna win 15% of the time.

*snip*
Personally if you bet into me on the flop and I had AQ, and Had top pair, I would raise you to find out where you were at.
*snip*

So you limp AK in EP and cold-call w/ AQ and raise flop to “see where he is at”? I’m guessing you are folding to a reraise? What if he calls? Say he calls and it goes c/c on the turn and he 3/4 pots the river? What is your plan? I think raising is usually bad against a good player here because it lets them play there hand well. You can call the flop bet and have the chance to check behind the turn quite often allowing you to keep the pot small. Bloating the pot w/ TP2K is pretty bad.

*snip*
If you called a re-raise would you continue and c-bet the flop even if you missed?
*snip*

Why would anyone “c-bet” here if you missed AND you were not the last PF aggressor? If you are 3bet and you call, you CAN NOT C-bet, since C-bets are only from the last PF aggressor.

*snip*
Those of you who would cold raise UTG with AKo what would you raise to? 5BB, 10BB, 20BB?
*snip*

LOL @ raising 20BBs PF w/ AK. Yes, some live games are like that, it still doesn’t mean that you should do it. Raising it up 4-5BBs should be good for basically any game.

One last question.. you are limping AA/KK/AK UTG in an attempt to LRR. What ARE you raising then? QQ/JJ only? Do you raise anything from EP? In loose passive games it is HORRIBLE to limp AA/KK or even AK with the intention or LRR’ing. Many times you end up going 6 handed to the flop for 1BB each. I would much rather see a flop 2-3 handed for 4BBs each. Also LRR’ing AK in smaller games is going to kill you when some passive calls.. and when he does, you are drawing SUPER THIN. LRR’ing AA/KK in an aggro game from EP is fine since you know someone will be raising quite a bit especially after 3-4 limpers enter as someone looking to squeeze will be higher.

I played in an awesome 2/5 game this past weekend. It was faily loose and uber passive. I watched one guy go through 7 buy-ins in about 3 hours. In that span he lost w/ AA 3 times and KK one. He limped each of them in an attempt to trap. If he would of raised PF, he would of prabably won all of them. 2 for sure, since I stacked him twice myself, once w/ KTs where I turned a flush, and once w/ QJs where I flopped the nut straight. Both times I would of folded if he had raised a standard amount. This was a great game, to be in, but a horrible game to be limping big PPs in EP.

looks like it’s about time you jump in with the first part of your starting hands chart…

I firmly believe AK is the most over-rated hand in poker. the most over-valued and the most over-played…

I’m certainly no expert, and I misplay AK my fair share. But in my experience people who believe AK is overrated are often those who misplay it frequently. It does have the downside that it rarely makes better than top pair. But it has the significant upside that it never makes a pair less than top pair; always outkicks any other top pair; beats any other unpaired hand in a showdown; and on the rare occasions that it makes two pair, a straight, or a one-card flush, it beats similar hands made by lower cards.

In some games I’m growing fond of limp-reraising AK (especially where people will interpret this to mean I have queens or better), but limping AK just because I’m afraid I’ll miss the flop is a misunderstanding of poker. The real value of raising AK is in getting called by dominated hands. The implied odds on outkicking a naive opponent with AJo or K9s are pretty good. And if both of us “miss”, that’s a misnomer, because I didn’t really miss. I flopped the better hand. Only tricky opponents will regularly bluff-raise CBs with ace-high.

Now, if I get called four ways, that’s different. I’m no longer hoping AK unimproved holds up to showdown. Now I’m getting a great overlay to flop my 2:1 shot at TPTK. It’s not perfect, because some aces and kings are probably disproportionately dead, and I might flop TPTK and pay off a bigger hand. But my dominated opponents have made a serious error, if they knew what my cards were.

You raise AK for value. You might also get some semibluffing opps against 55 on a queen-high flop, but you’re mostly hoping weaker aces and kings call you.