Ace King is the strongest drawing hand in no-limit Texas Holdem, and
it should be one of your biggest money-making hands long term, trailing
behind only premium pocket pairs, from pocket Tens and upwards.
Players tend to either hate or love the Big Slick (Ace King).
While certainly one of the best starting hands, players often overplay it
because they overvalue the hand preflop, and some don’t play it fast enough,
leading to a lot of problems postflop.
This article will break down how Ace King performs, and give you some
guidelines as to how to play it most effectively.
Let’s start with answering the most important question: Is there a
situation where limping with Ace King is the optimal play?
1. Why You Should Play Ace King Fast Preflop
As a general rule, you shouldn’t limp with Ace King preflop (or other
hands for that matter).
Open limping (being the first to open the pot with a call instead of a
raise) is a suboptimal strategy for a number of reasons.
First of all, you can’t win the pot uncontested if you don’t raise preflop.
This means that you rely only on your hand strength to win the pot.
And since making a strong hand in no-limit Texas hold’em is more an
exception than the rule, it’s simply better to give yourself more options to
win the pot, that is winning it without showdown.
This is something that BlackRain79 discusses in much more detail in
Modern Small Stakes
for example.
Secondly, if you open-limp, your opponents can raise behind you, often
leaving you playing out of position without a range advantage.
A player has range advantage when he theoretically has more strong holdings
in their range than their opponent.
The preflop aggressor has the range advantage over the callers, because he
can potentially have strong holdings like pocket Aces, pocket Kings or Ace
King, while his opponents can’t, because they would have reraised themselves
had they had them.
This means that you have the initiative postflop, and you have the
opportunity to c-bet and dictate the tempo of the hand.
BlackRain79 discusses this concept further in this video on how to play Ace King optimally at the micro stakes:
And lastly, if you open-limp preflop, you’re inviting players after you to
do the same, which can lead to playing in a multiway pot.
It’s harder to win a multiway pot than the heads-up pot, because you have
more opponents to beat, and the more opponents, the bigger the chance some
of them will connect with the flop in some way, thus reducing your equity.
So open-limping is hardly ever an optimal play.
Limping behind (calling after one or more players limped in) can be a
correct play in some cases (like playing speculative hands such as small
pocket pairs or suited connectors, for example) but a strong hand like Ace
King should almost always be played aggressively, especially in low stakes
games.
If you are the first to open the pot, you should therefore do it with a
raise. If one or more players limped before you, you should raise to isolate
them, because they are highly likely to be recreational players.
By isolating limpers, you are putting yourself in the best money-making
position postflop, and you can get action by a lot of hands you dominate (a
bunch of Ax and Kx hands, for example).
If somebody raised before you, you should 3-bet them to three times the
open-raising size if you are in position, and 4 times the size if you are
out of position.
You can adjust your 3-bet size based on your opponents. If you’re up against
fishy opponents you can go for a bigger 3-bet size.
Same goes for open-raising, of course.
Is there a situation where limping with AK can be a correct play, though?
Well, unless you’re Johnny Chan playing high stakes against world class
professionals, the answer is no.
If you’re playing mid or high stakes, there can theoretically be a situation
where you might want to go for a deceptive line like limping or flatting
with AK.
For example, you limp behind a player expecting to get raised by a hyper
aggressive opponent behind you, and trying to induce them to barrel into you
postflop.
If this theoretical aggressive opponent puts you on a range, he won’t expect
you to have AK in your range, so you can get action by hands you dominate,
like AQ, AJ, KQ and the like.
But again, going for deceptive lines like this isn’t advised in most
situations.
It can only theoretically be acceptable if you are playing against totally
balanced thinking regulars, and playing ABC poker can only get you so far.
But as this is hardly ever the case in low stakes games, playing your strong
hands straightforwardly is the correct way to go.
If you try to go for deceptive lines, you should be aware that it can
backfire for the reasons mentioned above, that is seeing the postflop
without the initiative and range advantage and potentially playing in a
multiway pot.
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2. How to Play Ace King When Facing Aggression Preflop
As mentioned before, you should try to position yourself as the preflop
aggressor with AK a large majority of the time, especially if you play low
stakes games.
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But back to being the preflop aggressor with Ace King, this means we should be open raising or 3-betting. So let’s take a look at what happens
when we encounter aggression against our raises.
Should we just flat call or shove all in preflop and hold our breath? Let’s
take a look at the first situation, when we encounter a 3-bet.
We have three options here: fold, call or 4-bet. Folding is out of the
question, of course.
Should we call or 4-bet depends on a lot of factors: are we playing in
position or out of position, what type of opponent is 3-betting, what are
the stack sizes, just to name a few.
There is no one-size fits all answer, so here are a few guidelines.
If you are playing out of position, you should be more inclined to 4-bet
rather than call. This is because it’s very hard to play a hand out of
position without the initiative and range advantage.
If you 4-bet, you’re putting tremendous pressure on your opponent, and are
going to the flop with said initiative if they call, so the hand basically
plays itself.
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From there you can just shove on the flop, as there won’t be much money left
behind at that point. Also, Ace King blocks pocket Aces or pocket Kings,
meaning it’s harder for your opponent to hold those hands.
If you hold Ace King, your opponent can only have 3 combos of Aces and 3
combos of Kings. If you don’t hold any blockers, with pocket Jacks, for
example, there are a total of 12 possible combos of Pocket Aces and Kings
your opponent can theoretically have.
If you are in position, you can consider flat calling, as stacks will be
deeper, so there’s more maneuverability postflop.
Remember, AK is still only a drawing hand, and if you decide to 4-bet, you
might only get action from Aces, Kings and Queens. Against that particular
range, AK has only about 32% equity.
That’s why it’s important to know what kind of opponent you are facing in
order to assess how aggressively you should play preflop.
If you are playing against tight regulars, you should be careful not to
overplay your Ace King, because as we already mentioned, it’s still only a
drawing hand, and it’s actually an underdog against premium pocket pairs
(and all other pocket pairs, for that matter).
Poker pros therefore often opt to just flat call 3-bets when holding AK
against very tight 3-betting ranges, and see the flop without committing a
huge chunk of their stack preflop.
This is because they want more maneuverability postflop with deeper stacks,
and the opportunity to outplay their opponents, or simply give up cheaply
when the board texture doesn’t favour them.
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3. How to Play Ace King Postflop
Now let’s take a look how Ace King performs postflop and try to draw
conclusions on how to play it most effectively.
We already mentioned that Ace King is the strongest drawing hand. This means
that if it hits the flop, you’re always going to have a top pair, top kicker
hand (TPTK).
If the board is dry, you can be confident you hold the best hand a large
chunk of the time.
What’s great about TPTK is that you don’t have to worry about kicker
problems, and your opponents can and will continue with dominated hands like
top pair, weak kicker.
This means you can confidently bet for value and get action from second best
hands. Also, you don’t have to worry about overcards on the future streets.
And thirdly, if you fire off a c-bet on a dry board, like A♥8♠3♣, it will
look like a standard c-bet, and your opponents might assume that you would
play that way with close to a 100% of your range.
This means that they can’t automatically put you on your exact hand.
Finally, if you flop a straight or a flush draw, you will always be drawing
to the strongest possible straight or flush, which means you don’t have to
worry about losing your whole stack with a monster hand that turns out to be
only the second best.
If you flop such a strong draw, you should also play it very fast.
As a general rule, the stronger your draw, the faster you should play it.
That way you can win the pot without even needing to improve, and even if
you do get called, you can still win a huge pot by completing the draw.
However, most hands miss most flops, and Ace King is no exception. Let’s see
how Ace King hits the flop.
You should at least be aware of these percentages in order to make better
in-game decisions.
It’s worth mentioning that AK offsuit and AK suited hit the flop quite
similarly. The only difference being that AK suited can also flop a flush
draw. So there really isn’t much difference as to how they should be played
preflop.
Like most hands, Ace King misses the flop two out of three times, or 67%.
But not all is lost if you miss the flop completely.
You still have an Ace-high hand, and your opponent will also miss the flop
two out of three times. This means you will still technically have the
strongest hand.
And if you followed the previous advice and didn’t limp with the Big Slick,
but raised preflop instead, you have the opportunity to c-bet the flop and
take the pot down.
Even if you get called, you will still have two overcards to improve on
future streets. In that case, you have six outs left (3 Aces and 3 Kings),
so your chance of improving from flop to turn and river are 12% and 24%,
respectively.
As far as the drawing hands go, Ace King will flop an inside straight draw
11% of the time. AK suited will flop a flush draw additional 11% of the
time.
Both AKo and AKs will flop a top pair 29% of the time, and will absolutely
smash the flop (meaning two pair hand or better) about 4% and 4.6% of the
time, respectively.
So we see that there is no significant difference between AKo and AKs,
except for the additional 11% possibility of flopping a straight draw, and
the negligible 0.6% more of smashing the flop.
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Summary
Ace King is the strongest drawing hand in no-limit Texas hold’em, and should
be one of your most significant long-term winning hands.
It should therefore be played fast both preflop and postflop in most
situations.
Limping with Ace King is ill-advised, as by doing so you are not giving
yourself the opportunity to win the pot preflop uncontested, you increase
your chances of playing in a multiway pot, thus reducing your equity, and
you won’t see the flop with the initiative and the range advantage.
You should therefore go into the pot with an open-raise or a 3-bet.
If you encounter aggression against your raise, it’s important to recognize
what kind of opponent you are up against so you don’t overplay your hand and
end up walking back to Houston, as the old saying goes.
Poker pros will therefore sometimes opt to flat call Ace King against 3-bets
instead of going crazy with it preflop, as it’s still just a drawing hand,
and it will in fact miss the flop completely two out of three times.
If you are the preflop aggressor, however, even if you do end up missing the
flop, you can still try to take the pot down with a c-bet, as you still have
two overcards.
This means you will improve to a TPTK hand 12 or 24 percent of the time
either on turn or river, respectively.
If you flop a straight or a flush draw, you should also play it fast, as it
is a great spot for a semi-bluff. You can either win the pot by making your
opponents fold, or improve on future streets to a monster hand and win a
huge pot.
In conclusion, Ace King is a great hand to hold, but it’s important not get
carried away with it just because it looks pretty. There’s a life lesson
somewhere in there too.
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