Some absurdly bad posts ITT, what's a bad post? One that says 'with AK always...' or 'with AK never...'.

OP, you need to start with the basics. As Kelvis said, the problem is not AK, the problem is that you lack very fundamental poker skills. You don't appreciate the importance of stack sizes. You don't size raises correctly. You consider running into better hands to be 'bad beats'.

Your solution is like telling someone that always cuts themselves while prepping food to cook to just order out instead of giving them proper knife safety tips.

yeah, it's extremely rare that you should fold unimproved AK on the flop in fact

Great point ReidLockhart, though I would argue many folks will never be able to stop their hands from shaking. DefiniteArticle, you and I totally disagree.

I often x/f AK unimproved OTF in live games. Reason is, action is generally multiway and our typical villains are sticky i.e. will call one street with any pair or other piece of the board. You're rarely best by the river if you don't spike an A or K and the chances of it checking down post flop is slim. So you end up in an expensive guessing game if you're going to cbet or x/c.

Yep, and I can't count how many times I've seen someone cbet or x/c in a multiway pot with AK unimproved, only to hit an A or a K on the turn, and proceed to call down their entire stack when obviously beat.

yeah okay, I'll qualify that with 'in HU pots' - the vast majority of pots in online 6max are HU which is why I didn't think to qualify it first time around.

Yeah, the game is very different between competent 6-max online and standard bottom-feeding stakes live.

Local casino seats 10 players to a table, combined with habitual limpers and a tendency for said limpers to call ridiculously wide, means you are often going to raise pre and then go 4-way to the flop.

Fair enough. In that case, it's definitely less advisable to fold the flop.

AK unimproved after the flop is worthless.

Incorrect.

What's with all the patently false statements around here lately?

Thanks for advice all.

See, I don't doubt that this is the case, and yet, I win the majority of sit and gos I play in. Is it just wild coincidence that the past five or six times I've lost has been when I've held AK?

If I'm habitually playing wrong, why am I getting away with it with other hands but not when I hold AK?

I honestly feel like I know how to play something like 77 or JQs better than AK. I've read a good amount of poker books, but this was a few years back. They were about things like how to profile opponents, Phil Helmuths sticks with me: the elephant (call station), the mouse, the jackal etc. I read a good nine or ten books on that sort of level.

I would like to be better, can anyone point to guides on stack size and correct raising?

In my mind I only make two kinds of raises: ones I hope to get called because I am sure I have the better hand, and ones where I hope to shove the opponent(s) off and take the hand. Generally I'd characterise my play as "tight, aggressive". Which is to say, I'm tight until I have a good hand pre- or post- flop and then bet aggressively.

I can see how I played that last AK hand wrong in retrospect, the re-raise wasn't big enough and maybe I should have gone all in there. I still think I'd have lost though, because that guy was a maniac and was never going to fold a TT in any case. So even with "correct" play I'd have still lost.

But this is why I hate AK, it feels so powerful but if you miss your draw you are completely committed and bust. It wrecks me every time.

OK, I guess you're right then. Good luck at the tables.

If you read further down, I did say this: I would like to be better, can anyone point to guides on stack size and correct raising?

I'd highly suggest thinking about the possibility that you don't know enough to know that you don't know enough. Dismissing help because 'I must be doing something right, consider my memory biased results!' Just screams that you're not as good as you think you are

I think you are not reading that post in the way I intended it:

I don't doubt that this is the case

I freely admit that I don't know enough to know that I know enough. And thus, I ask:

I would like to be better, can anyone point to guides on stack size and correct raising?

I can't believe how badly I misread your words. Sorry man. I didn't mean to down on you like that and I hope we all know that I wasn't just being negative for the sake of being negative. It was meant as tough love. My response was 100% to what I misread your post as.

Sorry

OP, I would start with going through the 'Best of The Beginners' sticky at the top of the page. Every link will be useful in one way or another.

At the same time, start posting a hand every few days, either here in BQ or in one of the SNG forums.

Also get a book on SNGs. I can't recommend one (don't play SNGs) so maybe start a thread on that topic either here or in an SNG forum on this site.