I lots most of my money on MMT by raising with AK ( pre-flop ) or calling raises ( or allIN's ).

What's your opinion on those two cards ? When I play them I almost never hit A-K on flop.

Thanks.

Variance is a bitch, impossible to give an answer based on this info.

ak is the death of me

play it till you die

read the forums. your threads will get better responses once you are able to pose questions that are more direct and situational. from there you'll be able to take those ideas and apply them to a full range of situations.

Am talking about early stage of tournament ... in late stage I go ALL In even with AT

I'm affraid this wont help much. Just post individual hands and you'll get all the responses u need!

AK is a monster

AK is a good hand to flat early when the blinds are low and the pot is small. If there has been a decent raise and a couple of calls it's a great 3 bet hand. If you are in mid stages/late stages of an MTT then it's always a raise/reraise hand.

Example:
Early stage of tourney: villain raises 3x. Call in position with AK. An exception is if villain raises 3x and gets a couple of callers. Then go ahead and reraise. If we take down the pot, great. If not, we do have a powerful hand that is only a HUGE dog to AA. Even against KK we're about 30% and anything else we're flipping at worst.

Later stage of tourney: villain raises 3x / reraise or reship because of already large pot

this hand is nothing special but to say you loose lots of money because of a hand and how unlucky you are seems to be quit weak. you should try to understand it is not about beeing lucky or unlucky. it is about making the right decisions and dont you shouldn't care about losing a certain hand group. it is more likely that you over play it when you loose much.
just post some hands of you misplaying AK or where you have some tough decisions with it.
your question cant be answered perfectly she is too general
i like flatting a raise in position in early stages.

tptk is not the nuts 100bb deep

i get soooo happy to see AK and when i see AKs my happiness rivals the times I see AA and KK

only because donkaments players suck its really not the nuts against any one with hand reading skillz, but donkament players do suck so yes its the effective nuts with basically all stack sizes presented to us in an mtt

It just depends.

good post

If you're calling AI with AK, especially to a raiser and a re-raiser, you're either going to be a slight underdog in a "coin flip" situation or you're going to be dominated.

So, unless you are playing in a turbo, calling all your chips in with an AK in the early rounds of a tourney is probably not the best move in the world.

AK vs. one opponent with a range of say, 55+, any pair, any broadway is ~64% to win, so this is justified by any odds. Versus two opponents with the same range it is ~44%; since if your stack sizes are comparable you have 3:1 pot odds, you are more than justified calling here too.

How deep you are in the tournament is irrelevant imo; you have +cEV and ICM is not a factor, so make the correct decision.

Maybe I play a bit to tight, but that seems like a pretty wide range for most players to hold while moving AIPF in the early stages of a tourney. Obviously I've seen it happen with ranges like the above, but, generally, I think that range needs to be narrowed. Especially if you are up against a raiser and re-raiser who moved all in and wasn't short stacked.

Actually it doesn't get much worse with tighter ranges, since these include dominated Aces. For 88+, A9+ your odds are ~58% vs. 1 opponent and ~37% versus two. I would also not expect super tight ranges for players who push like this early in the tournament; these tend to be horrible players with some kind of strategy to play like Phil Ivey or whatnot, and the cards they turn over are almost invariably garbage. Later in the tourney you have to think a bit more about ranges, but I love AK early on; if you bust you open a new tourney, if not you are in great shape to go deep into this one.

AK wins a lot of tournaments and loses a lot of tournaments...such is the life of a poker player...