Playing Ace King!

Playing Ace King

There's a reason this hand is called "Big Slick" - because plenty of players manoeuvre themselves in problematic situations. A typical example is that a player raises before the flop, gets called and hits top pair. After that the rest of the money moves into the middle of the table and suddenly his opponent turns over two pair, a set or even a stronger hand. That's typical for playing ace king and even typical for playing aces

Playing Ace King in Tournaments

Ace king is a solid tournament hand. That means that the stack-situation in a tournament is often a good one to play ace king. The smaller the stacks compared to the blinds the easier this hand can be played. So if you hold ace king in the later stages of a tournament where the blinds are high compared to the stacks it's very hard to play ace king really bad. It's no mistake to move all-in before the flop and it's also no mistake to shove your chips into the middle when the flop helped you somehow. So the problems rarely occur in tournaments.

 Playing Ace King in Cash Games

The problems occur in cash games most of the time. When we talk about cash games we mean playing with deep stacks. For instance the blinds are $1 and $2 and you're playing with a $200 stack then you're playing deep stack poker in a cash game.
Ace king is a monster hand for most players. They're overplaying it and risk too many chips. If you're all-in before the flop with those deep stacks you rarely hold the best hand. Most of the time you run in aces or kings and in the best case you're up against queens being in a coin flip situation.
After the flop it doesn't look different. Let's assume you flop top pair, what is pretty much the most common case with this kind of hand this hand isn't sufficient to risk a lot of chips. Therefore if the big money moves in the pot you most likely have a weaker hand than your opponent.

Ace king is a very good but problematic hand if you have no idea how to treat it. The most important factor are stack sizes. Don't overplay your hand especially in deep stack poker, meaning cash games and the early stages of a tournament.