ZPXFW Blog

Ace King isn’t known as big slick for no reason. Despite being regularly listed as one of the most popular and powerful poker hands around, AK suited or unsuited can quickly turn from big guns to big blanks, as quickly as you can say ‘missed the flop.’ The differences then in making AK work for you is knowing when to use it and when to let it go.

One of the key distinctions in the semantics of playing the biggest unpaired hand is using it as a weapon rather than as a shield. Like most online poker hands, more often you’d want to be pushing with AK than calling with it, particularly in later play. Odds are if you’ve made it to the river and all you have is one pair against a guy who’s been firing at you all the way down, it might be time to reconsider that it might take more than top pair top kicker to take down the pot.

Preflop too there is a lesson to be learned from AK. This would be that it is always better to be pushing the action than it is to be calling off. If you are calling all in bets with AK you’d better have good odds and a padding on your belt, or at least be low enough that AK is looking as good as you can find. Remember this when you play poker online.