STERLING POKER

Big Slick, Bad Slick

The Ups and Downs of Ace-King

A-K is a top-10 poker hand, and everyone is excited to look down and see big slick as their hole cards. But why, then, does it seem to lose so often? A-K is actually quite a tricky hand must be played correctly for you to profit from it and not go broke.

Here are several pros who explained just how, in their views, you should be playing A-K, when you should get aggressive with it, and when you should actually fold it.

T.J. Cloutier "More tournaments are won and lost with A-K than any other hand because that's always your decision hand. I recently went out of the Bellagio Five Diamond with it. In Dallas we call it 'walking back to Houston' because if you play it real strong enough times, you will be walking back. If you are from Houston, you will be walking home, you won't be driving home. You see lots of situations with it. At Bellagio, the guy had A-3 of spades, and I had A-K with the K of diamonds. He put in a re-raise with A-3, which usually no one would re-raise with, but he flopped two pair, and I flopped top pair and the nut flush draw. I had a zillion outs, but I didn't make it, so I was out. But that's poker."

Barry Greenstein "I play A-K very aggressively, but I steal a lot, and I raise a lot on much worse hand than A-K. Normally, the way it works into my whole system of play is that A-K is such a good hand compared to some of the other garbage that I might be playing in a tournament that I often have to go with it and hope that the guy has A-Q or a lower pair, cause I have to take a stand with some hands.

"Now, there are some players who play so tight that A-K isn't that good hand for them. They are looking for aces or kings. They aren't playing that many hands, so for them, if somebody puts a move on them, A-K may be the minimum that they want to have. It all works into your system of play, it's different.

"So, let's say for a loose player like myself, when I have A-K in a tournament, I usually just have to go with it. There will be times that I will get away based on actions in a three-handed pot, where I see the way players are playing against each other. For instance, if I raise, and someone raises me, and then someone raises that guy. Now, I'll often throw A-K away in a three-player pot because they are not just reacting to me, they are reacting to each other.

"Even there, I've made some mistakes, or I've made some incorrect laydowns, where the first guy was raising me because he considered me a loose player, and the other guy picked up on that and said, well, he might not have as much as he usually has because he's raising a loose player, and I laid the best hand down. For the most part, though, if two other players raise each other, and they are reasonably solid players, then I would throw an A-K away. "Where I've made my most money on A-K is by picking up the pots before the flop. Someone's raised in, I have re-raised him or I've raised in myself, nothing's come on the flop, I bet, and I pick up the pot. So, over my life, I think I have done pretty well with A-K. The biggest tournament I won was the World Poker Tour tournament in Tunica, and in the two biggest hands, I had A-K and was fortunate enough to flop it.