There’s a big difference between a suited Ace King and an unsuited Ace King, a much bigger difference than most players understand.  But to keep this series to a manageable length, I’m going to focus on an unsuited Ace King.  And I’m going to limit the discussion to before the flop in a no-limit game.  I might expand the series later, but for now I’ll stick with Ace King unsuited before the flop in a no-limit game of Texas holdem.

Before we get started, though, I want to address a common misconception about the hands.  Ace King is often considered a “drawing hand.”  Such concepts are important because they color the view we tend to bring to a situation when analyzing it.

But is “drawing hand” really a concept, or is it just a meaningless phrase?  I think it’s often just a meaningless phrase.  We do that a lot when we get confused, we throw out a word that sounds like it means something, but it really doesn’t.

The term comes originally from a theoretical perspective of poker as a conflict between a made hand and a draw (I talked about this in my book, The Complete Book of Holdem Poker, Lyle Stuart, 2001).  The idea came from draw poker, where it was almost always the case that one hand was clearly ahead of another hand, and the hand that was behind was only worth playing if the pot was laying it sufficient odds.  Flush draws and straight draws were always drawing hands, but sometimes pairs could be drawing hands.  In Jacks or better to open, a pair of 10s (also called a short pair) was drawing.  The distinction was that the drawing hand was clearly behind and needed to catch the right cards on the draw to win.

In draw, with only the two betting rounds, the hand that starts out with the best poker rank is also the best hand in the sense of being the likely winner.  A pair will probably beat a flush draw, and two pair will probably beat one pair, etc.

But in holdem, with its multiple betting rounds and many cards yet to come, such things aren’t so

So which hand is actually ahead?  Those extra betting

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So, pre-flop it just doesn’t make sense in hold'em to think in terms of made hands and drawing hands in most situations.  In some situations it does, such as calling a raise from an early position player with 67s from the button.  In that kind of situation you know you’re behind, and know you’re drawing.  But that’s not the kind of situation you’ll be in with AKo.

On the flop things are different.  There is a distinction to be made between drawing hands and made hands on the flop.  But even there the distinction isn’t as clear-cut as many players think.  We’ll get to that in some future article.  Right now let’s just get back to playing AKo before the flop in no limit games.

Position

One of the first things to take into account with AKo is your position.  One thing you don’t want to have happen is to see the flop against a large field when you’re first to act and the pot is large and the stacks deep.  That’s a very tough situation to be in, it’s going to be hard to play that situation the vast majority of the time, and whatever you do pre-flop, you want to act in a way that decreases your chances of ending up in a bad situation.