AK in bounty tournaments

Without having details like blinds or which of the opponents called... your goal is to get your money in in good situations, not to take lines that allow you to avoid bad beats. (And what do you do when you completely miss the board and the caller donk-shoves into you?)

I assume the blinds were about 1000/2000. I didn’t get all the details of the hand because my friend was upset that I disagreed with him.

I don’t really understand your answer. Are you saying that shoving preflop with AK over a raise is the best move every time, regardless of the size of the raise or one’s stack size?

My intent is not to avoid bad beats. My question is simply whether shoving preflop with AK is the best response and highest-EV play every time. I don’t think so, and that’s not the way I play tournaments. I argued that it might be better to raise smaller preflop in some cases. This accomplishes several things: 1) keep weaker hands in and get more value postflop, 2) possibly avoid losing one’s entire stack when facing better hands (QQ+), and 3) leave some room to maneuver postflop (perhaps bluff and make villain fold a better hand OR not lose more or the entire stack when one flops and turns nothing). Some arguments against shoving preflop are 1) you probably lose your entire stack against a better range (AA and KK), 2) you get minimum value against worse hands that fold preflop, and 3) you have no opportunity to bluff and fold out better hands (e.g., 22-99) postflop on a “scary” flop (e.g., QJ6) if the villain calls your shove and you would have missed the board.

Shoving preflop with AK seems like the “lazy” way of playing (“I don’t want to think and I want to see all five cards”) and not the best strategy in every case to me.

That all depends on the situation: the type of player villain is, the exact flop, the stack sizes, etc. Sometimes, I would definitely consider calling even if I miss the flop.

No, of course not. I didn't know you wanted to talk about any situation, not just this one. I think it's fine here, even if 35bb is on the larger side. You can of course 3-bet smaller, and obviously the deeper you are the worse shoving is. If you're going to shove on the large side, you need to do it with some percentage of like KK/QQ so opponents can't just pick you off with JJ-88 when you 3-bet shove large.

Now, a lot of the reason to 3-bet smaller is to try to keep hands we dominate in. (We do this far more frequently with AKs than AKo, because the added flush draw equity gives us a lot more flops we can get all the money in.) Sometimes we can even induce a 4-bet shove form some of them. In a bounty tournament, though, where you have a good expectation of getting called by hands you dominate by people seeking out the bounty, there's a lot of merit to just getting the money in preflop and hoping your 72% or whatever edge holds up.

And there are times in certain stages of the tournament where our fold equity is very valuable and we're happy to leverage it and take the pot down, but I'm assuming we're not talking about ICM play here.

As far as your other points... I did cover the dominated hands aspect, and that is a good reason. Trying to avoid going broke against QQ+ is not. Once we 3-bet this preflop at this stack depth, we have to go with it if we get shoved on, or we're folding much too much equity. Part of the reason we're happy getting in with AK is that we remove half the combos of AA/KK from the deck, so we're much less likely to run into them, while we only remove 25% of Ax/Kx we dominate. And if they 4-bet jam a pair we're flipping with, we're usually getting the pot odds at this depth to call off at this point. Speaking of, while we can get folds from some hands we are behind on certain flops, there aren't that many of those situations, and i don't think every single pair from 22-99 is calling a 3-bet (if 22-44 are even in the pot in the first place) or calling a 35BB jam hoping to be like 52/48.

Obviously, this doesn't hold to be the same when you're like 200bb deep, but we have different strategies at different stack depths. Under 40bb and when ICM isn't a factor, it's rarely a mistake to get the money in with AK.

It's got nothing to do with "lazy" and everything to do with the best way to realize your equity, with a hand with very strong raw equity but a lot of difficulty on boards where it doesn't flop TPTK or better. (Look at it another way: If your opponent will call your jam with AQ, is it better to get your stack in preflop or to give them a chance to fold drawing to three outs postflop?)

I thought my original post made pretty clear that I was asking whether it is the correct strategy to jam AK preflop in response to a raise (and maybe one or two calls) regardless of one’s stack size (50 bb, 100 bb, 200 bb, etc.), not just about this particular hand. This appears to be my friend’s default strategy with AK, and I disagreed with him that it’s the best strategy every time. He insisted that it’s the correct strategy because it’s a bounty tournament.

I agree that jamming preflop with AK for about 35 bb cannot be that bad. But I also proposed to my friend that he could have 3-bet smaller, and this is where he vehemently disagreed with me. Three-betting smaller in this exact hand would have given him an opportunity to shove on the flop and possibly win this hand, whereas shoving preflop gave him no chance to win once the villain called because the villain saw all five cards. So there are situations, even if limited, where 3-betting smaller with AK would be a better play. Would you agree that 3-betting smaller in this hand is also okay (and may possibly be better) and is at least not a big mistake, as my friend strongly implied?

By the way, with a stack size of 35 bb, if I 3-bet smaller and the villain 4-bet shoved on me, I would probably call it off with AK. When I stated that one can potentially lose less by 3-betting smaller with AK while facing a range of QQ+, I was referring primarily to larger stack sizes (e.g., 100+ bb).

I haven't played in a lot of bounty tournaments. But the big edge in my opinion is to gain a lot of chips so that you can gain bounties by knocking people out.

Recently in South Lake Tahoe in the WSOP circuit I played in a bounty tournament (where every time you knocked somebody out you got $100). I got knocked out in my first hand when I raised with K7s and was min re-raised by a guy to my left. Flop was 865 and I checked and he bet 5000 which was like 150% pot (we started with like 25,000 chips). I called. Turn was a K and he jammed. So he was vastly over sizing and he did have AA and I did call because I wanted to double up though I suspected he had AA. My next hand (after I bought back in) a guy limped in and I limped with 54s and then BTN raised to a reasonable amount. We called. Flop was Q45 (2 hearts) and it checked to the original raiser who made it like 2300 and the limper called. I decided to jam because my standard raise sizing would have been about half my stack. The original raiser tank folded (I'm guessing with AA/KK/AQ) and the other guy called with J3s and knocked me out. Shortly after on my third buy in a woman raised UTG to about 7 bb's. I had AK in the BB and jammed (again because my standard OOP raise size would have been over 33% effective stack). She had 66 and insta called and knocked me out. And I didn't buy in again. But because the woman had more chips than me she was basically always calling with 66. I'm not sure what she would have done if she had less chips than me. But my guess is that because she had raised to 7x preflop she would have called anyway. People are incredibly bad in bounty tournaments.

Ultimately I think that 3-bet jamming preflop with AK for more than 33% effective stack is ridiculous. It means that you can't gain a lot of chips with a hand that has a huge edge. People with worse hands (even AQ) will fold. People with pairs may call if they can knock you out but the pairs will likely have to be decent. And it will be a disadvantage flip situation. Gaining very small amounts with AK means that you will have to get very lucky with worse hands in order to double up. And in general you won't win a lot of bounties with mammoth jams.

I met a guy at Foxwoods earlier this year who always jammed AK preflop on his first bet (and it wasn't a bounty tournament). Regardless of the effective stack size. Before he told me he was doing it I actually folded TT when he had open jammed, because at that time the effective stack size was like over 100 blinds... If I had known that was his strategy (and that he wasn't jamming with PP's) I would have called with basically any PP (well probably not 22 and 33 and maybe not 44) so I could double up with a ~54% chance or buy back in.