About 9 months or so ago I wrote this guide on AK advocating it was one of the hardest or the so called premium hands to play.
Here is the link to that post
http://www.texasholdemforums.com/showthread.php?t=3818 (AK - the hardest premium hand to play in NL)
I revisited it after some recent discussion on AK which can be seen here:-
http://www.texasholdemforums.com/showthread.php?t=8945 (Conserving chips vs being agressive)
it is a little harder to work out what was going on there because elvis deleted his comments but most of the discussion is still intact.
The main problem with my original post on AK is that I assumed (as i did then) that so long as there were pot odds a call could ALWAYS be justified but that if there was not a good bit more than that in the pot then folding could also be justified and the difference was about someones attitude to risk rather than their ability.
Three things changed in my knowledge of the game since then:-
1) I have a better understanding that tourney size and buy in make a big difference in deciding whether a risk is worth taking
2) generally players should be very risk adverse because they should be one of the better players at the table and often by there will be better oppertunities available to them. and also because every extra chip is worth less than the previous one and the risk of being either knocked out or losing a big part of your chip stack is often not worth risking even slightly favorable odds for.
Fink dealt this kind of issue here
http://www.texasholdemforums.com/showthread.php?t=5107 (My advice on online NL Tourny poker)
it is an area that i can express VERY complicatedly (see my pot odds post 2 in recommended threads) but many people who play intuitive rather than mathimatical games will not find this easy reading
The bottom line though is that if you think you are against a PP then you should throw ak unless there is a lot of chips in the pot PARTICULARLY if it is a small MTT because the rewards will often not be there. Say it is a 2 table 10$ game - first gets something like 80$ with 4th getting 20. if all your chips are risked in a 50/50 and you do this in 2 games and lets say you win one and lose one - will you be likely to make enough profit in the game you win the 50/50 to make this worth the play - simple answer - probably not. If you finish ITM in 4th then you will have made a 2$ loss after the house has its share.
True you could go on to win this and make 80-22=58 but your average winnings if you do this say when there are 10 players left (1 table) in a 20 man 2 table game with about average chips come final table will be less than this. I believe a strong player will average more than this if they fold and they will have twice as many attempts to do this.
In 10$ games with sub 50 players when the blinds start to threaten a bit I find that many players are willing to push big - even after some strength has been shown with pairs like 22 etc. What this means in my view is that my advice to underplay AK PARTICULARLY in early to mid position is even more worth while because you will often run into pp's reraising you.
As well as PP's you will often find players folding their Ax too you which is really bad news as this will often reduce your profits as if they called you would be a big favorite.
In 10$ buy ins there is often very poor play post flop - in 30$ games there is poor play too of course but not the consistantly poor play that there is in 10$ games to justify underplaying ak as there is in 10$ games
When there is a bigger field the prize for 1st is bigger and it can be legitimately argued that some players can utilise a doubling of their chip stack so that it is worth more than 2 games without the doubling up would be. In smaller MTTs there will rarely be the big wins on the horizon to justify such risks. Equally well it is far from certain that this claim will be correct even in an big MTT for many players.
the only other thing i would like to reiterate is that ak is a hard hand to play when you dont hit, particularly at low levels where more aggressive and risky play is the norm - and you will only hit about 1 in 3. The same is true for any unpaired hand - but AK is the hardest unpaired hand to through away ... If you create a pot with ak it can make life very difficult on yourself.
AK revisited 
