Ace-King Anxiety

Do you treat Ace-King like a premium value hand or a drawing hand preflop?

Definitely a premium value hand. While it is technically a "drawing hand" because it hasn't formed a pair yet, treating it like a weak drawing hand is a huge mistake.
Preflop, AK has immense value because it completely dominates hands like AQ, AJ, and KQ, while running a coin-flip against pocket pairs from 22 up to QQ. Plus, card removal (blockers) makes it statistically much less likely that anyone else holds AA or KK. You should almost always be 3-betting, 4-betting, and happy to get it in preflop.

louuu19 covered the preflop side well. What gets me is after the flop, where it turns back into a drawing hand. You pair up about a third of the time, and the rest is two overs and a decision. At 100bb I'm also not rushing to get it all in against a nit's 4-bet. Is yours AKs or AKo?

Any A or K on the board gives us top-top. AK rules. Value town!

ace king , suited or not , is a drawing hand in cash games where you are often deep stacked . in MTTs or SNGs with shorter stacks and where the blinds just keep going up, you are almost forced to play it fast !

I’m quite positive about hands like this
It’s the sort of hand that can, in essence, sometimes decide the outcome of the whole evening…… but that’s not certain

AK is always a strong starting hand. However, as with any hand in poker, you must re-evaluate on every street. Whether you are dealt suited or offsuit AK, you should attack the pot. Do your utmost to prevent marginal hands from seeing the flop. Try to isolate one or two players and re-evaluate on each street.

The notion, that "AK is a drawing hand" is something, that was said by bad live poker players like 20 years ago. Its factually wrong, since an unimproved AK will win (or at least chop) at showdown vs. any other unpaired hand, that also failed to improve. So in essense AK is no different from 22, which can also only win unimproved at showdown, if nobody else improved either.

As louuu19 explain, we should usually be happy to reraise and potentially get it in with AK preflop. There are exceptions to this though. One is in situations with high ICM-pressure like a SnG bubble, where we should not always stack off with AK preflop as a call, if this might bust us from the tournament. And the other is deep stacked situations especially with early position and/or multiway action.

An example of the latter is a 6-max 100BB cash game, where UTG open, and HJ put in a 3-bet. We are in CO. Here GTO Wizard will always put in a 4-bet with AK to 17,5BB. If it then folds to UTG, who now 5-bet to 35BB, and CO fold, then AKo from HJ is also a pure fold. Only AKs, KK+ and mostly QQ is supposed to give this 5-bet action. So if we always stack off with AK in a 100BB cash game, and especially AKo, then that is actually a leak.

preflop it's 100% a premium value hand, you gotta raise/3-bet it aggressively to get dead money in the pot and take control. postflop is where people mess up—if you completely miss the board and face heavy aggression, treat it like what it is: ace high.

I treat Ace-King as a premium value hand preflop, but I also respect the fact that it's still just ace-high until it connects. I'm happy to 3-bet or even 4-bet with it in most situations, especially against wider ranges, but I'm not looking to stack off blindly against the tightest players without a read. It's one of those hands that makes a lot of money when played aggressively, but you still have to remember it can miss the flop completely.