You should stick to raise or fold philosophy.
Adhering to this advice would keep you out of trouble. Several holdem hands would seem like they should 
have been worth seeing the flop, but when you would look at the situation neutrally, you would see that these hands would just get you into trouble.
For instance, suppose a poker player were to raise from early position, and you were to have an ace and jack. At first glance, this would seem like a good hand. After all, you would have two high cards inclusive of an ace. Yet, when you would consider the range of hands the raiser would be likely to hold, your ace and jack wouldn’t have seemed so strong. (The assumption here would be that the raiser had only raised with decent hands.) It would be very important to think about what sorts of hands your various rivals had been capable of raising with, and from what positions.
When you would think this way, you would see that getting involved in a raised pot (when the raiser had been a typical poker player from early position) with an ace and jack would not have been a gainful strategy. In all probability, the raiser would be holding one of two hands: a medium or high pair, or two high cards inclusive of an ace. If it were the first possibility, his pair would probably be in the range of aces down to eights.
So, if you were to have an ace and jack, you would have been in decent shape against eights, nines, or tens in holdem poker. Then again, you would have been a sizeable underdog against jacks, queens, or kings, and a monster underdog should you have been unlucky enough to run into two aces. That is, more than half the pair hands he would be likely to have put you at a severe drawback. Against two big cards with an ace, you would have been more or less a five to two underdog if they had been an ace and king or an ace and queen. You would have been a favorite against an ace and ten, but many rivals wouldn’t have raised with this hand.
If your rival was almost certain to have either a pair or ace-something here – and that ‘something’ was almost sure to be a high card – he would have had a hand with an ace in it more than half the time. Thus when playing poker, in general, you would probably be severely behind something over three-fourths of the time. So, while your ace and jack would look like a good enough hand (particularly if you had spent the better part of the last hour looking at nine and two and eight and four), if you had played it here you would have been asking for trouble. So, you should have folded your hand and waited for a better situation.
With a hand that had seemed to the best, it would have been good to re-raise and make things on the poker players yet to act. Against one early-position raiser, if you would stick to a general philosophy of re-raising with a pair of jacks or better or with an ace and king, and folding all other hands, you would tend to get involved mostly in situations in which you would be holding the better poker hands. And, if you would always start with the best hand, you would have done just fine in the game.
Nonetheless, when a raise from a late position poker player had opened the pot, the situation would have chanced considerably. It would have been helpful to have some knowledge of your rivals’ playing techniques here. Some poker players had felt that ‘any two would do’ when the hand had been folded around to them in late position. So they would raise, trying either to steal the blinds or play against them with position. When facing with a poker player like this, you would have to expand the range of hands with which you would have been willing to go to battle. If not, you would have been folding the best hand too often.
While you wouldn’t want to loosen up too much, when faced with a late-position raise, it would be often correct to re-raise with hands such as an ace and ten offsuit or a pair of sevens. The reason for this would be that your rival may have been holding an even weaker hand, such as a king and ten, an ace and *, or a pair of fours. By re-raising, you would have achieved two things.
Firstly, you would have knocked out the other poker players (unless they either had very good hands or were awfully stubborn), having enabled you to play the probable best hand in position against one rival. Secondly, a re-raise would have allowed you to take the lead in the pot. Frequently in holdem poker, the flop would have been of no advantage to either of you, and your follow-up bet on the flop would have influenced your rival to fold (partially due to the strength you would have represented by re-raising before the flop).
It's okay to cold call a raise with A-K.
This tip would not be an absolute. There would be circumstances in which a better play would have 
existed, and these will be dealt with here as well.
In holdem poker, the problem with ‘going to war’ with an ace and king would be that it would normally have to develop to a pair or better to win the pot. There will be times in which it would be preferable to not commit a lot of chips before the flop; rather, you could smooth call (just call, that would be, specifically not raise) a raise with your ace and king and wait to see what would develop.
If you were to flop a pair in holdem poker, you could then kick into a more aggressive gear. By doing this, you would tend to lose the least amount when you would miss the flop. Also, you might win extra bets when you would hit your hand, as your lack of preflop aggression might cause your opponents to undervalue your hand.
In essence, calling a preflop raise with an ace and king would be preferable when you were to feel your hand would need upgrading to win, and re-raising would be preferable when you were to feel you might be able to win the pot with just ace high when playing holdem poker. Let’s see how you could ascertain which condition would be the case:
- When you were to face an early-position raiser, this poker player would probably have a good hand, possibly a high pair or even an ace and king himself. Average poker players would not raise with an ace and x or hands like king and jack from early position. So, it would be unlikely that your ace and king would be much of a favorite over most early-position raising hands. However, it would improve often enough to justify a call.
- When one poker player were to raise and a few players were to call, you certainly would have to improve to win the pot, since someone would have either started with a pair or would make one. Also, were you to flop a pair, it would be possible that the initial raiser would bet into the field, setting up an opening for you to trap the other poker players for a raise.
Factors favoring re-raising with A-K:
- When the only poker player in the pot was to be a middle-to-late position raiser, you would have to almost always re-raise with an ace and king. In this scenario, it would be likely that the raiser would have nothing more than high cards (or possibly a hand like an ace and x suited), and your ace and king would play quite nicely against this type of hand heads up. So, our re-raise would have two purposes. You might deliberate getting more money into the pot with the probable best poker hand. You might even consider eradicating the rest of the field, which would enable you to play the hand heads up and in position. In this circumstance, you would have two ways to win the pot either with a bet on the flop, or by showing down your ace-high on the river.
- Had the initial raiser been a maniac*, you would probably have to re-raise irrespective of your position. The reasons for this would be the same as those in the previous point, since you would prefer to get rid of the other poker players, and you would have the best hand most of the time.