Poker General Question: AK vs Maniac Early in Tourney

This thread isn't meant as a hand analysis, just a generalized question that I will frame with an example.

In the early stages of a tournament today I opened AKo from UTG at a full table. I was 50 BB deep which more than average stack size at the time.

This was followed by two middle position callers, and then a 60 BB shove by a maniac player in the SB. I'd seen him shoving on flops with T4s when he hit top pair, and getting many folds by aggressively betting pre-flop and every street.

Generally, will you fold to a maniac in a similar position when you have AKo? It's putting our tournament life on the line at a time when we have a larger than average stack, but it's also an opportunity to double up and take a commanding chip stack forward into the tournament. We are going to have to take some flips at some point, aren't we?

Source

 

You have to take a few more factors into consideration, whether it's a deep or turbo tournament. Whether the buy in is high or low. Because if it's a turbo and low buy in I wouldn't hesitate to go all in. But in a turbo tournament with a high or deep buy in I would prefer to fold. You also had 2 calls before the maniac player played, if these players are tight they are probably taking outs from you, they may have Ax or Kx in their hand.

 

Never fold AK before the flop. Looks as though you only called the BB from UTG. You should have raised. That might have warned off the two mid position players, if they had any skills, and made it heads up between you and the maniac. If he or anyone re-raised, you have to go with the math, and re-raise.