How do you play AK after the flop.

Ok coming in an early position I hold AK and bet 3xBB.
1 Player calls after me.
The flop comes up 842.
How do I bet?

What I have been doing is checking and getting into a whole lot of trouble. My opponents have been coming after me knowing I haven't made a pair. I have no idea if they are holding a low pair or bluffing.

I have similar trouble in late positions when I am behind the raiser.

Any help would be appreciated.

Kat

If you think that you can get them to fold better, then you can bluff.

I'm sorry to tell you that there's no right way to play any hand.

Spend some time reading through the poker strategy articles in the Beginner's Circle forum.

You will learn a whole lot in a short time.

MadMojoMonkey is exactly right. There is not going to be a "correct" answer to that question. Just a few thoughts that come to my mind include:
What do you know about your opponent? What is his likely flatting range pre? Does he fold to cbets? Does he float flops and fold to turn cbets, especially if a scare card hits?
If, and only if, your opponent is a thinking player, what does he know about you? Do you always check/fold the flop when you miss?
Are there any recent table dynamics that are important?
And, btw, the suits of the cards matter also.

Actually, I don't know why I am wasting my time with the above thoughts. Just do a search on articles by spoonitnow, the 1st poster on this thread. He has some very good articles on cbetting. In fact, just start at the beginning of his articles and work your way forward. It will improve your game immensely. Personally, I would start with "The Process of Learning in Poker".
http://www.flopturnriver.com/poker-s...in-poker-17324

There is an answer to your question... it depends.

Questions you should be asking youself -

What is our position?
How many villains are there?
How big are relative stacks?
What is our image?
Do I have a balanced 3bet range? Does this matter against this villain?
What are villains' images and stats?
What are villains' ranges?
Do you have any notes or reads?
Do you think they can call one/two/three streets with weak pairs?
Do they raise or call draws?

I feel like I'm barely touching the surface, but this is a decent start.

AK is not as awful a hand to miss with as some people tend to think. It's all omg I missed the flop how typical. Well AK misses 2/3 flops so get used to it. I'd rather have AK on a 47Tr flop than 22. Both hands have practically the same amount of showdown value, but AK has much more equity because it has six outs to improve, as opposed two for 22, meaning AK is at least 3 times more likely to improve when we're called. I say at least because AK is gonna make way more backdoor draws on average.

If every time you miss the flop with AK in a 3bet pot, you check, then yeah you're gonna find villains putting pressure on you because your hand is all too often face up and villain knows it can't take too much heat. Even a dumb villain can figure out you have AK here more often than not. I would say you should be cbetting AK in 3bet pots a high % of the time.