How to play AK and JJ pre-flop (Live 1/2)

Yeah these spots do happen rarely. But a 5-bet is def possible. (12 raise, 3! To 40, 4! To 100 into a 300 all in)

I think against an average 1/2 player im meant way overfold large 3-bets and 4-bets. And almost never 5-bet jam unless im against some maniac gambler. (Im talking 2-way here btw with no 3-bet cold callers.)

I know theres no cookie cutter answer as theres lots of factors to consider, but is this a reasonable general guideline on how to play AK?

I would generally fold those hands to a 4! at 1/2. Against some players, I would not 3! them.

Obviously this is player- and stack size-dependent, but I am much more inclined to 4bet (or 5bet jam) with AK than JJ.

With AK, you want to maximize fold equity pre-flop as villains are (almost) always going to have decent equity against you. If someone folds 99 or QJs pre, for instance, it's a huge win for us. At the same time, you will (almost) always have decent equity against a competent villain's 3b range, so you want to see all five cards if possible, and the easiest way to do that is to take back the betting lead and/or get it all in.

With JJ, once you see a high-card flop it should be fairly easy to x-fold at most tables. Players in my games are never turning hands like 99 or TT into bluffs and are rarely even double- or triple-barreling with A- or K-high, so folding to aggression post-flop isn't terribly difficult in these spots where we are most likely drawing to two outs.

In general though, the average 1-2 player isn't 3betting nearly enough, so flat calling a 3b with these hands (even sometimes just cold-calling an open) is fine. I think you can also fold these hands to a 4bet every time and probably lose very little sleep. In general, I am much more likely to 4bet myself if there are cold-callers in the middle.

You should open ship JJ and AK 100% of the time from every seat, assuming you are 10bbs deep.

I think the best answer is that it's completely player and stack depth dependent. Once you understand exactly what your opponents preflop 3b and 4b ranges look like it will be very obvious how to play these spots. And it should be very obvious what those ranges look like, within an hour of playing with most guys I can tell you a good estimate of what they are doing. I pay attention to showdowns, when I see a guy just flat call AK or JJ or QQ this type of info is extremely useful. Or when I see a guy cold call a 3b with QQ or AK I'm just never ever paying them off when they put in a cold 4bet.

I'm hardly flatting with AK, but that's just my style. If we're not folding it because of a strong range I would rather 4bet, and JJ is more of a fold to a strong range unless setmining odds were more than favorable, and of course if we're short than we can 4bet/jam with it vs a wide range/button presser.

Download an equity calculator (there are free ones). Give the villain a range and put you hand in with the dead money in the pot. It will tell you if you should call, shove or fold with some simple math calculations. I'll note that there is no national standard. The range of a 3 bet in LV is going to be tighter than a range in TX, for example.

Assuming you're 70bb+ deep things get a little more complicated, but not too much because 3b frequencies are shockingly stable across configurations for live players. You will mostly be facing 3-5% 3b ranges.

AKo is a top 1.25-2.5%, so it's in the middle-ish of the tighter 3b ranges and in the top half (but not nutted) part of the wider 3b range. JJ is more like top 2.5-3%, so it finds itself in the bottom half of both ranges, but more-or-less makes up for it with better equity realization.

As such, neither hand ever really folds or 4bs to such a 3b range HU IP.

OOP it's quite a bit more complicated and involves a lot more mixing, including a lot of situations where raise, call and fold have exactly equivalent EV in theory and which you go with depends on both theoretical and practical factors.

Multiway configurations are obviously their own kettle of fish. AKs is also a whole other kettle of fish in deep-stacked poker.

Live poker is also a zoo in a number of other ways (raise sizes, cold action, blind action, exposed cards, tells, etc), so that kinda makes up for the stability of villain's range construction across configurations.

So here we've seen why the only real answer to this question is "it depends." I'm going to go ahead and lock this up before it gets unreadable and/or turns in to troll bait.

OpP, if you have any actual hands you've experienced in this vein, please feel free to post one that you think is an average example and we can discuss with the actual factors included.