Why AK is considered a good all-in hand when it clearly is not?

It depends a lot on many things. Your question is so broad that it is difficult to make a proper answer, but I'll try.

About 3betting, it depends on what the positions are. If you are MP vs UTG you probably don't have to 3bet AK hands. But in late positions where ranges are wider, it makes sense to 3bet with a wider range and AK is definitely one of your best hands. On top of your equity vs villains calling range you should also think about how often you make villain fold immediately with your 3bet. And also you should consider the times where villain just calls your 3bet and you get to play postflop. If you are not all-in preflop, the equities don't mean much.

It is the same thing with 4betting. There will be many 3bet bluffs in certain spots and you have to defend against those. AK still is one of your best hands and when you think about how often villain just folds directly, you start to see how profitable the spot is.

Against 5bet shoves you don't need to win 50% of the time to make profit. You have already invested so much money. If you have 4bet your AK to 25bb and villain shoves (total 100bb).. Then the pot will be 125bb total and you have to call just 75bb more. This means that you start to see profit on the long run even if you win only 38% of the time.

These things depend a lot on positions, stack depth, action preflop and so on, so I can't give you an answer how to play AK on every situation. But I hope you got the point. It is not as simple as just looking at the equities

Thanks for the answer! It's really informative and helpful indeed. Sadly, I'm still left a bit confused, in all these situations you described, shouldn't I act the same with 99+ pairs since they have better chances of winning?

There is a lot more to it when creating ranges. As I mentioned the equity you see matters only if you are all-in and know villain's range.

AK for example blocks some of villain's strong hands.
And it connects more often with the board OTF. What if villain calls and you don't hit? It might not be great to cbet mid pair but if you miss with your AK you still can have some kind of draws or backdoor draws and you still have 2 overcards that can give you the best hand so you should be able to continue more often.
What if villain 4bets you? I think 99 probably should be folded quite often but AK can continue again.

If you are new to poker I totally understand that these things are a bit difficult, but you will start understanding them a lot better when you study a bit. For now you can just use some ranges that are available to you for free. You can check out Confidant's beginner course. Or use weazel's 6max walkthrough ranges.

I see there are depths in this game I'm far away from. I'll check the courses for sure. Many thanks for your patience and time!

No problem
Poker is a difficult game and there is always something new to learn. That is what makes it interesting, at least for me

At shortstack depth you will be straigh up ahead which happens in tournaments or against fun players that lost most of their stack even when you are facing a direct all-in

And deep stacked there is always dead money so a big reason you go all-in with AK is to collect it along with having equity when called
Download this free program
https://www.pokerstrategy.com/poker-software-tools/equilab-holdem/
And you'll be able to see how AK does vs a range of hands instead of e.g. just one pocket pair

You can also see how many combinations of strong hands he has - QQ+AK is what everyone stacks off with
This is without card removal

And this is taking our AsKd into consideration

So instead of having 34combinations of QQ+AK he always calls, he now can have only 21, so he will fold a whopping almost 40% time more often if that's the range he's willing to go all-in with!

@Lemon
How the f did you manage to make AKo a favourite over a range of QQ+, AKo, AKs..........

I'm a pokerstrategy coach, when you achieve that level of mastery even equities bend at your will

This is what I get for that scenario:

       Equity     Win     Tie
MP2    61.18%  40.50%  20.68% { QQ+, AKs, AKo }
MP3    38.82%  18.15%  20.68% { AsKd }

Cheers,
VS

I'm fairly new to Poker and I'm left amazed by how strongly people suggest 3bet, 4bet and all-in with AK. I checked the statistics and what I got is

Here is your answer

3bet, 4bet and all-in with AK

vs 4bet you make 5bet bluff with AKo. Not for value. Vs 3bet, you make 4bet (again not exactly for value) , let's say 23bb. And vs shove, you need 23/2 = 11.5, 50-11.5=38.5% equity.

Next question is maybe "Why the people go All in pre-flop with TT ?".

When we go all-in with AK we don’t want the opponent usually to call. When he folds, we win the pot. When he calls, we have decent equity. And we block his calling range which means he folds more often than he would if we had 72.

All these combined makes money.

And we like money.

Originally posted by Onogondur
I see there are depths in this game I'm far away from. I'll check the courses for sure. Many thanks for your patience and time!

I'm in the same place like you, sometimes I don't believes the depths that this amazing game reaches to. It's simply unbelieveable how complex it can get.

Anyway, it seems that AK will be a very good hand to shove with at most of the times..

And now imagine we are all doing this Real winner will be only pokerstars because pokerstrategy user vs pokerstrategy user will do this same strategy and rake is paid Real winner is not player but pokerstars i think this cant be winning strategy am i wrong?
Only if one player will be weakness postflop this can be profitable...
Too hands like KK... We can go all in preflop only if we know we are not play vs rock/nit because we cant beat him with KK his 4bet-5bet all in will be AA or KK... Rake is paid
You must have fish where it can be profitable or you can exploit nits/regulars with wider 3bet/4bet but without shove.

AK is the best unpaired hand.
There are 13 pocket pairs, and 6 combinations of each, so 78 combinations of pairs, out of 1326 total.
That is 6% of all hands.
AK (16 combinations) is ahead of all the rest.
Once the cards are dealt, it all depends on runout.

It would be wrong to suggest to anyone that AK is a cinch to win.
vs a random hand, it is a 2:1 favourite:

       Equity     Win     Tie
MP2    65.75%  64.91%   0.84% { AKs, AKo }
MP3    34.25%  33.40%   0.84% { random }

It is inconceivable that such a hand could be folded pre-flop under normal circumstances.
However, like any hand, it has to be played in the context of the hand itself.
you must never make decisions based solely on the strength of your hole cards!

So feel free to play AK however you like -- fold, bet, raise, 3Bet, 4Bet or shove -- all are valid moves with AK in the context of the hand itself.

Peace,
VS