situation i have trouble with (60-40BB stacks)

Ok, lets say i have a hand like JJ-99 or AK-AQ in the BB.

a 50BB stack raises 4x on the CO, he's relatively unknown, but seems semi tight and semi aggressive. folds to me.

Now, if i reraise to 3x it puts me in an awkward situation, because if he calls the pot becomes 24BB's and he has 38BB's behind. This is very awkard situation for me because if i miss with AK then i can't c-bet without being commit to a shove, so essentially i'm overbetting the pot. I also feel awkward checking. If i have JJ-99 and an overcard comes it's also going to be awkward to play.

So should i just be cold calling raises with these hands? What's your overall strategy?

Or is it ok to play in pots with such weird stacks.

I would say adjust your reraise size so you can put him all in if you do hit. Professional NLHE goes into detail about SPRs, I am still not too good at calculating them off the top of my head. If you min raise here with the above hands the pot is 16BBs. Remaining stacks are 42BBs so your SPR is just under 3. You can c-bet 12BBs making the pot 40 if he calls allowing you to shove the remaining 28BBs in if you think you are good. You lose a lot of fold equity this way if you think he will be the type to be strung along. If thats the case I think waiting for a big hand and value towning him might be better.

with out reading replies:

3bet more preflop making a flop shove roughly around PSB!!!

whiffed AK can c/f but you can balance by check/calling made/commited hands regardless of flop texture.

i guess you cud 3bet less therefore u make a c/b that can fold to a shove. we can bet less since opp cant set mine profitably vs us.

I try to get more than 1/3 of the stacks in preflop so I can shove any flop. If his preflop raise size makes that difficult to do then I dont think calling is too bad. We are stacking AQ/AJ/KQ etc. on lots of flops anyway.

there was a CR vid by maybe Jman who said calling preflop sucks, its way better to 3bet.