Beginner question: "Big hands are for big pots, small hands are for small pots" ?

I think this is a good question and it's important to look at a few key points.

The bigger the bet/raise the tighter your villain will call. The smaller the bet/raise the wider your opponent will call. So if we have a small hand and we start dumping money into the pot we are going to put yourself into a position where villain is only going to call with hands that beat us. You may be ahead of villians range on the flop with middle pair, but potting it means when he calls he is going to be far ahead of your middle pair. If you have the nut straight you're going to get him to call with his best hands, but you are ahead of them.

So we want to play small pots with small hands and big pots with big hands.

This gets a little more complicated when it comes to things like denying equity, but you aren't going to triple barrel bottom pair for protection.

Does this make sense?

That actually makes a lot of sense to me and sheds some light on it. Thank you!
I still wonder though, if there wouldnt be some situations, where the potential tightening of the opponents range could be compensated for with the fold-equity, the bet might provide, or if there are some further strategic explanations, which go beyond this mere calculation of range-equities.

Yes! There are situations like that! You can fold out so much of their range with certain bets then the EV is positive, but you generally don't want to do it with any hand. Having a plan for hands in you range is vital part of a winning strategy. We always take the line that is maximum EV, not just positive. This is a general rule, and a good one, but there will always be some exceptions, but when we bet big we want to do it with big value hands, or really good draws. Because the good draws can make big hands by the river and big hands we want to get money from. If start trying to generate folds with big bets and bottom pair, what hands would be have left to play small pots? We would just be dominated too much when they call, and when we don't bet big we are always weak. A good player would take advantage of that.

It's been a long day and that might have been a long run on sentence. Sorry if it is confusing.

Also equity is just the pertantage the hand will win when it gets showndown, you have to take into account playability. This starts to go deep really fast.

Welcome to poker!

Hi Chowchow12 thanks for you reply,
I think my misunderstanding of this concept actually leaked over into my game. About my first 2k hands in SH were marked by overly agressive play on the flop and turn which eventually made me lose a lot of buy-ins.
I started to adapt however and it is working much better.

As I explain it to myself now:
At each spot where one can bet, one either wants to bet ones whole range or one doesnt. If one doesnt want to bet ones whole range (which usually is the case for balance reasons and because most villains don't fold enough to make the first option profitable) one should figure out, which hands in ones range have the least incentive to bet. These are usually the mediocre hands. Most of our strong hands we would like to bet for value. While a lot of draws or hands with good blocker effects we would like to bluff with for balance and fold equity. A lot of the time betting the mediocre hands wont make fold better/call worse. Unless we have a very good idea of our opponents folding and calling range, there is usually not much sense in betting those. So most of the time it would be safer and wiser to check and eventually call for bluff catching.

I guess your point about playabillity is pretty fair. I just recently got to comprehend, that especially in deep-stack scenarios one shouldnt overestimate the raw equity of a hand, but instead consider a lot of other factors like implied odds, how the hand realizes its equity, the probabillity of it to get dominated etc.

Good luck and thanks a lot for your help!