[Closed] Starting Hands Charts

Originally posted by muel294
Is it maybe because we have to get our steal raise through another opponent

This. The aim of the steal is to get everyone to fold. Less players = more chance of successful steal = more hands fit to steal with If the stacks are deeper then your considerations on positional advantage for post flop play make sense.

Just another quick one

How come for the early phase in the special notes section it says we should 3 bet all in with AK if there is a reraise behind us or someone raises 6BB+.

Surely getting all-in pre for 75BB pre is really high variance? Dont we have to be fairly sure that our opponents are:

1) Going to fold a lot of the time
2) When they do call we have the crushed (eg AQ,AJ, AT, KQ, KJ) mostly and are not just flipping (against any other pair)

Although early chip leads are nice they often dont equate to a win or ITM finish do they? Also, say if we lose a flip when we get called the chips we lose are of greater value than the ones we gain when we win.

I am not saying I would fold the spots, just that I would not always 3 bet all in, for example it might be better to flat call an UTG raise in position on the button for pot control and take it from there. Whereas if action is folded to the button who raises 6BB it is probably much better to shove than play a big pot OOP?

I also disagree with the SHC on the special note about AK play because if you bet and get re-raised chances are that you are facing a big pair that he is not going to give up (otherwise he probably would have just called hoping to make a set). So when he calls your push, I don't want to leave it up to a coin-flip. (My limited experience is that he does call more often than fold...)

So for me, it is not an instant push. I really take my time and consider the hand... (i.e. info I have on the raiser, other players in the pot, chip stacks, position, likely post-flop scenario, etc...) In other words my AK play is very, very situation dependent.

I would have to say that in practice if I have more than 20 big blinds and am possibly coin-flipping for more than 1/2 my stack pre-flop, I usually fold the AK.