some of the best players in the world play against some of the other best players in the world who 3b pre and crap like that.

ATs is an easy peezy lemon squeezy muck UTG through like MP3, but i think AJs is right on the cusp. not a FR player so not certain what side of the fence it falls on in a plain old jane old standard table and situation.

not sure we should be basing our starting hand ranges on what the pros can play profitably as opposed to considering how much value we stand to get on how many boards based on the continuing ranges of the players behind us.

at the risk of making spenda go apeshit, i'll answer the question about AJ playing better against shorties: it's SPR. it's much harder to play TPTK or TPGK OOP w 100bb effective stacks than say if effective stacks are the size of the pot as of the flop or even if a PFR puts villain all in (because our hand has great all in equity). hands like small PP's and SC's play much better with higher SPR's where semi bluffs are more effective and nut type hands like sets and flushes get paid better