Quote Originally Posted by JustinSKS
We are opening AQ utg because most of our oppoents ranges are dominated by our hands and our hand is dominated by 16 less had combinations than AJ would be. We are only dominated by AK or AA, KK, yet we stil l have outs against KK. And the type of flops that are good for our hand are high card flops. AQ can connect with the flop and give you a lot of TPTK type hands, draws to straights and flushes if suited. Our opponents likely calling range is a lot weaker then our opening range.

For example if someone calls with KQ and the flop comes Qxx, we are likely to get their stack and they do not have very many outs to draw to. We have all of the weaker Q's dominated. If it came Axx we have all of the weaker A's dominated. So we are generally ahead of many opponents calling ranges. As you start going down the list such as AJ well, AJ is dominated by much more hand combinations. Were as AQ is not.

So we can extract value from the weaker kings and weaker aces when we do hit the flop. Also having AQ makes it less likely someone will have QQ or AA, so on a A or Q high flop we are likely ahead of all of the Q's because it's fairly slim someone will have AA or QQ and we will possibly stack the weaker ones.n

My two cents.
we are a pretty big dog against qq....



but my reasoning for it being the absolute bottom of my range utg, is that you need your range to be that much stronger in order to make up for the position you lack playing utg. Like Justin says we are only a big dog to qq,kk,aa,ak, we hit a lot of tp type hands and what not.

but yea, i dont play any wider than that because w/ aj or a10 it is easy to be up against top pair better kicker and be put in some tough decisions.