1-2 NL Holdem $220 stack.

Table is fairly loose - agrressive.

Villain 1 - Sitting to my immediate left, about $120 in chips. Very loose passive. Doesn't understand the value of his cards. I'm thinking he is new to poker.

Villain 2 - Mid position. Seems very tight- like a rock. About $400 in chips. Has only been involved in a few hands in the past hour.

I am UTG and get dealt Ac-Qc. I bet $17. Villain 1 snap calls which he always does. But Villain 2 raises to $100. I fold my hand.

My choices when holding Ace-Queen in early position fee like:

a) Fold - nahh that's too tight, especially with suited cards.

B) Limp call - doesn't seem right, but there is some deceptive value. But with a table full of limpers, if an ace or a queen doesn't come (and no clubs) seems my hand is dead. I figured table was too loose.

C) Small bet - maybe $6, but that won't scare away the crowd at all at a loose table, I'm in the same position as limping.

D) large bet - probably everyone just folds as a big bet UTG screams "big hand" and I will get called mainly by small pairs, suited connectors and other 2 high card hands.

Good fold.

At best we are flipping.

Sometimes we are dominated.

Cliches apply.

"Out of position, out of action."

"Don't go broke with a queen in our hand."

"Under the gun, tight is right."

"Variance is good when we are in position" (ok I made that one up)

Folding here is not too bad if there are solid aggros behind us.

Easy fold to the V as described. Don’t be allured by its suitedness. Best case scenario, you flop an A or Q and you are toast anyway because rocks only only 3! AA to $100. Can’t flushmine for that price either.

Open raising AQss always UTG unless short in which case l/rr is best.

I don’t like the preflop thought process.

Would you raise to $17 with AA or KK?

I would make my standard open with AQ UTG. That’s $12 for me.

Ninety percent of the time I’m raising AJ and KQ UTG.

Ninety percent of the time I fold AT off from UTG.

Don't vary you bet sizes based on hand strength. When you run into a good player who notices it will get you killed. Even against run of the mill players being OOP means that raising bigger doesn't help that much, it just cuts down the number of garbage hands that villains call with.

What I found works well at 1/2 is vary your size by position. Have one size for EP, one somewhat smaller one for MP and one even smaller one for LP. The optimal size varies widely though, depending on how loose the table is my EP size could be anything from $10 to $20.

When you get 3 bet AQs is generally an easy fold. 1/2 3 betting ranges tend to be something like AQ+/JJ+. Your hand doesn't do well OOP against that range.

I would do the same thing but I like to vary my opens between 15 and 12, unless a straddle in which case I go 20 or 25, opening with this is way better than limping or folding, just sucks when you get raised

There is nothing wrong with adjusting raise sizes. Just do it for better reasons than hand strength relative to position.

The other night I started to raise to $20 with a wider range at 1/2 because there were several calling stations who I was comfortable playing bloated pots against.

There is a thought that because guys are price inelastic you should charge them since you're going MW anyways. But this doesn't include the cost of having a lower SPR on the flop and often playing villains hands for them. I'd avoid playing 6-way pots OOP if possible but prefer that over leaving your nose open with a larger raise pre. It usually won't matter if hero telegraphs the sizings either ($25 with KK+, $12 w rest)....the cost in ev from imperfect sizing from the first three positions can be made up from playing well at the rest of the table. Also less variance opening smaller in general.

To be clear this applies for soft $1/2 games.

To be honest I probably was utilizing position as well when doing this the other night. It’s partly because I am tighter than a .... OOP.