People do tend to like sitting on my left, but the general feedback I've gotten from big blinds when I have the button is that they wish I would stop raising them so much.
A2o is just not a good hand. If you look at tough games, the GTO solution for preflop across a range of open sizes and rake never raises A2o, except for in heads up games. The bottom is usually A3o, and even with minimal rake and a 3bb open, we're folding A3o 2.2% of the time, and never opening A2o.

I usually steal OTB wider than GTO, but I'll use a hand like 63s over A2o, I have plenty of aces in my range, and off suit hands realize less equity then suited hands.

I don't think it is a huge mistake to open A2o when folded to on the button, and if we're going 4 or 5 bb pre then we're allowed to open more hands, but acting like A2o is a must raise when it is at best breakeven EV (especially folded to on the button, when you can just fold and let the blinds chop and get to the next hand faster), I dunno. Seems odd.

In live games, when we have a losing image we need to tighten up because we have less fold equity.

Here is the profitability of A2o on the button in six max across a range of sizes, according to GTO

basically agree with this, except for the bolded - we need to open tighter if we choose a larger sizing. i think whats going on in the profitability chart is that at the larger sizings we are opening a tighter range and getting 3b less often, which benefits A2o since we would fold to a 3b.

So, I believed this as well for most of my poker career, and it's incorrect at equilibrium. The smaller we open, the better odds we offer on a call, so the tighter we have to play to maintain fold equity. Larger opens, worse odds, the more hands we can play while maintaining fold equity.

If you compare 2bb vs 3bb GTO charts you'll see this

To put it in postflop terms - when we bet small, we have to have less bluffs for each strong and or they can just always call. Most hands preflop are bluffs, you don't want to be called.

im skeptical of this reasoning. you could also say: the smaller we open, the better odds we offer on a call, the wider the continuing range we are against, the more hands we can play profitably. we are also giving ourselves a better price on the steal with a smaller size.

also, this logic doesnt work if you keep extending it to eg 10x opens, so it would have to be something specific about the 2-5bb (or whatever number the inflection point is) range of open sizes. im not saying its impossible but it would be a really non-intuitive result.

Fair enough. Sorry for my unwarranted adamance about A2. The important thing to be stealing fairly wide here. In live games, almost no one is going to take the correct countermeasures of light 3!, playing aggressively postflop, etc.

I don't think the GTO solution on specific hands matters all that much to low-stakes live play except as a baseline. I'm surprised GTO doesn't have us stealing with A2 but in practice it doesn't matter much. We can probably open both A2o and 63s profitably in most games.

I doubt the solvers are accounting for the times the action goes: check-cbet-call; check-check; check-check; our hand is good. That is to say, it's much easier to realize your equity postflop than it "should" be. Hence your screenshot suggests A2o is unprofitable against perfect competition, but that doesn't say much about its profitability against passive opponents in small-stakes NLHE.

GTO isn't useless here, but it's just a theoretical starting point.

Your post is well-argued but I don't get your point here. Getting the hand over with isn't much of a virtue when it means giving up our most profitable hand positionally of this orbit.

I agree. There's no way that is the case. Otherwise, you would see larger sizes at high stakes online cash games. It's just not true. By using larger sizings, you let your opponents play tighter leading your range advantage to be decreased postflop, lowering your EV. Interestingly though, I feel people are even more passive vs. large opens despite the fact that they should have a higher 3b frequency. So when playing live despite opening larger you can still open wide considering that fact.

I agree that GTO isn't that important except as a baseline; however, GTO sims are run with 5% rake; having 10% rake in live games is massive, especially since other people tend to massively overcall. If I raise to $25 on the button, get called by the BB, who then check/folds to a $15 flop bet, I've put $40 at risk, and I'll win $52-25-8 (my open, rake, BBJP, tip), for a profit on the hand of $19. Online, even at 5% up to $20, I'd wine $52-25-2.60, for a profit of $24.60.
We have less fold equity preflop live, and we pay a much higher % of the pot in rake when we take it down on the flop, so raising pre a bunch to cbet and take it down is a much less profitable strategy.

Re: getting the hand over, if we win 10bb/hour, that works out to an avg EV of 0.3bb/hand, assuming 30 hands per hour roughly. So if our fold gets us to the next hand immediately, and our playing the hand means we play one less hand an hour, we need the EV to be more then 0 - closer to 0.15bb or more (cutting it in half cause we still have to wait for the dealer to do things, so it doesn't count as a full hand). Yes, having the button is a highly +ev situation, but the high rake and poor hand equity of A2o, IMO, makes it not worth going to a flop and feeding the rake / reducing the hands per hour.
It's a very minor point, and I'm happy to be wrong about it, but I think it makes sense?


So for starters, you do tend to see smaller UTG open sizes and larger OTB sizes at high stakes, and the Zenith GTO preflop ranges confirm that - it's only opening 2.5bb with 1.1% of it's range UTG, but going 2.5bb or larger with 42% of it's button range (and these are magnified as % when you look at just what % of our raising range we're using different sizes with).
OTB, when we go 2bb, the BB gets to continue ~60% of the time. When we go 3.5bb, they only continue 30% of the time. So yes their range gets a whole lot stronger! But we also win 1.5bb preflop much more often, which has a much higher value then having a higher equity edge postflop in a 4.5bb pot.

Agreed we can open much wider than GTO pre live, given the lack of proper 3betting, though I do think we overestimate how much we can, given how high the rake is. But if you're in a time game, go wild!