[mistrpug]

I'm thinking that just because a hand has an overall -EV, doesn't mean it shouldn't ever be played. Maybe my logic is off here, but this is what I'm thinking:

If you never played a hand, your EV would be -7.5 Big Bets/100 (SB + BB 10 times) Those hands you mentioned (AA, KK, QQ...) are all good enough to have +EV when you play them, but ones just below that do not. However, playing those second tier hands give you less -EV even though overall it's still not +EV.

I'll try to explain a little further... ATo is -EV overall. If you played 100 hands and got ATo everytime, your BB/100 would be -7.5 (actually not quite since you will probably hit some flops with a free play in the BB). Just because playing that ATo "optimally" 100 times won't make it +EV overall, doesn't mean it's wrong to play it. Your BB/100 should be raised to close to 0 BB/100, which is good.

I hope that makes a little sense, and that I'm not totally off-base here.