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With 15xBB in middle position, you can open push 33 or AJ.


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Very untrue. Once you hold meaningfully more than 10BB, open-pushing is virtually never correct. Basically, this is a game-theory issue. If you push on decent hands but not excellent ones, your opponents will figure it out and call you too often for your pushes to show a profit. If you push on all decent+ hands, you will lose more EV by killing action on your excellent hands than you will gain by stealing the blinds on your mediocre hands.

With 15 BB, AJ is a MP raise, planning to fold to a push from a non-maniac who has you covered. 33 is a MP fold if there are no limpers.

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Pushing for 15xBB without ante from 6th position with AJ or 33 is EV+. You could standard raise with a small pair, but pushing is better than folding. It is very favorable if you get called by AQo or AKo. You are a significant favorite plus pot odds.

In general, it is probably better to standard raise with most hands. However, if I raised with AJ from mid position, I would usually call/push a reraise.

If you are thinking of folding a small pair, you are better off pushing it, even if people know what you have.

It is not necessarily bad to push some hands, standard raise some hands, and limp others. Your opponents may not be able to tell what type of hand you have by your actions. Say you push from mid position with small pairs, ATs AJ, KQ, KJs, and some suited connectors. You standard raise with AQ-AK, 99-KK, and various speculative hands and mediocre hands, particularly if you think you can steal the blinds. You limp with some speculative hands and AA. You could mix this up a little, sometimes standard raising with AA, sometimes pushing with AK, sometimes limping, raising or pushing with JTs or 77.

It becomes hard for opponents to put you on a hand. They can't get out of the way of your standard raises, because you mix in enough raises with speculative hands with the premium hands. If they come over top of your limps, you may have a big pair. You can also play AK or JJ for a limpriase sometimes, so it is harder to read a limpraise as a big pair. When you open push, you probably have a marginal raising hand, but it could be a pp, high cards, or a suited connector.

An overbet open push is much more playable in live tournaments where there is 3xBB is blinds and antes. This is different from Party Poker with 1.5xBB in blinds. With a large ante, you could just open push or reraise allin most of the hands you want to play with 15xBB. This approach is most useful if you are one of the shorter stacks and/or you are not as good a player as the others postflop.