[StellarWind]

Hands with two useful cards need to be played. Valuing a hand like 86s higher than Q9o for 3-handed play seems very wrong. Flushes and straights don't come up very often and rarely win big pots anyway. These battles are about making one pair and having it stand up. That's a lot more likely to happen if your potential pairs are of decent size. Implied odds in this situation tend to consist of Q9 taking money from 86 when the flop comes 963. Or maybe the showdown is between your pair and the opener's big-little with paired kicker. Either way, the extra pair-over-pair pots that Q9 wins but small connectors would have lost are important pots because both sides will pay for a showdown and someone may even put a raise in someplace. The final pot will be around 8 BB and that's a big swing. The hands where only one player makes a pair (so Q9 and 86 have the same chance) are generally over faster and much less juicy.

When SB calls in front of me I play a lot more hands with two useful cards but no showdown value because the pot is bigger and it is more worthwhile to try and flop something. But I am less inclined to play a bad ace because the possibility of winning unimproved is mostly gone and what remains is a one-card hand with domination issues.