[Vincent Lepore]

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According to Pokerstove hands like QTo and T9s have an equity edge against 9 other random hands. So what's the reasoning behind folding these from UTG?

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Who says to fold them? If it's Sklansky and Malmuth then one would think that there must be a logical reason. As it turns out there might be a good reason for not playing these hands from UTG. Sklansky and Malmuth classify UTG and the next two players to act as Early position. The key here is the word position. Hands like these have an equity edge against 9 unknown hands if all of the cards are dealt out and no further betting is allowed so in NLH an arguement can be made for playing these hands depending on stack size and blind ratio. But in most live poker, not tournaments, hands are not played this way.

"Play" is another key word in determining the value of a hand. How well does a hand play against x opponents is a prime consideration when deciding if one should play the hand.

I hope we can agree that in limit poker when you raise or call with a hand like Q,T or any hand for that matter from an early position your raise or call must produce a positive EV for it to be correct. What happens whenever you enter a pot you affect the dynamics of the situation. Some considerations when making a decision to play are what type of players are left to act and how well each of them play. If you are known by good players to play hands like Q,T from early it will certainly affect what hands they play against you. We could go on about the dynamics of a hand and the factors that govern what constitutes a +EV play but it would be a long drawn out explanation. Suffice it to say that determining the EV of a poker hand is situational dependent. When someone tells you that Q,T is not profitible when played early they are using their experience coupled with some hand analysis to make a general statement that in typical games this hand does not play well enough from early position to produce a profit.

Vince