[Femto]

I was just pondering this, and I could be waaay off, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

In the early stages of lower limit STTs (11-55), when I open-raise EP with AA, I find that I almost always lose my stack when the one of the 1 or 2 callers flop a set. I can’t ever seem to lay it down, since 90% of those players will come over the top of you when they hit their top pair on the flop.

If they have a pair, and they will for sure get my stack if they hit their set, they don’t know it but they have odds to call with as much as 1/8 of their stack heads up (so a 125 chip raise in the first few hands of the 10/15 level). So does it ever become “correct” to make a preflop raise of more than 1/8 of their stack to force them into making a mistake here? Or does the expected value of putting in a normal raise in relation to the blind size and losing to a set even out because of the times when they’ll dump a bunch of chips with just top pair?

It looks and feels unnatural to open with a raise like that in level 1, but I just don’t feel like I’m forcing the pairs to make a mistake. I'm just sick of all these 10th places with my AA and tryin' to see if I can plug a leak.

Thoughts?