Dominating Power Hands
By a “dominating power hand,” I mean a hand that is likely to be a better hand than the hand a typical player will open with from an early position.
Medium and pocket pairs, 9s or above, seem to do well even against an early position opener.
The only other hands that seem to consistently do well are suited Ace, King or suited Ace, Queen.
Dominated Power Hands
A hand like Q 
T is an example of a hand that is likely to be dominated.
When I use the term “dominated power hands,” I don’t mean the term in exactly the same way, although I include those hands that are typically considered dominated hands.
I also consider other hands such as A K 
, which would not typically be considered a dominated hands.
By a “dominated power hand,” I simple mean hands that are usually good enough to open with but not good enough to call an early position opener.
This groups of hands contains a pair of 8s; Aces suited with a Jack, 10, or 9; any suited King; any suited Queen; any suited Jack; 10, or 9; any suited King; any suited Queen; any suited with a Jack; and unsuited Aces.
Note that with the majority of the hands that you should open with, you should not call an opener with.
There are two reasons you can open with more hands than you can call an opener an opener with.
First, when you’re first to act, you’re against a group of unknown, random hands.
You should open with hands that tend to be better than a group of random hands.
When someone else has opened, his hand is no longer random. Now you’re against one fairly good hand plus a bunch of random hands.
It’s the information that one player has a fairly good hand that makes it correct to fold most hands you would have opened with yourself.
Second, you can open with some marginal hands such as 8 
8 or A 9 because most players tend to call an opener with worse hands than they would open with.
That’s a mistake on the part of your opponents, and it’s one you can exploit by opening with hands that might not seem like strong hands.
This is one of the situations where the kinds of mistakes your occonents tend to make have a large effect on the value of your hand.
Pick the Right Table / Picking a Seat / Theories of Poker / Betting Theory: The Odds
A Theory of Starting Hand Value
A Theory of Flop Play: Counting Outs and Evaluating Draws
The Dynamics of Game Conditions / Table Image / Player Stereotypes
Women and Poker / Spread-Limit Games / Double Bet on the End Games / Kill Games
Short-handed Games / Tournaments / No-limit and Pot-Limit Poker
