What starting hands you decide to raise with as an average stack preflop will, as with most things in poker, depend on several factors. You should evaluate each of these factors closely when deciding whether or not to open with a hand.
The first thing you should look at is, of course, the actual strength of your hand. The better it is, the more likely you should be to open with it. However, closely related to the strength of your hand is the position you are playing from. In early position, your raising range should be tighter than it is in later position. The reasons for this are straightforward. First, there are numerous players left to act and therefore there’s a good chance that someone might have a better hand than you.
Second, you are at a positional disadvantage; if a player chooses to call or reraise you, you will be providing them with information on every street post-flop because you will be first to act.
A third important factor is how your table is playing. The more aggressive your table, the tighter your range should be. The tighter your table, the looser your range should be. If you are playing at a passive table that likes to limp and call raises a lot, you should be somewhere in between loose and tight depending on the tendencies of the individual players.
As an average stack you also need to be aware of the stack sizes of the other players at your table. For example, if the player in the big blind has a very short stack or a very big stack, he will be more likely to play his hand and as such your hand needs to be stronger in order to open. A last factor to consider is your own image. Have you been raising a lot or playing very tight? You need to know what the other players at your table think of your play. If you've been opening a lot of pots because you've been getting good hands, they don't necessarily know this and could classify you as a loose, aggressive player and start playing back at you.
Raising from early position
What hands should you raise with from early position? There is no set answer of course, but in a typical situation your bigger pairs and bigger Ace hands like A-K and A-Q are certainly raising hands. It is important to occasionally raise with lesser hands that you would fold and/or limp with in order to keep your play a little unpredictable. A common problem is that players often give away their range of hands with how they play it. How many players have you encountered who always limp in and call raises with small to medium pairs from early position? Probably quite a few!
Instead mix it up and raise with these same hands from time to time and limp in with the hands you would normally raise with.
Raising from middle position
Of all the positions to be stealing from in an MTT, middle position can often be the most effective, simply because it's not as predictable a stealing position as late position. As such, middle position is where you can really start playing some marginal hands.
At the right kind of table, open-raising a wide range from middle position can be a profitable play. This will, of course, depend on the players at your table. If you are facing an opponent who never folds his big blind, stealing is not the best course of action (but playing good hands is!). However, if you have players at your table who don't like playing hands out of position and are not aggressively defending their big blinds, it can be the perfect time to pick up pots when you are card-dead.
Positional defenders
One thing to look out for though is what I like to call positional defenders. These are players who don’t necessarily defend their blinds, but instead tend to defend their cutoff or button. They call or reraise from the cutoff and button, both to prevent the blinds from joining in on the action and to isolate you, knowing they will have position post-flop –the good thing is these players are pretty easy to identify. If you see a player calling raises or making reraises frequently from late position, you’ve found a positional defender. This doesn't mean you have to stop raising first to act if there is one at your table; you just need to adjust your game to account for it.
In fact, there are a lot of chips to be gained from positional defenders if you play them right, because they won't be able to help themselves and will insist on making a play at the pot. If you open-raise and a positional defender calls and you hit the flop, be aggressive on the flop. If they raise, you can win a big pot. If they call, don't be afraid to check on the turn, because positional defenders love nothing more than floating on the flop in order to take a stab on the turn if you show you did not like their flop call.
In a typical situation, you should be raising most pairs and Broadway cards if you’re first into the pot in middle position. It’s also recommended to increase the frequency of raising with non-standard hands like suited connectors and suited Aces and Kings to keep your opponents off balance. You must of course evaluate the remaining players in the hand and their stack sizes and tendencies, but your range really should be wider here than when you are in early position.
Raising from late position
The problem with raising from late position is that in today’s game everyone expects you to do it. This in turn creates the tendency for players to want to re-steal, meaning you are far more likely to get played back at from the blinds when you raise from a late seat. This obviously depends on what sort of players you’re facing in the blinds, and careful observation can help you determine whether or not those juicy little antes are yours for the taking.
The best way to figure this out is to raise a player’s blinds a couple of times, preferably when it’s not going to damage your stack much. If they fold, it means they probably aren’t going to defend too lightly and you can liberally raise their big blind. Of course if you do it too often they will eventually play back at you (usually), but that’s okay.
Let’s say you make a standard opening raise of three times the big blind when the blinds are 500/1,000 with a 100 ante and the action is nine-handed. Each time you pick up the blinds you gain 2,400 in chips. If you open five times and the big blind only plays back at you one out of five times you end up making a profit of 6,600 in chips. And who knows, the one time they decide to play back you might actually have a hand and win even more chips.
Stealing an angry man’s chips
A defender will make it known quickly when they aren’t going to tolerate you raising their blinds. They will either reraise you preflop, call and lead out or check-raise on the flop. Obviously when you run into one of these players you’re going to have to make an adjustment, but don’t make the mistake of never raising this person’s big blind. The problem with that approach (apart from being weak/passive) is that when you do actually pick up a hand, your opponent won’t play back at you and will fold. You want them to play back at you when you have a big hand, so take the occasional stab at their blinds. After all, you do have position on them.
In late position in a normal situation, your range should be the widest it ever is. The normal factors apply including your opponent’s tendencies, relative stack sizes and your own image, but the actual strength of your hand matters least when you are raising from late position. You are operating at a distinct advantage because you are acting from a position where you will be in position post-flop. Even if you are reraised, there is some value in seeing flops because of this positional advantage.