I seem to get premium cards in early position a lot more than anywhere else. I’m usually UTG or in the SB when I get AA AK KK QQ. Or maybe it just seems that way.
A big raise from early position will scare everyone else off the hand, most of the time. So you end up just taking the blinds, which is poor value for such a strong hand.
If I limp, many times it’ll limp all-around, and now I’m up against 8 players having a chance to hit something on the flop. Not great odds for winning the hand with just a big pair now. This is especially true early in a tournament when the blinds are low and the table is full. Less of a problem when the blinds have gone up to 150 or so and we’re down to 5-7 players.
The later in the tournament, the most likely it seems someone will raise before it gets to the button. If so, then check-raising is pretty good. If a lot of players have put chips in, a pot-size raise can often take the hand, unless someone else also has a pocket pair and thinks they can challenge you. I usually prefer to get one caller with AA than to shut the hand down, so a pot-size bet is usually better for that than a shove, or depending on your stack size sometimes a half-pot bet.
The only time I shove pre-flop with a premium pair is if I’m late to act in the hand and someone else has already raised up big. The purpose of this is to isolate the hand to just me and them. This usually works, but a significant minority of the time it seems like some other yahoo will want to get all-in with us… maybe 30-40% of the time? Especially if there’s still 6 or more at the table.
I’ve noticed that, especially later in the game, when the blinds hit 300+, and the table is down to 3-5 players, shoving with rag pairs becomes a thing. People doing this are usually counting on getting no calls and just want to steal the blinds, but heads up even a pair of 3s or 4s plays reasonably well. It seems more common with the shorter stacks at the table. I’ve seen it very often, I’ll be sitting on a stack from 7000-12000 chips,
4-5 players, the rest of the table is somewhere between 2000-4500 each, and someone will shove 55 or 66 or 77. It’s close to the bubble, no one wants to challenge and go out 4th or 5th and get no chips out of the game. So it plays pretty well. Stealing the blinds at 150/300 with 1-2 limpers in the pot as well is quite profitable for 55-77. You can do that 2-3 times and suddenly you find yourself #2 or #1 at the table. And usually the other players are going to get out of your way the first 2 times, figuring you to have QQ+. After 3-4 shoves, they start to suspect your range is significantly wider than that, so it’s best not to do it more than that, and tighten back up. But then doing this sets them up for when you do wake up with KK or AA and shove it, you’ll be more likely to get called by someone and take them.