In my hope to grow into a confident winning PLO player, I'd like to lay down the foundation of strong play. This, of course, starts with preflop action. I find myself questioning too often whether I'm opening too tight or loose in given spots with certain ranges of holdings, and I feel like this only complicates and obfuscates the decisions i make on later streets.

In terms of any learning pursuit, especially in competitive environments, I've always been of the theory that one must develop muscle memories when it comes to developing different skillsets. Once you commit an important task to autopilot, you now have the ability to concentrate on bolder pursuits, and perform your task (or sport, or whatever) to a greater degree of proficiency. Here on RIO, Nick Howard had a great (and probably better elocuted) way of describing this --- in the form of developing and increasing your "contexts".

For poker, this means that putting your preflop ranges, maneuvers, and standards to a muscle memory will open up your ability to properly play the very complicated streets that follow. You can commit more earnest thought to f/t/r play, and then start developing those muscle memories. I want to build this baseline, as I feel my preflop play is severely lacking.

Sooooo, why not start here! I'm sure plenty of folks here are in a similar boat as myself, where even if our ultimate preflop decision is correct, or at least defensible to the point where it isn't a major leak, these decisions still come from a hazy understanding of what we SHOULD be doing as a general rule. I think this haze only creates more problems in our minds as we progress in a hand, along with the obvious truth that overplaying/underplaying certain hands in certain positions will lead to being put in spots that cost us BBs long term.

I'm not sure the best way to start, so I'll just jump right into a certain type of hand, assuming 6max games:

QQxx rainbow, ss, and ds the xx being raggier cards, ranging from well connected low cards to not at all connected low cards (72, 93 etc.)

What spots on the table are we opening these various holdings when folded to? Are we calling raises from certain other positions? mixing in some 3bets in spots? What about these hands out of the blinds ---- with a single raiser, multiple callers, etc. down the line?

Have at it.......