Yeah there are a lot of questions in that post. I'll tell you what's really important though in poker... POSITION!
Yesterday I was up against a nitty TAG and I raised him from the dealer spot with 2 7 off suit. He flat called my raise. So I see the flop and he checks so I fire a 2/3 pot size bet. I still have 7 high... and they check the turn so I fire another 2/3 size pot. No river card was needed. I took the preflop money & made some value bet money on the flop with 2 7 off suit (7 high).
Several times I have won with 2 7 off suit, but the reason is because of aggression and position. If the villain/opponent is passive, you can take advantage of that and represent a hand that they can't call you with. If they 3 bet you or re-raise you on the flop just happily fold. Hell, you can even pretend like you're going in tank mode before you fold your garbage hand.
Just mix it up. If you play too tight, people will not give you as much action when you pick up premium hands. So sometimes all you will pick up is the small & big blind in cash games when you're holding QQ/KK/AA. It's always a crappy feeling, but least you didn't get cracked. However, you're hoping that someone calls with a hand that is dominated so you can get more value from your premium hands.
I'd say more, i'd say Poker is a game of situations and you had position, the perfect enemy and you HAD that information on him.
If he was a calling station you wouldn't even get in with that 27o pre-flop would you?
Probably not, you'd rather wait for cards because if he's calling anyway, you want to get paid the river and you want do extract the max value, instead of having your
bluff called by pair of sixes.
@op
And this is the reason we play tight, there is a purpose in this, we just don't play tight because "poker works like that", it doesn't...
We raise with AQo expecting to hit top pair against a 8 or T who thinks he's good and make him pay for it.
Our intention with raising ATs from MP is to get called by combo's by JT, QT, KT, flush draws, str8 draws (ATs often hit nuts against those)...
While ofc avoiding these situations ourselves....
By playing tight you're almost ahead of everyone most of the time.