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A good h2h limit strategy probably plays 95% of buttons and 70% of big blinds or so, so at least 30% of the hands you play are neutral EV at best (symmetrical game, so at most 50% are +EV preflop and you play at least 80% of all hands).

Only playing hands you are +EV against a full range would be exploitable as it is way too tight in heads up.

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I don't agree with your 50% figure. Symmetrical, sure, but remember the blind bets. Once that money is committed, each player can have a higher EV in playing the hand than in folding.

(Related thought experiment - consider a game where each player has $101 in front of them before the hand starts, and then post $50 and $100 blinds. 100% of hands should be played from each position.)

Yeah that's fair. It was sloppy language from me.

The point I wanted to make was that you play hands where your odds of winning is <50% a large amount of the time.

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