[sweetjazz]

A key factor in deciding how many hands to play preflop in a 3-4 handed game is whether there is a loose passive fish in the game, and whether he is willing to pay 3 bets to see the flop with most of his hands. In that case, you can raise more because the pot is protected.

But in a typical game where the donator likes to splash around aggressively but shows some discretion when facing a 3-bet preflop, you run the danger of being isolated OOP with a weak hand or playing a weak hand against an opponent who is aggressive and whose main weakness may be getting out of line with weak made hands. That weakness is hard to exploit when your hand mostly makes weaker made hands, and it also kills either the implied odds (your continuation bets are more likely to get checkraised) on a lot of your drawing hands or hurts your chances of winning unimproved (if you check behind to take free cards).