How Suited Connectors Are Costing You Money

Very nice article.
I find suited connectors to be most profitable in multiway, limped pots where I am in late postion. At the levels I play, top pair seems to be so magical to a lot of players, when I hit a straight or flush, they cannot lay their top pair down. And in a limped pot, the investment is small; when I miss the flop, it’s an easy fold.

Yeah, you generally don’t play small pairs heads-up for a big raise, and you don’t play suited connectors/1-gappers/2-gappers in a heads-up pot for a raise.

Now, say, I’m on a table full of limpers, with 78s, i’m going to limp. If the guy next to me raises to $10, and 3, 4, or more people call, I’m calling too.

I don’t know what 1/2 game you play, but here in Detroit, if you want people out of a pot, pre-flop, you’re raising $20+.

Every bit about where, when, and how I’ll play suited connectors (or any hand, for that matter) is “table dynamic” dependent. If I know that the table is loose and raises won’t be respected preflop, the hand goes up in value (due to the number of people who are going to call). If I’m going to be against one opponent (due to his raise, etc.), whether or not I’ll play them is dependent on my perception of his abilities, and my perception of his perception of me. If I think he/she has problems laying down big hands, and therefor will pay me off when I do connect, then I’ll play them (for that reason). To do otherwise would be either leaving money on the table or negative EV. The point being, playing these type of hands is a “it depends” situation…

Couldn’t agree more! When I was a dealer the most used excuse for playing a hand they shouldn’t have was “but they were suited!” Overrated.

Nice blog by the way

<-New Reader

But, but, but . . . Doyle says that he loves to limp in with suited connectors and get raised behind. I read it in SuperSystem!

Seriously, does Doyles advice “work” in deepstack games where let’s say you have 300xBB and so does your foe?? You limp. He makes it 5xBB. Folded back to you. If you call, now the stack pot ratio is ~29:1 I know position is bad, but lots of money behind for bluffing the turn or river scare card. Or would you advise open raising in midposition with suited connectors in a deep stack game to vary your play? Or, in the words of Ciaffone, good players don’t build draws out of position when the chips are deep?

Bruno:

I agree that “it depends”, strictly speaking. In other words, there may be some very players who will ALWAYS pay off with their stack even though you obviously hit your flush, NEVER put you to tough decisions when you flop middle pair-no kicker, and NEVER cause you problems when you steal OOP. Such players will of course be big donors, but they probably exist in live $1-2 games.

However, they exist a lot less than we’d like to think. Ed’s article is spot-on IMO because it’s so easy to play implied odds hands thinking, “If X, Y, and Z happen then I could win a huge pot.” But without considering the actual probability of X, Y, and Z, you’re no better than playing 8-3 offsuit in hopes of flopping a full house!

For us intermediate players, folding SC (and occasionally low pairs) OOP requires the same discipline as when we first learned to fold queen-ten for a raise. Back then I was just learning, so if a poker book said, “You must not cold-call with queen-ten,” I paid attention! But now it’s easy to deceive myself. I’ll rationalize: “This author doesn’t know how bad my opponents are!”

Perhaps, but false optimism can kill intermediate players same as it can kill beginners!

Great Blog, I just found it on the net. I have been reading some of your articles for a couple of hours, good stuff.

I use to get in all sorts of trouble with suited connectors, I think watching Daniel Negreanu to much and trying to be like him.

I would some times flop 2 pair, knowing the guy had a big pair, AA, KK, QQ etc only to see my hand countered on the turn or river when the board repeats and doesn’t fill me up.

Keep it up, added to my reader!

In the 9c7c example I would probably raise against weak opposition because then I have more possibilities of stealing the pot either preflop or on the flop.

I agree that if you limp then call the raise to $10 that is like throwing money away

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Correct play is usually to raise preflop in that situation

In a live $1-2 game? What does raising preflop accomplish, other than making it likely that you’ll be out of position against an almost-as-large field with a bigger pot?

Set up a CB? Perhaps, but you’d better know if the players behind you who are likely to call your raise are also extremely loose postflop. There’s not a lot of point to continuation betting a no-pair hand against someone who’s going to call on the flop and maybe also the turn and river with any pair. The majority of live $1-2 players aren’t that bad but enough are that I’d want to see people folding to continuation bets before I started planning the hand around them.

[...] few months back I wrote an article about playing suited connectors titled “How Suited Connectors Are Costing You Money.” The basic premise of the article was that a lot of people play suited connectors in the wrong [...]

[...] connectors are widely misunderstood hands. A while back I wrote an article called “How Suited Connectors Cost You Money.” In that article I talked about a common way that many people misplay suited connectors, and [...]