Q: My guess is most people (including me) don’t play 89suited (67,910,10J) the right way…
20BB 89 suited on button vs 3x raise?
40BB 89suited on button vs 3x raise?
100BB 89 suited on button vs 3x raise?
200BB 89 suited on button vs 3x raise?
What about 89s on the button vs raise/call before you act?
What about 89suited in BB?
Do we have to raise 89suited to play it?
What about 89 suited with 20BB on the button when it is folded to you? When it is limped to you?
So obviously I could have just asked what is the proper way to play 89 suited?
A: Good question, suited connectors are hands I see misplayed all the time. You’ve also zeroed in on the right variable to consider, as they are among the most stack-size-dependent of all hands.
With a very small stack, your only options are to re-raise or fold. Calling off 10% of your stack hoping to improve on the flop is a losing play. Against an aggressive opener, suited connectors are good restealing hands because they have decent equity even against a strong calling range. You still need a lot of fold equity to resteal with them, though; if you don’t anticipate getting a lot of folds, then you should be the one folding.
Actually, even with more than 100 BBs, fold equity is important. This doesn’t have to be pre-flop fold equity, though suited connectors are often good hands for light 3-betting. The point is that suited connectors aren’t pocket pairs, and you can’t play them that way. With a small pair and a large stack, you can often call simply to set-mine, planning to fold if you don’t make your set.
Suited connectors, however, won’t flop a strong hand nearly so often. Much more often, they’ll make marginal holdings like middle pair or a straight or flush draw. You can’t afford to keep calling bets hoping to improve, because the stacks aren’t deep enough for a big payoff if you make your hand. Besides, unlike with a set, it’s often obvious that your draw got there, so you may not get paid.
To play a suited connector in a heads up pot, you want to be up against a wide and therefore weak range. This enables you both to showdown the best hand reasonably often when you make a medium pair and to steal the pot reasonably often when you flop a draw and play it aggressively. Suited connectors, in other words, are good semi-bluffing hands.
In a multi-way pot, fold equity is less important because there are more people who will potentially pay you off when you make your hand, plus you’re getting better immediate odds to see the flop.
No matter how many people see the flop with you, it’s alsways very valuable to have position when playing a suited connector. With a small, you usually have either a very strong hand (a set) or a very weak one (an underpair to the board). There aren’t a lot of judgment calls, so they are relatively easy to play from out of position. Suited connectors, however, require a lot of judgement calls and a lot of fold equity. Both are easier when you have position.
The deeper you get, the more room there is to outplay people post-flop, and so the less important it is to re-raise pre-flop. With fewer than 50 BBs, I generally prefer to re-raise or fold suited connectors. As we get deeper, I’ll still re-raise if I think I have a lot of pre-flop fold equity, but against a player who is loose pre-flop I like calling.
The important thing to see is that I’m not just trying to flop a super-strong hand like a flush or straight. My main goal is take the pot away when I see a good opportunity, and those opportunities come along more often with suited connectors than with any other hand.
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Very valuable info there. I’ve been set-mining by not continuing unless I hit straight draw or flush draw on flop. Obviously, I’ve been folding too often.
Yeah. The other problem with that strategy is that a flush draw is not a set. Even when you hit that hand, you still aren’t a favorite to win, so you still need fold equity to play it.
Great post. I’d say another perspective to take aside from “what is the best way to play suited connectors” is the opposite–how do I balance my 3-betting range between strong hands and bluffs, and what are the best hands to use as “bluffs”? When you think about it, suited connectors are ideal hands to use for light 3-betting because they can flop a lot of hands we can barrel and even stack off with (straights, flushes, draws, 2-pairs, trips), as well as hands we can check and bluff-catch with (pairs).
So if we want to mix up our game and make our 3-bets less readable, hands like suited connectors are ideal ones to do so with, provided we do it with the right frequency–this means we fold them most of the time, and 3-bet once in a while (I think I remember Galfond saying he does it maybe a third of the time). Deeper stacked, we can throw in some calls in position, for implied odds, and also for balancing our calling range.
Very well said, thanks!
Mailbag: Calling UTG open raise (say 3.5X) on the button with small pairs (say 22 – 55). Unless UTG will stack off with one pair it doesn’t seem profitable to set mine. Say UTG has AA but will only lose 40 in a single raised pot, but will obviously get it in with a set of AA. I can’t call and then pot control when I hit a set. With set mining I see three cards, with AA UTG gets to see 5 cards, so my 12% for a set is reduced by 2%. So I have 10% chance of winning 40 and 2% chance of losing 100 so my EV is just 2 and I have paid 3.5 pre flop, so even if I was in big blind I can’t set mine. So what hands can I call in position with? Do good players either 3-bet or fold? Presumable when a good player calls it is with the idea of floating or bluff raising a c-bet.
Strangely, it seems to me that set mining in a 3-bet pot has better prospects. Say now UTG has 22 and button 3-bets to 12 with AA. Button can’t pot control with AA in a 3-bet pot so UTG EV is 10% of 112 less 2% of 96.5 or about 9 compared to the additional outlay of 8.5. Of course 3-bettor does not always have a hand to stack off with but if they are going to check-fold a significant number of flops then this might make up the difference. But everybody writes that shouldn’t call 3-bets with 22 – 77 and even with 88 it is necessary to bluff raise or float to make it profitable.
After playing a little on-line I am trying to develop some basic strategy for opening, calling, 3-betting etc. Trying to reconcile all the conflicting opinions and get it to make GTO sense is making my head spin!
Mailbag question addendum.
To anticipate some discussion about the relative merits of 53s versus AJo.
AJo will flop one pair or better 32.7% (one pair, two pair, trips, straight).
AJo can also flop three gs (KQx, KTx, QTx) 10.3%. For a total hit rate of 42.7%.
53s can flop
two OED – 7.0%.
5 gs – 17.2%
flush draw – 10.9%
One pair – 29.0%
two pair or better – 5.0% (made flush, straight, two pair, trips)
41.6% of gs will also have a bdfd and 27.7% of one pair will have bdfd.
If we decide to triple barrel any two pair+, OED, flush draw and any gs or one pair that has bdfd and check fold the rest, the overall hit rate is 38.1%.
But this means we are check-folding any naked gs and one pair, With rare exceptions all of AJo gs are naked and in fact are overall questionable as barrel-able. Flopping one pair on say QJx is also of questionable value.
So the flop-ability of AJo and 53s are comparable and it is arguable that 53s provides a higher incidence of opportunities.
Great analysis. Another point to consider is that if our opponent is tight and folds often to 3-bets, we’re turning AJo into a bluff, meaning villain folds all hands we dominate, and calls/4-bets with hands that we flip against or have us crushed.
If that’s the case, calling is the better move, because we stay in the pot with a hand in the upper part of our range, and we keep villain in the pot with his entire raising range.
On the other hand 53s, is too weak a hand to call with. This, combined with the reasons you state above, makes it a better hand to bluff with, i.e. 3-bet light. Add the fact that you are pretty much never dominated by any of his non-pair holdings.
Though I would probably wait for a slightly better suited connector, personally. 🙂
Thanks bigblatch. Actually with 53s versus AJo I was referring to opening UTG. But I am also very interested in what hands I can call an opening raise with at various positions at the table. I have pretty much worked out my 3/4/5 betting strategy but of course this finally depends on my calling/opening strategy.
One of the great things about 3-betting is that it forces the opener to define his range. If he doesn’t 4-bet with his premium holdings he is not punishing me immediately for 3-betting. If he does 4-bet then his calling range (if any) is truncated. Once {QQ+,AK} are taken out of his calling range it is amazing how little of any flop he can hit
I purposely chose 53s because it is kind of the runt of the litter as far as suited connectors go.
Thankyou for your comments – much appreciated.