In this series of articles I would like to take a look ay how to play connectors in Texas Hold’em poker. Notice how I merely referred to them as connectors and not suited connectors. This is because in No Limit hold’em games then having the connectors suited is a nice bonus but is not really crucial as most pots these days are not multi-way.
Which is just as well really as getting trapped underneath someone else’s higher flush is an absolute crippler. Once again we will be looking at full ring poker games with between eight and ten players active. The term connectors will be used to describe hands from 3-2 all the way to 10-9.
It is also worth pointing out that connectors do not necessarily have to be connected. As hands that have a gap or even two and three gaps can also be called connectors as they still have straight making potential. For example poker hands like 7-5,8-6, 9-6 etc can come under the heading of connectors.
Early Position
The number of times that I see people misplay connecting cards are too numerous to mention. I don’t know if it is the influx of televised poker or what but many people seem to be falling in love with this type of hand before the flop. One thing that you must remember with hands like these is that they are speculative hands.
This means that you require the situation to be such that you can sneak in very cheap and have the potential to make a lot of money either because a player has a huge stack and because you feel that he has the capacity to lose that stack by making a big mistake.
These crucial points are often overlooked even by poker players who should certainly know a lot better. So if I have any kind of connector in early position in a full ring poker game then I will just dump the hand….end of story.
Even if you have big stacks after you and you have also identified several players on the table who could possibly go for their entire stack, your position is still terrible and will remain so on every betting round.
It goes without saying then that if I am in early position and there has been a raise to my right or even just a call, I will still dump my hand. I do not know at this stage that there will not be a raise after me and a speculative hand like 8-7 or 7-5 cannot stand a raised pot. You will end up being out of position with the worst hand on too many occasions for the play to be anywhere near profitable and that is a poor online poker strategy.
Do not get confused here with tournament poker tactics. Remember that players in tournaments need to accumulate chips to win the tournament and will be looking to gamble more than they would necessarily do in a normal cash game.
This concept gets accentuated on the final table where blinds are coming around rapidly and have escalated to a much higher level thus placing players under more time pressure. Whenever you see players doing this on television then do not be fooled by what you are seeing and then try doing the same in your regular cash game.
