Playing The Connectors

Moving on from playing pairs, we now come to the next hand type in this series of lectures and that is the connectors. Anyone who has been following this series of discussions of just how to play various types of hands before the flop will have seen us take a look at all pocket pairs from 22 all the way through to the pocket aces in the past few issues.

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 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 as J-10 and higher will come under a separate future heading on Broadway cards.

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 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 players who should certainly know a lot better. So if I have any kind of connector in early position in a full ring 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.

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.

Middle Position

Nothing really changes much even when you get to middle position. Once again if you are sitting in a game where the players are passive and have fair sized stacks and also have the capability to lose their entire stack needlessly then you could speculate in un-raised pots a little more but the pot has to be categorically un-raised. Don’t try getting cute by calling an early position raise hoping that you can take the pot away from your opponent who likely holds nothing but high cards.

Remember that your position although better than early position is still not that great and there are several players still to speak after you. The problem with your hand is that you need to hit the flop big time in order to continue and a pre-flop raiser will more than likely fire at the flop irrespective of what arrives so what are you going to do then when you miss?…..or were you hoping to flop a straight or a flush. If you were than I don’t much fancy your chances.

Depending on the game, if it has been folded around to me and I have a tight table image and the game is relatively normal with no aggressive players to my left or there is not much re-raising going off then I may sometimes throw my opponents a curve ball by raising from middle position with a connector whether it is suited or not. You simply cannot wait until you have a premium hand all the time before you raise otherwise your play is just going to be too predictable to your opponents.

But there is one thing that needs to be pointed out here and that is that there are in fact slight differences with regards to middle position. For instance in a nine handed game then after the two blinds, we have the button and the cut-off who are in the two latest positions on the table. This leaves five players in between the blinds and the cut-off in a nine handed game. Early position could certainly be classed as the first two to speak after the big blind but could also involve a third person as well.

So when early position becomes middle position and when middle position becomes late position is not always clear cut and especially when players are regularly sitting out or leaving the game. In a typical ten handed game, I would be much more inclined to raise from say the seat to the right of the cut off than I would the seat that is three seats to the left of the under the gun player despite many theory books stating that both are middle position.

Late Position

It is vital that whenever you sit down at any poker table that you try your hardest to assess the players on your table. There is no room in poker for mental laziness. When I am in late position and I have only just sat down at the table then I will make it my goal to see what the blinds are made of and the people to my left. Those blinds are crucial to my success, if they play back aggressively then I will attack them less but if they are the passive types then I want to know quickly and I will raise from late position with hands like connectors whether they are gapped or not.

Once again if the pot has been raised before it gets to me then I will dump them in the overwhelming number of cases as I just do not want to be going up against premium hands against trigger happy players with small to medium stacks with speculative hands like connectors. So if a player raised before me then I will simply pass the hand. But the main difference with being in late position is that I now have more opportunity to attack the blinds if it has been folded around to me or if there has been numerous limpers then I may take a flyer and limp along in the hope of flopping a big hand and getting paid off.

But these are long shot propositions and straights and flushes do not come along that often and your flush is not even the nuts and could cripple you anyway. If I consider raising with a hand that is weaker than the average conventional raising hand then I will not just do it with any old piece of garbage. It is true that any two cards can win in poker but if you raised with anything then you would simply be raising too often and you would find players coming back at you a lot more. But those little connectors have the capacity to make a big hand that is fiendishly concealed and can break someone…..as long as that someone is not you of course!

The Blinds

I think that one of the most misplayed positions in poker and especially in No Limit hold’em is the play in and around the blinds. In my experience people defend their blinds too much in this version of the game. I don’t know if they have a limit hold’em mentality or what or maybe they instinctively know that the pre-flop raiser is coming in light and are electing to make a stand against this would be aggressor.

But the best play in the majority of cases if it has been raised is to simply fold the hand, this even applies if the raise has come from a steal position. Of course there are indeed exceptions to every rule and if you are constantly getting raised by the same player after it has been folded to them on the button then you cannot simply fold your hand in the big blind all the time otherwise this will just encourage this aggressor to simply raise with anything and take your blind money.

So as long as you have the proper table image of a solid normal type of player then you can play back at this bully every now again on light values. Because after all, they have proven that they are clearly raising without the goods so you can re-raise on weaker hands also. As long as you are not over doing this play then your opponent is going to respect your re-raise and will likely fold. This means that your raises are in fact taking larger chunks of money than if you had simply raised from position and taken the blind money.

This way, you can help to keep aggressive opponents who are in late position in check and your re-raises with connecting hands will have deception both when you flop a concealed monster and when high cards flop that your raise has represented. But the fact of the matter is that if the raises are not coming from overly aggressive players who are making their intentions crystal clear then the best move is to fold connecting hands to a raise.

They are of course ideal for completing the bet in the small blind in un-raised pots as you will be getting excellent odds both in implied odds and pot odds to call the extra small bet with a sound speculative hand like a connector whether it is gapped or not. Well I sincerely hope that this months article on how to play connecting cards has proved highly instructive and I look forward to seeing you next month in another one of my lectures, take care.