Unsuited Connectors Are Unsafe

It is very easy to think that there isn’t that much difference between a starting hand that is suited and one that isn’t. Your flush chances only add two or three percent to your winrate, which may not seem like much. In some cases winrates are relatively equal. For example, A-K offsuit will beat a random hand 65.3 percent of the time. A-K suited only does slightly better, it wins 67.1 percent.

Unfortunately your opponents won’t be playing random hands (even though it may sometimes seem that way.) The fact that your A-K is suited occasionally leads to very profitable situations. You may flop a bigger flush draw against an aggressive opponent who gets a lot of money on the flop as a big dog. For example, I recently saw two players get all-in holding A K and 8 7 with a flop of Q 4 2. In this case, the suited A-K was an 81.7 percent favorite. This is like getting all-in with A-A versus 2-2. The fact that this type of situation can occur, even though its frequency is low, makes the suited A-K much better than its offsuit cousin.

The benefits of being suited become much clearer when the hand is lower. A lot of the value of A-K suited comes from the high cards, which don’t depend on making a flush. A hand like 8-7 suited doesn’t really have much high card value. Most of its value comes from its ability to make straights and flushes or to apply pressure with a draw to a straight or a flush. It also has the ability to make a two-way draw (to both a straight and a flush) which will make you a favorite over any one pair hand, approximately even money against two pair. It is only against a set that you become an significant underdog, typically about a three to two dog. Unsuited connectors can never get these good situations.

To take an extreme example, your opponent has Q Q. How do 8 7 and 8 7 compare on a flop of 6 5 2? Guess what the win percentage of each hand is. The two-way draw to the suited hand will win 56.3 percent, but the unsuited hand will only win 37.0 percent. Most of the time, the two hands will produce relatively equal results. But the times when being suited matters are often times when the pot gets large and your winning chances escalate sharply.

In a deep-stack cash game, after a few limpers, I have no problem limping in with 8-7 offsuit, especially from the button. If the situation is very good and there is unlikely to be a big reraise behind me, I will even call a small raise with unsuited connectors. But that is as far as I’ll go. I don’t ever want to risk more than 3 percent of my stack with unsuited connectors. Even calling a small raise from the button leaves you vulnerable to a big raise from one of the blinds. Aggressive players often reraise out of position. They will raise all their legitimate hands and some of their garbage hands trying a “squeeze play.” (After an initial raise and one or more limps, a squeeze is a reraise designed to force the initial raiser to fold, after which the limpers seldom have a good enough hand to fight back.) When you call a raise and then fold to a reraise, you have basically thrown you money away. You lost it without even seeing a flop.

Heed my warning: Playing unsuited connectors is unsafe, unsanitary and unsound. ♠

Steve “Zee” Zolotow, aka The Bald Eagle, is a successful games player. He currently devotes most of his time to poker. When escaping from poker, he hangs out in his bars on Avenue A — Nice Guy Eddie’s at Houston and Doc Holliday’s at 9th Street — in New York City.