Suited Connectors are overrated
Recreational players are spewing money with hands like 76s when they should be playing suited Aces instead, says Dara O'Kearney.
The most overrated type of hand that recreational players like is the suited connector. In the early days of the poker boom, they would see somebody like Gus Hansen or Daniel Negreanu play these hands aggressively and win a big pot, so they assumed that was the way to play these disguised hands that can hit monsters.
Recreational players would overplay them from every position and also play lots of suited gapper hands like 96s.
Solvers have exposed that suited connectors are actually quite weak holdings. For example, this is a GTO-approved 100BB cash game opening range for UTG in a Six Max game:
As you can see the 'sexy' hands like 98s, 76s, 65s and 54s are barely played. 87s is not played at all. They are only played occassionally for board coverage reasons, you have to be capable of having the straights that they make on middling boards.
Suited Aces are better
Why have suited connectors fallen out of favour so much in modern poker theory? The main reason is that suited Aces and suited Kings have been shown to be much more useful.
When you make a flush with a hand like A5s, you know it's the nuts. When you make a flush with 65s and your opponent starts to shovel money into the pot, you have to at least be a little worried. Even if you are ahead, the turn could bring the fourth card of your suit to potentially outdraw you.
Suited Aces and suited Kings also fair better when they make top pair. Even a weak kicker hand like A3s are often good as bluffcatchers, because making a pair is harder than most people realise. The solvers have shown us that domination is not as big a concern as we thought it was.
Hands like 65s are still useful, especially because they can hit all the categories of hands like trips, straights, flushes, and boats. These hands are well disguised too, which work in their favour.
But as pretty as they are, suited connectors are overrated. If you play them all the time from every position you will exploit yourself. Tweak your range and replace some of the suited connectors with suited Ax instead.
Dara O'Kearney's new book Mystery Bounty Poker Strategy is out now.
