Hitting Flops With Middle Suited-Connectors in Hold’em Poker
March 10, 2010
One of the most flexible hands in Hold’em poker is what’s known as a suited-connector, two cards of the same suit with consecutive rankings. The middle suited-connectors are often used to fill out tight early position or middle position ranges since they play fairly well post-flop and make it hard for your opponent to read your exact hand. Here we’re going to take a look at how middle suited-connectors hit the flop and what you can do with that information.
Using a program designed to quickly calculate the chance of flopping various holdings with Hold’em starting hands, we’re going to take a look at how the hand 87 suited does. About 5.6% of the time we’ll flop better than top pair. That includes all of the times we flop two pair or better. Another 5.8% of the time, we’ll flop top pair. Top pair won’t be super strong with these middle cards, but it will be a decent enough hand. About 15.8% of the time we’ll flop middle pair, and about 7.4% of the time we’ll flop a worse pair than middle pair. Finally, 65.4% of the time we don’t flop a pair or made hand. This breakdown of made hands basically shows us that most of the time we make a made hand on the flop, it’s going to be a weak pair, so we’ll need to be careful with our betting so that we don’t accidentally commit ourselves with a weak hand.
As for the draws, 10.9% of the time we’ll flop a flush draw, 9.6% of the time we’ll flop an open-ended straight draw, and 1.2% of the time we’ll flop both. We’ll be able to play these draws either passively or aggressively because of their sheer strength, so this gives us a lot of chances to balance other parts of our range. Additionally, we’ll flop a gutshot about 16.6% of the time, which we can play as a flop semi-bluff to add balance to our c-betting range.
In general, middle suited-connectors will hit the flop about one-half the time, though it won’t always be a super strong holding. If you compare this to big broadway hands which only hit about one-third of the time, you’ll see that the broadway hands hit the flop harder on average. So on average, these hands will still be fairly effective.
Article Source www.ezinearticles.com
Author Jesse Eddleman
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