Suited connectors in tournaments

Suited connectors are generally regarded as great implied odds hands and most players play them whenever they happen over such a pocket hand. Given that it is indeed a starting hand which carries good implied odds, most people limp to the flop with this hand to see what they hit.
Suited connectors are indeed worth to play in deep-stacked cash games, no doubt about it. Whether you should limp to the flop with them or put in a preflop raise on them is something that the circumstances will dictate. The optimal preflop action on such a hand is largely dependent on the type of players you’re faced with and the general table mood. The bottom line is, suited connectors alongside suited one-gappers and small pocket pairs are indeed excellent implied odds hands and you should definitely play them in deep stacked cash game situations.

I suppose I needn’t tell though that there are significant differences between cash and tournament play. Most people are well aware of this fact, though it’s quite surprising that so few of them actually consider it when making strategically important decisions. This is the reason why you’ll often see people play suited connectors in tournaments, the same way they play them in cash games.
Due to the difference in nature between poker tournament and poker cash play (differences caused mainly by the finite tournament stacks and the ever escalating blinds) suited connectors lose a lot of value in tournaments.
In tournaments in general and in SNGs in particular, you are never actually deep-stacked. Well, maybe close to deep stacked at the beginning of a massive MTT. What this means is that you’ll lose value playing your suited connectors on several fronts. First of all, in a cash game, you need to have a deep stack all the time in order to be able to fully exploit the edge given to you by the implied odds on suited connectors and other such hands. You stack is a tool there: the bigger it is, the more money you can get into the pot, which means your opponents will have to match it if they want to see a showdown. If you’re playing on a short-stack (like you always are in a STT), the weapon which is your stack falls seriously short: it will not allow you to exploit your implied odds to the maximum.
The short stacks of your opponents represent another limitation: they can’t call more than they have so you can’t really make a lot of chips off them regardless what you do. In a cash game, the two variables which ultimately determine the profitability of your implied odds are the losses you incur on your missed hands and the winnings you take down on the made hands. The losses can be limited with the proper tools both in a cash game and in a tournament, however the winnings cannot be maximized in tourneys, which means that ultimately, your implied odds may not come through for you.
Does that mean that you should never play these babies in a SNG? Not by a longshot. Just stop granting them more value than they actually have and you’ll be OK. You should still limp to the flop on your suited connectors if a cheap flop is in the works, and you should even attempt to steal some blinds with them. The key factor here is position. You can only achieve any of the above moves when you’re in late position (on the button or in the cut-off). Never attempt to limp from early position as it’s almost like offering your chips as a gift to your opponents.
Your suited connectors will retain bigger value in the beginning of the tournament when you are still relatively deep-stacked. That’s when you should limp along from late position to possibly hit a hand which could send one of your opponents to the rail.
As the blinds escalate, blinds-stealing gradually comes into the picture. As your suited connectors lose their implied odds value, they’ll gain a blinds-stealing edge. That’s because as the stacks become shorter and shorter compared to the size of the blinds, the implied odds value dies off completely.

Poker tells

You’ll often hear that whenever good poker players (those who master the third and fourth levels of poker thought) play each other, they play the player rather than their cards. Past a certain level, poker becomes a game in which psychology takes front seat, ahead of mathematics which is the leading play-guiding factor on lower levels. Poker psychology is based on reads and tells, and on players’ abilities to read the tells their opponents drop while disguising their own hands and if possible, misleading their opponents. As far as tells and reads go, the fundamental concept guiding players’ actions is that keeping their opponents in the mist is not enough: they need to actually mislead them, to cause them to become certain of the wrong thing.

You probably all know Daniel Negreanu and his uncanny ability to read his opponents’ pocket cards. If you take a look at the following video:

You’ll see Negreanu in action against fellow Canadian Brad Booth also known as “Yukon” Brad.
The interesting thing in this hand is how Booth manages to jam Negreanu’s otherwise infallible radar and to cause him to hesitate a bit before making the big laydown. Negreanu does manage to evade the trap, after all, his instincts are among the best if they’re not THE best in poker, but still, Booth’s tactics cause him to hesitate a little before doing the right thing, and making Negreanu actually attempt to talk himself into a call is by no means and everyday achievement.

Many people don’t realize this, but this hand is probably the best illustration of how one should disguise his/her hand and how much potential there is in the mind games behind all the reads and tells.
Brad Booth turns a straight flush, calls Negreanu all the way to the river where he raises him just as the latter rivers a straight. This is when the mind games begin: what Booth is trying to achieve here is to make it look like he’s bluffing to steal Negreanu’s river bet. The circumstances are right, and sets up the trap perfectly: he actually tells Negreanu the hand he’s got, knowing that his opponent will not only not believe him, but might be mislead to think that he is desperate to make it look like he has a true monster in the pocket. What do you know? For a second there it actually seems to work. The play-bluff is so well portrayed by “Yukon” Brad, that Negreanu begins to talk himself into calling him down. He is way too experienced to act on emotion alone though. One can literally feel how his heart tells him to call Booth’s raise, but his mind calls for a time out and begins a cold analysis of the situation. At the end of the analysis, Kid Poker concludes that he could only possibly beat a bluff there, and even though it looks like that’s exactly what Booth has against him, the odds are unfavorable for a call as a flush may well be in the books.
Of course, just to keep his opponents guessing, Booth never shows his hand. Just to add to the confusion, a female voice at the end of the hand claims that she in fact had the nine of diamonds, which sows further confusion at the table. Nobody really knows what to make of it, and Esfandiari’s remarks make it quite clear that he appreciates the way Booth played that hand.
Some people will say that Booth didn’t exactly accomplish anything impressive in this hand. After all, he won with a straight flush, how hard can that be, right? And he did fail to get Negreanu to call him in the end. What these people fail to realize though is that out of God knows how many possible ways, Booth played this hand in the most optimal manner. He singled out a weakness and he exploited it in such a psychologically complex manner (see his “Canadian” comments which were probably intended to re-enforce his play-bluff) that he is worthy of all respect for it. At the end of the day, how many people can boast that they had the great Daniel Negreanu on the ropes like that, even if it was only for a brief moment.

Poker – a game of luck or one of skill?

With one court decision after another ruling that poker is in fact a game of skill, let’s take a closer look at this more than controversial question.
We’re going to have to start out from the premise that poker is indeed a game of skill. There are now scientific studies available to prove this and I’ll go into details on them later on. Just how big a role does the luck element have in it though? While I agree that it is a predominantly skill based game, I’d also like to know how one can quantify the element of luck.
Take a look at the following YouTube video in order to see the luck element in action:

It is about Jamie Gold (who else) squaring off against Patrik Antonius in a hand in which the latter has a straight against the former’s set of Ks.

The hand begins with Gold basically telling the others at the table what his pocket hand is. He tries to be subtle about it, but his quiet eagerness betrays him. There are numerous opinions and theories out there about just how skilled a poker player Jamie Gold is, but I suppose we’ll have to agree that in this instance he walks straight into the trap that Patrik Antonius sets him. The Finn picks up all the preflop information he needs about Gold’s hand and decides to see a flop probably hoping that it will bring along an A that will get the better of Gold’s pocket Ks. The flop brings a gutshot straight draw though, so he’s still in search of a hand when Gold commits his second mistake: he gives Antonius a shot at completing his hand on the turn by betting a small-enough amount into him. The Finn pounces on the opportunity, and sure enough, the turn brings a K which doesn’t just give Antonius the nut straight, it also gives Gold a set of Ks, a hand which he would probably never be able to get away from.
Predictably, Gold runs into the trap without a second thought, goes all-in and gets called by Antonius. What comes after this is the interesting part: the two players agree to run the river card 3 times, and even though Antonius has a made hand going up against Gold’s 12 outs, two times out of three he loses the pot.
Now then, Gold makes several mistakes in this hand and Antonius makes none. Of course, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that Gold is a lucky fellow. Not after his 2006 WSOP Main Event run it shouldn’t, but this example makes one wonder about just how much of a factor luck is in this game.

Whether or not poker is a skill dominated game is no longer a question. For years, those advocating that poker was in fact a form of gambling, kept going back to the claim that there wasn’t any clear, science-rooted evidence to support that the skill factor was the dominant one in the game. Nowadays, there are several such studies. Two German scientists from the University of Hamburg ran an experiment based on actual hand histories lifted from an online poker room, which analyzed win-loss fluctuations and players’ win-loss averages to determine how big a role skill had in the outcome. They concluded that those with a skill-wise edge over their competitors did much better than less skilled players, to an extent which is clearly outside of the variation induced by chance.

In a study aimed to offer a simpler and more convincing view on the skill factor, a couple of American researchers have determined beyond any sort of doubt that poker was indeed predominantly based on skill. They looked at a staggering number of 130 million hands played at PokerStars, and concluded that 76% of the hands played never saw a showdown. In a hand which doesn’t even allow the cards to have any sort of say whatsoever, the luck factor is obviously non-existent.
With all this in mind, I suppose we can conclude that poker is a game of skill, except when one adds Jamie Gold to the mix…

Freeroll tips

Playing in online poker freerolls is one of the most straightforward ways to getting a bankroll started from scratch. Sure, the money you stand to win in one of these freerolls is never a significant sum, but it is usually enough to get a bankroll going and the truth is, many of the best known online and offline professionals have begun their careers that way.
Most freerolls require players to post a real money deposit before they’re admitted, but there are some which have no such requirements. It’s these freerolls that you should gun for from the very beginning. After all, your goal is to get your bankroll started, and if you have to make a deposit to be allowed to play in the freeroll, the whole thing doesn’t make any sort of sense anymore. If you already have money at your disposal, spending time in freerolls is not what you should be doing.
Freerolls are almost always massive MTTs, and they’re a breed apart. Being good at real money MTTs will give you an advantage, but you’ll have to make a few significant modifications to your approach if you really intend to prevail.

The fact that freerolls cost nothing to register for will mean extremely loose play in the beginning. Nobody has any money at stake, so early strategy will be radically different from real money MTT play. There are several player typologies at action at the early MTT tables. One kind is the player who forces a double-up early on. These players aim to give themselves a good start in order to increase their odds radically, or to bust out right away and thus save the time they would otherwise waste and still come up empty handed. Still other players only play in the freeroll to annoy the other participants. They don’t care about advancing, they just want to bad beat someone out of the game.
Both these player types are bound to leave the game soon, which means you need to be extremely tight in the beginning to avoid the traps set by these guys. The size of your stack compared to the size of the blinds will also justify tight play here. As the freeroll progresses though and more and more players are sieved out, you need to gradually loosen up a little and steal a few blinds along the way too. Always keep in sight that you are playing in a freeroll where people are much more likely to call your bluffs and semi bluffs than in a different type of game. Given that playing the player instead of the cards is not really an option in the pre-bubble stages of a freeroll, you have to fall back on good old Level 1 poker play and play your cards. Bet your big hands aggressively. The fact that people are likely to call you down on just about any two cards is something you can exploit through this simple Tight-aggressive strategy.
Make sure you take advantage of the scare caused by the proximity of the bubble. Most players tend to tighten up once the money bubble is in sight in order to preserve their stacks and sneak into the money. This is when they are prone to giving up their better hands when bluffed.

Following the money bubble the strategy picture changes quite a bit, due to the following factors: there’s now real money involved and everyone would love as big a share of it as possible. Secondly, those left in contention tend to be better players, after all, they have managed to survive all the way to the money.
As the final table bubble approaches, play begins to resemble the final stages of a real money MTT more and more. Creative plays become much more efficient, though another problem now rears its head: due to the escalating blinds and the mounting pressure on players’ stacks, the luck factor creeps back into the game big time.
Make sure you practice short-handed and even heads-up play: in a freeroll, as in any MTT, your goal should be to win and not to just make the money.

Where’s the real money at?

If you’re looking for a great return on a relatively meager investment, looking for that one big break that will truly make a difference in your life, sooner or later you’re going to have to make the move from the cash tables to the tournament ones. It’s not that there isn’t money on the high limit cash tables: there’s plenty there, but you need a huge bankroll just to give yourself a real shot at all that money, and few people in the world can muster such bankrolls. The best way for you to make it big is through the MTTs poker rooms offer. Sure, you will need to make a sizeable investment here too, because it’s not like you’re going to walk away with the goods on your very first high prize-pool tournament. As you become a good tournament player, you’re going to have to play in about 40 tournaments to win one. At an average of $200 in buy-in though, that still only amounts to $8,000 and you stand to win well over 100k so it is a good deal any way you turn it around.
The one thing you have to pay keen attention to is that you indeed become a good enough MTT player to string together such a win-loss ratio.

Here are a few pointers on what you need to focus on when you’re making the transition from your cash tables to the tournament ones.
The very fist obstacle you’ll encounter at the tournament tables will be one linked to the size of your stack. In cash games, your stack has little to do with your survival: it is rather a weapon you can use to dominate your opponents and to maximize your winnings. In a tournament, your stack fulfills a double role: it’s a weapon as well as a measure of your tournament life. While in a cash game you can re-buy any time you like, in a tournament, that option is not available for you, or it is available in a very limited way (there are rebuy tourneys). The nature of your stack will force you to adopt a very different approach to strategy. You will no longer be able to fling your chips left and right and strike at every bit of available EV+ regardless of how minute it is. In a cash game, you should go after EV+ every time, because in the long run, this sort of approach will be rewarded. At a tournament table though, you’ll have to tighten up and give up marginal EV+ situations on account of the simple fact that once you lose you will no longer be able to assert your long term edges.
In tournaments, it makes perfect sense to let go of marginal EV+ for the sake of surviving to take advantage of a much better EV+ situation further down the road.
Another factor that is cause for a big difference between cash and tournament strategy is one tied to the blinds. In cash games, the blinds stay the same, and with them the variables of the equation remain pretty much the same from one hand to another over an indefinite stretch of time. In tournament poker, the blinds increase as time trickles by. This puts a constant pressure on your stack and implicitly on your tournament life. You won’t be able to sit by idly letting others duke it out: you’re going to have to get involved and in a way that will not result in your sudden ejection. Poker pro Dan Harrington has devised a set of strategy recommendations based on the proportional relation between the size of your stack and that of the BB+SB. In line with these recommendations, you’re going to have to learn to be extremely flexible in your approach.
As you climb up the blind levels, it becomes more and more important that you be efficient at stealing blinds. In a cash game, successful blinds-stealing is only likely to make a 2% contribution to your stack. In a tournament, especially in the middle-to-later stages, this contribution will be 10% and more.
Re-stealing and taking advantage of the bubble are also important aspects of tournament strategy.

Studying and profiling your opponents

Your money at the poker table will come off the mistakes your opponents make. Your main objective is to avoid making mistakes yourself and to exploit your opponents’ mistakes time and time again. In order to be able to do that though, you need understand where your opponents are likely to err, and for that you need to get to know them. The best way to sum up your knowledge of an opponent’s habits, mistakes and strengths is to create a profile of him/her.
Poker is a game of partial information, yet because of the fact that every single gesture people display, every single act they undertake gives away a wealth of information on various aspects of their existence, some people are better at reading their opponents at the green felt than others. You need to learn to pick up the information generated by people’s actions and then you need to learn to interpret the information.

Live poker offers plenty of opportunities for information gathering. Online poker is less generous in this respect but you’ll be able to pick up certain tells there too.
In a live poker room, you’ll start your profiling well before your opponent even sits down. It is kind of like a detective-job, so it is actually rather exciting and entertaining.
The way a player buys his chips and handles his cash can tell loads about what sort of poker player he is. Keep an eye on him when he buys in. Does he have a few bills only or does he have a pocket-load of $100 bills? Occasional players who do not have an actual poker bankroll will carry less cash and they will have $20 bills mixed up with the others too. Pro players who have a serious bankroll usually only carry $100 bills on account of the fact that the amount of money they need to have handy is simply not practical to be kept in smaller bills.
How is the money actually handled? If a player tends to be shy about the way he/she handles his/her money (under the table, attempting to hide it from the other players’ view as much as possible) it is likely that he/she will play a tight game. If the player is displaying the contents of his wallet or pocket in plain sight, he may well be an impulse-driven, more aggressive type. Watch your opponent when he buys in. How does he handle his money then? Does he find it visibly difficult to let go of the bills? If so, he’ll probably find it difficult to let go of his bills in the game too, and won’t commit often.

Watch the amount your opponent buys in for. Buying in for the minimum amount means that he/she is almost certainly under bankrolled and looking for a quick bankroll-boost via a double-up. This also means he/she will be playing on scared money, which offers you certain advantages over him/her. If the player in question buys in for the maximum possible amount, it doesn’t just mean he is adequately bankrolled, it also means he’s there on serious business and maximizes his edges this way.
You reckon the amount of information you can get from a player just by watching him/her handle the money is impressive? Well, we’re just warming up on the reads here. Once the chips come into the picture, things get even more interesting. Watch how your opponent takes the chips out of the rack. A seasoned player can get the chips leaving them in stacks. A rookie will just dump all the chips and stack them up after.

The height of a person’s chip stack can also tell you a few tales about his poker room experience. Rookies do not feel comfortable with more than 20 chips stacked in a column, while pros have absolutely no problems with that. A person who stacks his chips by the 10s is almost certainly a beginner.
Look at how your opponent arranges his stacks. If he’s methodical and careful about it, you’re probably dealing with a conservative and tight poker player. If he doesn’t even bother to stack his chips, you’re likely to be facing a maniac.

Learning to fold

People usually love the feeling of calling their opponent’s huge raise on the river and finding out they just busted a bluff. It is indeed one of the highs live and online poker offer, but too many people become addicted to this high way too fast. You see, you may bust a bluff every now and then, but turning this into a habit may be extremely counterproductive for your bankroll. Yeah some people do bluff quite often and some of them do make wrong moves like taking their bluff too far, but statistically speaking, that won’t happen all that often. If you make a habit of trying to keep your opponents honest at all cost and if you keep talking yourself into calling in situations which – by all appearances – are not bluffs, you are going to be the one making the mistakes and your opponents the ones exploiting them.

You know what can be an even bigger rush than busting a bluff? Making that huge laydown on the second best hand, especially when your hand is strong enough to be taken to the river under different circumstances. Now, this is where true poker skill and experience comes into play. You may have seen several ‘name’ professionals fold sets or even straights when sensing trouble. They’re capable of doing that because they don’t just play their hands like amateurs do: they play their opponents. In order to be capable of doing that, you need to advance to the third level of poker thought, which is usually out of the reach of most online players and live amateurs.

Take this youtube video as an example:

It’s about Daniel Negreanu locking horns with a couple of amateurs and with John Juanda. Obviously, it all comes down to a confrontation between Juanda and Negreanu, on something that’s pretty close to a perfect hand situation. Both professionals flop a set of Jacks, only Juanda has a K kicker and Negreanu a 3. Juanda shoves all-in and I suppose any other player at that table with the exception of Negreanu (and Ivey) would’ve made the call.
What does Negreanu do though? First of all: he doesn’t get caught up in the possibility of a huge hand developing and he takes a step back taking a look at the big picture. He puts the pieces of the puzzle together and makes a decision in the blink of an eye. Don’t let all the stalling he does afterwards fool you. He is aware from the second Juanda commits his stack that he has the 4th J coupled with a better kicker than his. He laments about how Juanda may also hold something like a Qs,10s – which is quite amazingly nearly the hand that Cheryl Hines folded before to get out of Juanda’s way, but he knows that Juanda has the J. He considers the situation: it is a pro he’s up against and not one of the amateurs who are much more likely to make mistakes.

The bottom line about making the laydown: if every bone in your body tells you that you’re beat, chances are you are indeed beat. Your opponents – regardless of their skill level – bluff much less frequently than you think they do. This seems to be a general truth. If you’re playing online, the vast majority of your opponents will be doing exactly what you expect them to do based on the range you put them on. Don’t be shy to use the feature which allows you to take notes on your opponents. If you jot someone down as a tight-aggressive ABC player, chances are you won’t get any sort of surprises coming your way from that guy.

Certainly, there’s glory in taking down a huge pot and busting your opponent’s bluff in the same time, but saving a huge bet by not calling a marginally better hand is – from a financial point of view – just as big an accomplishment.
Keeping your opponents honest through such hero calls carries another risk factor on top of the obvious one: the heart-ache factor which can easily send you on a tilt.

A Bluffing frenzy

The bluff is one of the most popular moves in poker and online poker. Ask any beginner what aspect of the game he likes most and he’ll tell you it’s the fact that you can take money away from an opponent who holds a better hand than yours. Every newbie is in love with the bluff, and they will try to pull the move every time they deem it appropriate. The fact that they bluff much more often than they should and that they do it based on zilch is another matter altogether. Such bluffs are called donk-bluffs and they represent one of the most frequent mistakes beginners make. Good players love the donk bluff, because they make a lot of money on it.

The bottom line about bluffing is, one should never do it blindly. A bluff is a very complex poker strategy move. It needs to be built up, it needs to be correlated with the board texture and the reads one gets on his/her opponent. A successful bluff requires third-level poker thought, because a player has to be able to put him/herself in his/her opponent’s shoes and look at the situation from the perspective of the opponent.

Take a look at the following video:

This one is a classic example of a bluffing frenzy: two players trying to out-bluff each other.
The hand featured in the video is between Michael DeMichele and Eric Crain, with the latter holding a sizeable chip advantage over the other players at the table. The fact that he’s so well stacked and that he has position on DeMichele is probably the reason why Crain makes the call on his 8s,6s in the first place. This hand is a suited one gapper, and as such it offers excellent implied odds, especially when one is deep stacked. The calls are made and the two go heads-up to the flop which lands 2,9,2 rainbow, not giving anything to either of the players involved. DeMichele realizes that his Kh,Qh is no good and checks the flop. Crain makes his read and decides to check as well, just to make sure the pot stays small. The turn brings a 5s and doesn’t change much, other than offering Crain a gutshot straight draw. Out of position, DeMichele is the first to act and he checks again. The commentators capture Crain’s thought process excellently here. They talk about how no one wants the pot and how Crain might as well take a whack at it and steal it since he’s got the firepower to do just about anything he wants to DeMichele here. This is where it gets interesting. DeMichele has been lying low and studying his opponent and the board texture and by the time Crain decides to attempt the steal, he knows what he’s going to do. As anticipated by the commentators (who can see the cards and don’t actually comment live anyway) and by DeMichele (a much more impressive feat on his part), Crain makes the bet. DeMichele knows it’s a feeble attempt to steal the pot, so he decides to turn the situation around on Crain and raises him. This is where the situation precipitates. Surprised by his opponent’s aggression, suspecting a steal attempt himself and also confident that the texture of the board doesn’t look like it’s given DeMichele anything, Crain re-raises. The following move on DeMichele’s part is sheer genius. He goes all-in, thus effectively announcing that he does in fact have a hand on which he’s ready to stake his tournament life. Crain knows the only thing he can possibly beat here is a bluff and possibly not even that as DeMichele is sure to have a high-card, otherwise he might not have seen the flop at all. He makes the fold and DeMichele walks away with an unlikely-sized pot, thanks to the mistake Crain has made by re-raising him.
As you can see from the example, a bluff is by no means a move executed on an impulse. Both players have carefully weighed the situation before committing their chips to a bluff. It may look like chaotic play at first glance but it’s everything but that.

Suited Connectors

Suited connectors are generally considered excellent implied odds hands, though some players hate them while others like them. It’s easy to see why they carry such excellent implied odds though. They can make both flushes and straights, and those are some of the best big pot hands. Sure, you stand to lose several smaller pots when playing your suited connectors, but the few times that you hit your flush or straight will more than make up for it. Big pocket pairs are considered some of the best starting hands, and they will indeed win you many smaller pots. Suited connectors won’t win you nearly as many pots, but the ones they do win tend to be huge ones.

Now then, the problem with your suited connects is that while they do offer you good implied odds, the chances of them filling up a straight or a flush are rather meager. That means your whole implied odds setup turns into a rather marginal one, especially so if you’re playing against aggressive players at a 6-max Texas Hold’em table. If you limp along a lot on your suited connectors under these circumstances, you stand to bleed too much money away, and eventually you won’t be able to make up for those losses through the big pots that you take down.

This is why you shouldn’t limp on your suited connectors at aggressive short handed tables.
The course of action which gives you the most possibilities to win the pot on your suited connectors is to be aggressive. You may be wondering why I recommend being aggressive when your goal should be to limit your losses in order to maximize your implied odds. Limping along is an obvious enough way to limit your losses, right? Well, yes and no. At a 10-handed table full of rocks, limping is indeed a good way to see many cheap flops on your suited connectors. At a 6-handed aggressive table though, you won’t be able to see any cheap flops, and by limping you’ll pay a lot anyway without the benefit of showing any kind of preflop strength.
If you start out aggressively, you’ll show strength and that will offer you the following opportunities to take the pot down: you may take it right there on your preflop bet (which won’t be a big pot but it’s one hell of a good way to limit your losses), you’ll get called and you’ll get the chance to fire a second bullet on the flop taking the pot down then, through a bluff or a semi-bluff. You’ll also have the opportunity to make your hand and take the pot down at showdown.
Now then, this all sounds dandy and all but in practice it’s much more difficult to achieve than in theory. Keeping an eye on your position will offer you an excellent clue as to how you should play your suited connectors. The fact that being aggressive on them offers you better chances to win doesn’t mean you should shove a lot of money in on them every time.

If you are in early position, your opponent will have control over the hand and the pot. In such situations it is not profitable for you to play your suited connectors. They are after all drawing hands, and playing drawing hands is a pain in the rear end when your opponent has control of the pot.

You may want to raise some of your bigger suited connectors from early position every now and then, just to keep your opponents guessing, but generally there’s not much value in playing them from early position.

Late position is a different matter altogether. Almost all your suited connectors are worth raising from the cut-off or the button, especially so if the other players fold around to you. Most of the time, your raise will earn you the pot right there.

The post flop part of the action is the trickiest. This is why you need the initiative provided by your preflop raise. From there on, standard C-betting (take the board texture into consideration) is the way to go.

A few poker table selection tips

In order to understand the importance of table selection, first you need to understand how winning poker works. No, you’re not going to make your money by picking up better hands than your opponents. Over the long-run, your starting hand quality is going to be the same as everyone else’s, so you won’t enjoy any edges there. Your money will come from exploiting the mistakes your opponents make and from making sure you avoid making such mistakes yourself. As you can see, the money that you make at the poker table doesn’t solely depend on you and on your poker skills. It also depends on your opponents.

The bottom line is that in poker you’re only going to win as much money as the table you play at (your opponents) allows you to.

This is why table selection is so important both online and offline. Whether you’re a live player or an online one, you should never think twice about getting up from a table where you don’t seem to be able to win and taking a seat at a different one. Sometimes, even if you manage to squeeze a few bucks out of the table it makes sense to leave for a different one where your time is spent in a more lucrative way.
Here are a few pointers that should come in handy when you’re looking for a good table: look for a loud table instead of silent ones. At a loud table, players have fun, and therefore they may not be as focused as usual. They may also part with their chips easier. How do you locate a ‘loud’ table online? Simple. Just check for the chat section of the software and you’ll be able to tell whether or not you’re up against a lot of chatterboxes. Experts state that those who use the chat feature often, tend to be weaker players than those who focus on their play and ignore the insults and impromptu poker lessons from the chat window. Also, the fact that someone tries to lecture another player through chat might be the mark of a fish. Good poker players never attempt to enlighten their opponents in any way. If they use the chat they merely congratulate their foes on their bad moves.
Take a look at the players around the table. If you recognize any as good players, you shouldn’t play there even if you’re on friendly terms with them. Your time is much better spent elsewhere. Use the notes taking feature offered by every online poker room for this purpose when playing online. Don’t be lazy to use the feature in the first place and don’t be lazy to check your notes after. Try to spot first thought level players, whether they’re calling stations or just weak-tight ones and don’t forget to ‘brand’ them. The majority of the money you make will come off such players. Be aware of the schooling phenomenon and don’t let it upset your mental balance. Never wish you played against better players when you get called and outdrawn by a fish. Such thinking is fundamentally flawed.

As a general rule, you won’t be able to make more money off a table as there is there. Compare the stacks the players have with the size of the BB and SB. On one hand, playing against short-stacks can prove beneficial because they’ll be playing on scared money, on the other hand, you won’t get paid well enough on your implied odds and short-stacks tend to make lots of all-in moves, which will pump your variance skyward.

When choosing your seat, remember: there’s no such thing as an unlucky seat, however, depending on who you’re playing against, you might want to act before certain players and after other guys. Poker is a positional game and your position at the table relative to the other players can carry certain drawbacks or benefits.

While live poker offers relatively few options when it comes to table selection, online poker rooms offer tens of tables at the limit you’re aiming for, so your table selection opportunities are virtually limitless there: one more reason for you not to skip this all-important first step before getting your session rolling.