Connectors in No-Limit Hold’em

“Connectors,” as I use the term, are cards that are close enough in rank to have a reasonable amount of straight-making potential and small enough to have little or no high-card potential. This would include J-10 down to 5-4. The holdings 4-3 and 3-2 are weaker because they cannot make the top end of a straight. Hands with a gap of more than one rank, like 9-6, don’t have enough straight potential to be playable. I seldom play connectors that are not suited, as they are considerably weaker, but I confess a fondness for J-10, even when not suited. Four ways to make a straight are better than only three.

In a column I wrote a little over a decade ago, discussing the play of connecting cards in limit hold’em, I wrote (tongue-in-cheek), “In conclusion, I recommend that you play connectors only on the second and fourth Tuesday of the month.” Connectors play a much greater role in no-limit, and I will call even a decent-size raise with them when the money is deep and my position is good.

The basic nature of connectors is that they are long shots. It is not that easy to flop a good hand to low-ranking cards. So, I do not see any sense in playing them unless you have a decent amount of money in front of you. If you are not going to win very many pots, you need to win big ones in order to make it worth your while to get involved. I would seldom be willing to commit more than 5 percent of my stack to see the flop. Otherwise, the overhead of playing them figures to eat up your money.

I think it is helpful to compare connectors with small pairs. According to statistics, each hand type has roughly the same chance of cracking an overpair if both hands are all in preflop. However, if there is betting left to be done, the situation is radically different. Playing small pairs is a more simplified process than handling connectors. With a small pair, you have either a monster on the flop if you hit or a clear fold if you miss and anyone bets. With connectors, if you hit something decent on the flop, that something is much more likely to be four-fifths of a hand than a complete hand. (Furthermore, if that “something” is a flush, it is not easy to make a lot of money if the hand is good, but it is easy to lose a lot of money when the hand has no outs.) So, most of the time, the net result of getting a good flop with connectors is having to play the hand out on the next three betting rounds. You will need to either make your hand later or outplay your opponent to make him lay down a winner. If you are able to accomplish the latter, the possibility of a monster loss was a lot more potent a threat to the opponent than simply calling the all-in raise of a short stack. Having deep stacks means that you need position to wage a successful battle. A deep stack and good position are essential ingredients for playing connectors.

Let us now get more specific. To have a deep enough stack, you need to have the amount of a flop bet, a raise, and an all-in reraise. Otherwise, you do not have sufficient betting leverage to make the opponent who has something throw it away. If we regard the pot size as one, and assume progressive pot-size wagers, we see that the bet size is one, the raise size is four, and the all-in reraise is 16. This quadrupling progression of the pot size on the flop comes from calling the wager of one unit, making the pot size three units, and then raising the three units, making the total pot size now four units. The same process again quadruples the pot on the reraise. In a heads-up pot, if your opponent opens for triple the big blind and you call, there are 7.5 units in the pot. So, your stack needed to be 16 × 7.5 units deep to fully justify the call. That is a stack of 120 units to justify a three-unit expenditure to see the flop. This will give you an idea of why we sometimes say that you should not spend more than 5 percent of your stack to see the flop when holding connectors. However, 5 percent is only the break-even point (according to my guesstimate). To have a decent-size overlay — that is, to be making a sound investment — you can see that it is better to pay less than 3 percent of your stack.

The second thing that we said you need is good position. Conventional wisdom says the button is the best position, the cutoff is second-best, the hijack seat is third-best, and so on. This is normally true on the turn and river, but not on the flop betting round. If the pot is raised preflop, the preflop raiser usually is the aggressor on the flop and makes a continuation-bet. So, having good position on the flop is more a question of where you are in relation to the preflop raiser than where you are in relation to the button. And the flop betting round is extremely important.

As you can see, the best place to be on the flop is on the immediate right of the preflop raiser. That way, if he bets the flop, you get to act last. If you flop something good, you get to see everyone else act before you have to make a decision. Note that being on the preflop raiser’s immediate right means that you also were able to see the exact price to call preflop, which avoids the disappointment of calling a raise and having someone behind you come over the top with a reraise. Of course, the ideal position is when you are on the button and the small blind raises preflop, giving you maximum position on all three remaining betting rounds. That is heaven!

That’s good position, so let’s now discuss bad position. The worst place to be is on the preflop raiser’s immediate left. I like to call this seat the “electric chair.” Preflop, you might not even get to see the flop when you call the raise. On the flop, the bet comes through you, and the whole field gets to see what you do. If the preflop raiser fails to make a continuation-bet, this does not leave you in command of the situation, because the field has “checked to the raiser,” and someone may well use the blade on you that was lying in wait for the preflop raiser.

To sum up, connectors are attractive hands in no-limit hold’em when the money is deep and your position is good. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true.

Bob Ciaffone has authored four poker books, Middle Limit Holdem Poker, Pot-limit and No-limit Poker, Improve Your Poker, and Omaha Poker. All can be ordered from Card Player. Ciaffone is available for poker lessons: e-mail [email protected]. His website is www.pokercoach.us, where you can get his rulebook, Robert’s Rules of Poker, for free. Bob also has a website called www.fairlawsonpoker.org.