Drawing hands like 78 suited or J9 suited pretty much suck OOP. But does that mean we never play them? Do we play them if there is a raise and several callers? OR only for cheap? OR never?


I feel like if we do this we need better post flop skills to no when to fold our hands. I also feel like playing these hands increases variance when we hit draws and miss but get a good price. Obviously these hands also suck because if we do turn or river the flush or straight we might not get paid off. We either check river and hope they bet or bet river and just get called. So I think they play really well on the button but horrible OOP.

I would like to know thoughts on this and if/when we play then OOP and how to play them best. Sometimes if I do have a hand like 7c8c and flop a good draw I will just lead out kinda small to control the pot especially at passive tables. Also to balance my donk bet/lead range.

If you only play strong hands OOP, you'll be exploitable. So you need to play 78s and J9 sometimes.

All hands are more difficult OOP, that's part of poker. You just need to cultivate the best conditions for your hand.

If you're at a loose passive table, then play these hands when SPR's are high enough to justify calls. Adjust your requirements for position. A hand like 78s with 3 or four players to the flop demands an SPR of at least 10 I would think.

If the table is tighter, you can tighten your requirements provided you're willing to fire at flops where you either have significant equity, or your opponent likely does not.

From another thread but completely relevant.

This.

/thread

Playing suited connectors - preflop & postflop -Splitsuit Sweeney
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ_0KB7Dmqw

I'll let this stay open for a little bit, but it is too general to be of much use. If you are playing fit or fold with SC, you're probably losing money with them. Play them when you have a strategy to win the pot when you miss some of the time or just fold them.

I fold them UTG but raise with them MP and button and pretend I have AA

Obviously you'll be playing them from the blinds sometimes. There will also be a significant number of occasions when you'll be playing them OOP from middle or late position. For example, in some games, T9s+ is probably too good to muck in an unopened pot from MP or LP.

That said, we shouldn't forget that these are speculative hands and we should be seeking spots where we're getting good odds, esp. inferior players.

[QUOTE=SpexDome;47674372]If you only play strong hands OOP, you'll be exploitable. So you need to play 78s and J9 sometimes. QUOTE]

This assumes that opponents are that observant (and are playing long enough with you), which in most 1/2 or 1/3 games, is not going to be the case. This type of balancing your range idea is most certainly needed at higher stakes, but at lower stakes I've found you can play more offensive poker and not worry so much about playing these sorts of hands OOP.

[QUOTE=Joey913;47680866] Give your opponents some credit. Over the course of several hours, it's not hard for someone to notice that 80% of your raises came from the button or LP.

Bart Hanson recommends a 25 to 1 ratio for calling SC and 35 to 1 for suited gappers for appropriate implied odds.

I started using this a month ago and it has worked well for me.