All of the hands you mention (pocket pairs, suited connectors, suited aces) actually play very well in multi-way pots. They occasionally make very strong hands that can win big pots, and they're pretty easy to let go when we miss. Whether calling is a good idea of course depends on a number of factors.
- What are our pot odds? The more money there is in the pot relative to the amount that we have to call, the better. Multiple callers give us better odds to call. Also the smaller the 3-bet, the better our odds.
- How much do we have left in our stack? The deeper the effective stack, the more we stand to win when we make our hand.
- What's our position? Being out of position makes it more difficult to get value when we hit our hand, so we have less incentive to call when we'll be out of position postflop.
- Who's left to act? If we're closing the action, we can guarantee seeing a flop by calling. If there are players left to act, calling is less attractive since we can still get raised out of the pot.
