refering to full ring games NL hold'em low stakes

I think I've recently been getting confused with how im suppose to be playing these connector cards and losing too much money with them. My main question is when your holding a hand like 5/6 6/7 4/5 5/7 etc, what conditions pre-flop apply "in general" for you to call?

I usually feel that its good to call a hand like 9/10, 8/9,10/j, qj, 10q so long as there is 2 callers in front of me with no raise (so obviously im never gonna play them in early). However, i find it questionable to make a call with 2 callers with the lower connectors. Your rarely going to flop something big vs something big but not queite as good as yours. Thus your not going to make much money "generally" from low connectors. Especially when your playing multiway with low cards. If there is a raise preflop and a couple of callers then your potential is huge on profit because there usually going to be playing pretty good card (especially the tight people) ie they got Ak and you have 57 and flop comes 57A. How do you think small connectors should be played pre-flop? what criteria would meet your needs to play them?

There's probably lots of good posts on this you can find in the archives.

IMHO, they are a good hand to use in opening up your range in late position. You want to muck em in early position. I limp behind in late position sometimes depending on opponents, but if you're in the button or CO, raising is a lot more fun. I'm not wild about calling pre-flop raises with them, but I will given deeper stack sizes or good odds or if I want to be a jerk towards someone. They are flexible hands when 3-betting. Generally, I want to have a reason to think I can take the pot on FE alone, whether I plan to make a move or, more likely, I've just been the aggressor from the beginning. Unless it's a big multi-way pot I guess...

I guess this will get you in more interesting spots with draws, but they aren't usually overly difficult post-flop if you're aggressive with them, especially compared to the kinds of spots you tend to get in with overpairs and tptk. I guess you do tend to brick turns with missed draws, but I more or less usually keep betting, which may be a leak.

I was specifically talking about normal suited connectors there, as they make more hands/draws. I might do some of the same stuff with off-suit connectors and one/two - gappers, but they really aren't as good. If you google around enough you can find math that will tell you expectation differences with them. I can't remember the context but it was basically like suited connectors were 20% "better" or more when compared to one-gappers or their off-suit bretheren.

What level are you playing at?
Cold calling is vastly overrated anyway - especially if you are not so sure postflop.
If its multiway and you are on the button then yeah call if its a SC but in general tighten up BIG TIME with cold calling until you feel confident with villans ranges and equities post flop.

You could drop the gappers and the off suits and it wont be a loss.

Preflop, you're losing tons of value by not raising those hands. If you're on the button or CO and someone open limps (especially if they're a nit), RAISE. Dont just raise premium hands or SC's or 1 gappers, raise something like 50% of your hands.

IMO, the only time to call these is when there is a preflop raiser and 2 other cold callers and you have position on all of them or 1 raiser and you both are deepstacked. This is very rare. Also, the difference between QJs and 56s is a lot smaller then you think. You're going to lose a ton of value with QJs when you make top pair and your hand is dominated, but you refuse to fold.

Although you're right that the bigger SC's are going to be up against bigger hands more often, this is not a frequent thing. What happens more often is you get to pick up small pots by raising these hands. Plus, if they have a big hand and you whiff the pot its easy to fold them. When youre first learning poker, its best to put yourself in as few marginal spots as possible.

Playing it from late postions limping or tryin to steal the blinds with them, I think they work good in a pot with more players were your getting good odds for your draws.

To paraphrase the a couple of lines from the beginning of the movie "Patton": The goal of poker is not to be able to make tough decisions. The goal is to make the other poor bastard make tough decisions.

High SCs like QJ, QT, T9 are hands that have lots of hard decisions. Take T9 for example. If the flop is QJT, you have a straight draw, but could be drawing dead. A single pair with any of those hands could be beat by another hand limping in. Unless you hit the hand perfectly, you're always at risk.

The SCs I like the best are 76 and 65. Lots of players will stack off with A2 or A5 when they hit the wheel and they get played often. The other thing is that if the flop comes Q96, it is easy to drop. QJ and QT are going to either win small pots (everyone folds) or has to play the rest of the hand wondering if they are up against AQ or KQ.

At the micro level, I don't think playing these in EP is useful. Most villains aren't thinking about what you have anyway and aren't going to remember that you beat them with SCs early. There's lots of opinions of how big your stack and the others need to be, but it should be at least 15X the bet you need to call and I prefer 25X.