How Much are Suited Hole Cards Worth? |
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Posted Mon Jun 30, 2008 3:56 pm GMT by lwestatbus
How much does being suited affect how you play hole cards before the flop?
I think that it was Mason, Miller, and Malmuth who wrote that power in hole cards comes from three sources: High Card Strength, Connectedness, and Suitedness (is that a word?) and that any starting cards that are not made hands (pocket pairs) should have two of those characteristics before you consider playing them.
So how much power does being suited bring to hole cards? Alternatively, can you give examples of how you would play two starting cards differently if they were suited than if they weren't suited.
I think I read somewhere that you have a 6% chance of getting exactly three more cards (not four--exactly three) of a specified suit by the river. If this is true, that means that your suited cards automatically gain 6% of the expected pot size in value right off the bat. It therefore seems that any cards you would not normally play because they are slight dogs preflop suddenly become playable cards if they gain this 6% edge. Is this correct? If so, what are those marginal cards?
For example, I don't normally play A-ten or K-ten but will usually play them if they are suited. (Factors such as position, raised or unraised, and number of players already in the pot obviously affect this decision but are way too complicated to get into here.)
Another issue--I am in a constant state of conflict between wanting to PLAY (because that's why I'm at the table) and the discipline needed to pass on weak cards. When I pick up suited hole cards I immediately get a little push toward playing the cards with the suitedness as an excuse, not a reason.
Please indicate whether your response applies to any HE game, FL, NL, Tourny, or any combination.
Thanks.
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Posted Mon Jun 30, 2008 4:21 pm GMT by xDiamond_CutteRx
Being suited adds about 5% to your equity, all things being equal. So this is not usually a make or break amount if you're say, heads-up in NL Hold'em. However, it can make a significant difference, particularly multi-way, and particularly in limit games.
Say you're in the big blind in limit Hold'em, one player raises, and three others come along for a call. Being suited can often be the difference in profitability for a hand like, say,   . Unsuited, you may be getting immediate pot odds to play the hand, but your reverse implied odds make the risk of playing the hand OOP too great most of the time. However, if you're suited, now you actually have much greater implied odds because of that added 5% equity. The reason is that when you do make a hand like a flush, you are very likely to be best (which cannot usually be said of a pair of Queens with no kicker), and you may win additional bets in a multiway pot, where you actually benefit more from a 5% increase in equity than you would heads up.
However, take a situation where you are not very deep-stacked in a NL Hold'em tournament. Everyone folds to you in the CO, and you have AT/KT unsuited. Here, being suited does not really make any difference, because with only moderate stack sizes, implied odds do not play a great enough role to override high card strength. Both of those hands are usually worth a raise in this situation. Being suited gives you a further advantage, but not one that is likely to change the course of the hand if you are only moderately stacked. This becomes very apparent if you are reraised out of the blinds. Will being suited affect your decision? In most situations, it will not.
Does that make sense?
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