Everyone loves to play suited cards, especially suited connectors and especially online.
This is a point that needs to be driven over and over and over: 'internet players will play ANY two suited cards' These days the same thing goes for live play and in tournaments like the WSOP Main Event simply because so many internet players are now playing live.
I will address suited cards in general in another article, for the purpose of this post, lets stick with connectors.
There are times when it is a good idea suited connectors and time when it is not.
First of all, playing suited connectors is playing what I call a speculative hand.
Speculative hands are not hands that you want to play at any and every point in a tournament.
You should be playing these hands when you can afford to for the most part.
These are not hands that you are trying to push people around with, so they are not hands that you want to dedicate a huge part of your stack to.
These are a great hand to limp with and a great hand to play when you have at least 3-4 other players in the pot so that you are getting enough on your money.
They are not a good heads up hand because the chances that you are going to hit a monster are slim.
That, by the way, is the one and only aim of playing suited connectors; hitting a monster.
Do not fall into the trap of thinking your pair of 8's is best because it is best on the board.
The next thing that I look at when playing suited connectors is chip stack.
Can I afford to play them and will someone make a big raise pushing me out of the pot? For example, early in a MTT is a great time to play connectors because you can generally get in for cheap, maybe 30-50 chips out of your 3k chip stack and your risk/reward ratio is huge.
By contrast, when you are late in a MTT and players are constantly raising to take down the blinds/antes, it is a much worse time to try to play these hands because you may end up against a raise that you don't want to call.
Also, if you are small stack or low compared to the average, the times for playing suited connectors is all but gone.
You cannot afford to leak chips on hands that don't have a good chance of winning.
Plus, you cannot play them too strongly when you are short stacked because the last thing you want is your tournament life on the line with 7-8s against 2 over cards.
If you are going to play suited connectors, and you should.
Pick your times wisely or don't play them at all.