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Often in my classes students ask me why I don't play "gapped connectors".  My pat answer is because ‘your odds of hitting a draw or a hand with suited connectors is SO bad that I don't want to make the odds worse by playing the gapped suited connecters!'  There is a lot of logic backing up that simple statement though and that is what I aim to discuss. 

First off, suited connectors are drawing hands.  They rarely turn into ‘made' hands on the flop.  Below are the kinds of hands that you can flop with suited connectors. 

'Made' hands:

flopping full house:  0.09%
flopping flush:  0.8%
flopping straight:  1.3%
flopping trips:  1.3%
flopping two pair: 2.02%

Draws:

flopping open ended straight draw t: 10.4%
flopping flush draw:  10.9%

So when you play suited connectors, 5.5% of the time, you will flop a made ‘hand,' and 21.3% of the time you flop a ‘hand,' it will still be a draw with about a 1/3 chance of the draw completing by the river.  A true straight draw will complete 31.5% of the time by the river and a flush draw will complete 35% of the time.  (Odds given are for two cards to come.) 

The problem for gapping connectors is that the odds of flopping a straight draw are progressively worse than the odds of flopping a straight draw for suited connectors. You have to think of the flop for suited connectors like this. If you have 78 in your hand, a flop containing 56, 69 or 9T will give you a str8 draw. If you hold a
single gapping connector like 79, the flop needs to contain 68 or 8T in
order for you to have a str8 draw. Thus you have only 2/3 of the amount of combinations of cards that will help you flop the str8 draw and you have 2/3 of the 10.4% chance of flopping the draw that you have with suited connectors. Thus a single gapper has a 6.93% chance of flopping a str8 draw and of course the same odds as a suited connector for the flush draw. A two gapper has only one set of cards on the board that will help it. T7 needs 89 to flop a str8 draw and the odds of that will be 3.46% Now this does not take into account the opportunities for gutshot draws, but the odds of hitting the draws are so bad, (16.5% with 2 cards to come and 8.7% with one card.) that calling them draws is wrong headed thinking. 

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