I'm not onto the terminology yet, so I'll explain my problem in laymens terms:

I find myself often in the position of a hand like 5-7s, 6-8s, etc. mid to early position against a table that has a propensity to see 4 to 5 of the 10 players call a 3xbb raise. Should I be calling these with suited connectors hoping to make a huge bust, or just sit back and wait for a solid hand? or is this too general of a question?

whoa buddy, slow down.

no limit?

aseem

Sorry, I was particularly referring to MTT's NL

1. the deeper the stacks, the more inclined you can be to play those types of hands to raises.

2. the more aggressive the players post-flop, the higher their value since you get paid off when you hit (on the flipside, it costs more to draw, so small pocket pairs go up in value whereas suited connectors go slightly down in value since you often have a flush/straight draw on the flop instead of flopping a monster which you do with pocket pairs).

3. the more aggressive the players pre-flop, the better position you need to be in. it sucks to cold-call a raise with 87s on the direct left of a raiser, only to get a person behind you reraising. closing the action is ideal.

4. position is also very important for post-flop reasons. let's say you flop a set with 22. you want to checkraise after the original raiser bets so that you can trap everyone for money before psuhing hard to protect your hand. similarly, say you flop a straight draw with 87s. you want to be calling/raising after everyone has acted, because you don't want to be putting money in right after the bettor since people behind you could raise.

5. the more thinking and observant your opponents are, the more inclined you can be to play these hands, mainly for deception. this one usually doesn't apply online or in small-stakes MTTs....

honestly, in tournaments (online, at least), you almost never meet all of these criteria to profitably play these speculative hands. specifically, the stacks are almost never deep--in fact, they are often quite short for most of the tournament.

aseem

There's a nice section in Harrington on Holdem Vol. 2 which talks about when you can play suited connectors/small pocket pairs in MTTs.

To summarize, he says that you need at least 24x the BB to make the implied odds worthwhile when you do hit. 24x is break/even so you really want your stacks to be even deeper to play these type of hands.

To clarify, (gobears knows what he's talking about, this is just for the OP's benefit) you AND your opponents need to have deep stacks relative to the blinds. I've gone on rushes in online multi-table tournaments where I've gathered up 100BBs+ and could have played very creatively, but my table lacked any other big stacks to try this with. I could never play a pot with anybody that had enough chips to make it worth playing these hands.

I keep reading advice from people who have read HOH2 and it seems to correspond with what I've picked up on my own. I may have to give it a read.

thanks, that helps a lot.

Position is paramount when dealing with those little hands. I used to call w/ those types of hands regardless b/c when you hit it makes it worth your while, but I've been paying much more attention to position with tricky little hands, and the results show...

I have been focusing more on cash games in recent months instead of tournaments, but I feel that these types of hands have much more value in cash games than in tournaments. Maybe it has to do with the structure of the tournaments I've been playing in, but for the most part I feel like in a tournament setting you're not really getting the right price to call w/ these hands, but in a cash game when you and your opponent(s) are deep stacked the call is much more correct.