[Slim Pickens]

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Ok, I would like to hear some opinions on suited connectors/1 gappers/2 gappers/ Axs as marginal hands in the early blinds. Here's my personal opinion.
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I'll limp the SCs and Axs at a passive table but I don't have much faith in the gappers early, even for a single bet. Collin suggests playing them up to a point; do you think his advice is too conservative?

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I just took a look in my PT database filtered to cover about 2k 6-max SNGs with buy-ins 50+5 or greater, looking at suited connectors. 93% of my total profit at 15/30 (level 1) is with AKs. It's like 140% at 20/40. Filtered for all hands with 4-6 players at the table it looks a little better, but AKs is still 75% of the total profit for 31% of the hands played. Maybe I suck at playing them, but more likely they're just not profitable enough to be worth playing early in a SNG for the majority of players.

My opinion is unless you're faced with a very profitable situation early on, maybe like a 58% pot equity overall playing smallish pots and never playing a large one, suited connectors aren't worth playing. Since the blinds are low, multiply the bet size you put in on each street by your pot equity at that point and divide by the size of the pot at the end. It will have to be at least 0.58 to be profitable in a SNG but very close to 0.50 in a cash game. That's how steep the "ICM tax" is.

As for Axs, I pretty much never pay it as a speculative hand, although occasionally I'll put in a raise in position with it if there are a lot of weak limpers.