Two Plus Two Older Archives - Calling a raise with suited connectors

Hi All,

Assume deep money, and you're in LP or blinds with 87s. What pot odds and/or other conditions do you need to call a solid player's EP or MP 3xBB open-raise?

I assume a solid player will make this raise on TT or better, AKs or AQs, and that any callers ahead of me will have applied the Gap Concept and have quality calling hands.

By my reckoning (with twodimes), on average, 87s will be a 3:1 underdog heads-up, and a 4:1 underdog in a multi-way pot vs. those kinds of hands. The win odds for 87s stabilize with more players in the pot, provided only one of its suit and none of its rank are duplicated.

But of course those are the win odds assuming you play the hand to the river, and that pre-flop call won't get you to the river. So a mere 5:1 pot odds -- e.g.: if you're in the BB with two callers ahead of you -- doesn't seem as if it's enough to justify the call, as too often you'll have to fold at the flop, or risk getting sucked into a losing chase for all of your chips. You'd need to flop a pair-plus-four (even money vs. an overpair), two-pair, or better to be certain of playing out the hand. With a naked four-draw, assume you'll have to fold at least 50% of the time, because your opponents won't knowingly give you good odds to chase a naked four-draw.

I'm sure one of our resident math wizards could compute the odds for this (or already has) but I don't know it off-hand.

So ... what would you need to make this call?

BTW, this is a purely hypothetical situation. I'm curious.

Cris