www.pokerroom.com - The poker textbooks will often tell you that you should be wary about playing hands such as suited connectors, or that you should always raise preflop to protect your hand when you have (A,A). Personally, I like to experiment with playing hands different ways, and here are examples of playing the two I have just mentioned.
Seated just before the small blind, I picked up (7,8) suited, and decided to put in a small raise. Sometimes you will find you pick up the blinds uncontested, but on this occasion I was called by the big blind. The flop of (7,J,7) was fortunate of course, but when I raised my opponent on this flop, he had no doubt his (A,J) was good, and so called, and lost.
The point I make, is that if you come into a pot raising with middle suited connectors, and you hit your hand well, your opponent will always struggle to work out what you have. This means you are much more likely to get paid off when you hit the hand well. Another example is to flat call preflop with Aces (only with 1 or 2 players to act behind you). You cannot of course try this with multiple players yet to act, because the danger of ending up in a four or five handed pot is too great, but if the blinds are reasonable, you will often find someone raising behind you to try and steal the pot. If you end up in a three way pot, this is no disaster either.
The most important point here to consider, is that of table image. Given these two examples, my opponents now know that I am capable of raising preflop with (7,8), and that I am capable of flat calling preflop with (A,A). Thus making it very difficult to read my hand strength preflop. I have put real uncertainty in my opponents minds over what I might be raising with preflop, and have done so at hardly any extra risk, or cost to my chipstack.