Suited connectors are an important part of No Limit Texas Holdem. Suited connectors are also quite often building up your implied odds (or they should be) against opponents who either have huge hands, or aren't capable of laying down whatever hand they hold.
There are two main benefits that come from playing suited connectors in No Limit Texas Holdem: a) widens your hand range in opponent's eyes, and b) often gives you tremendous implied odds because these hands are less predictable than others.
But suited connectors get misplayed a lot, too. These hands are usually so "beautiful" that it's hard to lay them down, and maybe because of this I see players making huge mistakes especially in tournaments, when they overvalue their odds and actually risk way too many chips just to play this type of a drawy hand. Yes, this hand can be very valuable, but not when you risk 25% of your tournament stack to call a raise from a player who can only make the raise with premium to super-premium hands.
Generally, pot odds would tell you not to get into a pot with suited connectors (in 6 max. and heads-up games). You're almost always losing in pot odds, but key is to take an advantage of these hands at the right time, against right opponents. You don't step into the pot because playing suited connectors is generally profitable (it isn't). You step in when it's profitable, against profitable opponents. Here's an example of pot odds you'll usually get with suited connectors:
I'll use 76-suited (76s) in all these examples. Let's start with a heads-up pot. Suited connectors get beaten up by odds pretty badly in heads-up pots. This is why, when you play suited connectors, you'll have to be quite sure that there's a benefit from getting involved - otherwise you're just throwing a lot of bets away.
76s vs. AA = 25.5% vs. 74.5%
76s vs. 88 = 18.5% vs. 81.5%
76s vs. AKs = 39% vs. 61%
76s vs. JTs = 36% vs. 64%
76s vs. ATo = 40% vs. 60%
Five hands here show us that 76s is often behind against any kinds of hands you can imagine your opponent raising with. This means if you play heads-up and 50% of the money in the pot comes from your stack, there won't be right pot odds to call since you're risking more money than you can win. You give your money 1 : 1 odds, whereas your hand will almost always be getting from 3 : 1 to 3 : 2 odds. Therefore using suited connectors is sensible only when you get implied odds. There's also the "loose table image" fact, but that can be done with a lot of cards that get you in less trouble.
A three-way pot, then. Here 33% of the money in the pot comes from our pockets, so to for pot odds to justify this play, we'd had to be at least 33% probable winners:
76s vs. AK vs. JTs = 26.7% vs. 39.8% vs. 33.5%
76s vs. 99 vs. AJo = 19.6% vs. 42.5% vs. 37.9%
76s vs. JJ vs. QQ = 20.8% vs. 17% vs. 62.2%
76s vs. 98s vs. AK = 24.8% vs. 29.9% vs. 45.3%
76s vs. AQ vs. AJ = 35.9% vs. 41.8% vs. 22.3%
Still doesn't look too good for us, except for the last one. Like you see, playing 76s actually gives us a great probability considering pot odds. We should play 76s in a spot where our opponents hold Ace-picture hands. In other kind of pots, like you see, we're far behind. It's very much about what kind of opponents we play against, not really about pot odds. Playing hands like 76-suited requires implied odds.
You're looking for a big hand with suited connectors. You don't want to get it in with top pair, no draw. You want to have straight and flush draws, maybe even make a pair on top of that. You should be able to lay this hand down in most pots, too, since you simply are going to lose most of them.
So to end this article, let's recap why these hands can be profitable. First, they're unpredictable, this way giving us great implied odds against right opponents (who either have big/huge hands or don't know how to give up whatever they're holding). In case we get caught of having a suited connector - type of hand, we can still benefit from that (doesn't matter if we won or lost) because now our table image is a little bit more loose in our opponent's eyes. Suited connectors should be played because of implied odds.
Look for big draws, play cautiously and remember - you're not supposed to win with these hands most of the time - overplaying is a big mistake but easy to fall into.
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