Jun 13, 2018 The “stop and go” is a basic poker move executed by calling a preflop raise out of position with the intent of shoving the flop.To put it another way, it’s a delayed shove. While the stop and go can technically be done in a cash game, it’s more applicable to tournament play.Likewise, it can be used in multiway pots, but its success rate goes way down. Stop And Go Tournament Strategy. Back before Greg Raymer was the World Series of Poker Main Event Champion, he was a lowly part-time internet player like so many today. Raymer was primarily a sit-and-go player where 9 or 10 players battle it out at a single table.
One of the oldest adages in poker – it’s one you’ve heard repeated time and time again – is that if you can’t spot the fish during your first ten minutes at the table, it’s you. Most adages have a least a modicum of truth in them, and this one has a lot.
Stop And Go Poker – Everything You Need to Know If you’re looking to expand your repertoire of poker strategies and tactics and like the sound of a risky but high-paying move, then Stop & Go is the perfect answer for players who want to elbow their competitors out of the game. The 'stop-and-go' play refers to a strategy sometimes used to good effect by short-stacked players in tournaments. It's a two-part move that begins before the flop then continues on the flop.
How do you spot the fish at the poker table, and what should you do when you can’t? Everyone knows that you have to be observant at the poker table, but there’s so much going on that it’s just about impossible to pay attention to everything. And even if you could, there are some things that aren’t happening that you need to pay attention to also. More about that later.
The Best Way to Study Players
Increasing levels of familiarity will help you with this task. That’s another way of saying that as you continue to watch your opponents, you’ll pick up things later on that you probably won’t see initially. So it’s best to look at the big-picture things first.
What’s obvious and available for all to see? When first sitting down at the table, look for skill signs and begin correlating your opponents’ play with the hands they turn up at showdown. You can easily do both at the same time.
Poker skill signs are easily found in live poker games. How comfortable is your opponent with the game, the speed of play, and the others at the table? Is he comfortable with his chips? Does he riffle them with an air of sureness and certainty that suggests he spends hours upon hours at the card table? Sure, there are poker players graced with manual dexterity who can riffle chips like a slight-of-hand artist and can’t play worth a damn – but there’s usually some correlation between these things and skill.
In some cases it may be very high. In others, not at all. But you have to start somewhere and if your opponent is at ease with the game’s mechanics, give him credit for being able to play, but be ever vigilant and willing to downgrade that rating based on information gathered later.
Showdown Hands Provide Vital Information
The most accurate information you’ll be gathering about your opponents will be the hands they turn over at the showdown. Whenever cards are turned over at a hand’s conclusion, the information is gold. You know what your opponent was holding and if you replay each of the betting rounds in your mind, you’ll be able to see how he valued his particular hand in the face of whatever action was initiated by him or in response to the action of his adversaries.
Showdown hands provide insight into a player’s willingness to aggress if he was the guy doing the betting or raising. Was he aggressive with a very big hand? Was he on a stone cold bluff? Was he semi-bluffing with a drawing hand? All of this information can be gathered and stored in your mental database simply by observing the hands players expose at showdown and correlating it against the action that took place on each wagering round.
This is the most precise and reliable information you can gather about your opponents because it is all based on observable facts. You don’t have to make assumptions about what you think he might have had; the facts of the matter – in the form of showdown hands – are all there for you to see.
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You can learn which players are willing to defend their blind from early position with weak or medium strength hands and who will cold-call a raise with a marginal hand. Showdown hands will also tell you which players will call when the pot odds are not favorable to them.
Who’s a calling station? Who is aggressive all the time? Which players like to limp-in regardless of their place in the betting order simply because they like to see as many flops as they can?
Who always comes in for a raise? Which players will always raise from late position when first to enter a pot? Which of your opponents will never release a hand like Ace-King or pocket Jacks, even when all the signs point to the fact that they are beaten?
Players who won’t fold can be value bet to death, but they can’t be bluffed. Others, who will fold all but the best hands, are easily bluffed, and scrutinizing opponents’ hands that are turned up at the showdown and examining them against any whatever wagering took place on the various betting rounds just might buy you a license to steal.
Ongoing Decisions
Every time a new player sits down at the table, you have to begin scoping out his or her game. While it’s generally a good idea to develop a quick impression of his play during his first 10 minutes at the table, that’s not nearly enough.
Many players come to the table resolving to play good poker, only to change gears the minute they lose a hand. When this happens, you need to reassess your opponent. Maybe he was pretty snug – and therefore bluffable – when he first sat down, but after taking a lick or two, he might fly open and call every bet made in his direction. If that’s the case, you have to do a complete about-face and become a value bettor rather than a bluffer – at least where this guy is concerned.
Dollars and Cents
How much your opponent chooses to wager in a no-limit game is critically important information. If your opponent is a raw beginner who bets proportionally to the strength of his hand, you can play him as though he’s turned his cards face up.
Some poker players will bet smaller when on a draw than they will with a made hand. Others will bet small when they are trying to induce a call with a huge hand, and some will make large wagers when they want to drive you off the pot.
Some of your opponents will play power poker. They are very selective and aggressive and when they bet, it’s usually a large wager. Others are small-ballers, typically wagering less than three times the big blind when they raise before the flop.
Many players will try to keep the pot small with medium strength hand, while betting big with powerhouse hands and bluffs too – albeit for very different reasons.
The only way you’ll be able to categorize these opponents – and thereby determine an appropriate strategy for beating them – is to examine showdown hands and correlate them against the wagering that took place during the hand’s play.
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Common Poker Tells
In a live poker setting you also need to be aware of common poker tells, even though they are seldom as reliable as watching the hand an opponent turns over and correlating it with how he played on every wagering round of the just-concluded hand.
Poker tells, by definition, require some educated guesswork on your part and they have to be applied differently for each opponent. Nevertheless, there are a few nearly universal tells that you can rely on, unless your opponent’s action shows you that a particular tell does not apply in his case.
At the Beginning
When you first sit down at a poker table, your antennae won’t be able to pick up nuanced signs. So you have to begin painting with a broad brush. Find out who’s loose and tight, and which players are passive and which opponents are aggressive.
That’s your basic cut at reading a table: loose vs. tight; passive vs. aggressive. You’ll find players fitting into each of those four basic boxes:
- Loose-passive
- Loose-aggressive
- Tight-passive
- Tight-aggressive
Some of the time your opponent’s will wobble and vacillate between boxes. Relegating your opponents into these little squares will seldom be a perfect fit, but it’s a start. Once you’ve got them categorized, begin refining your judgments about how they play with an eye to determining how they vary their play under differing circumstances.
Some players get very aggressive when raised while others seem to turn turtle and curl up in a foetal position.
A Few Final Thoughts
Studying your opponents is always a work in progress. Even when you’ve studied an opponent for quite some time and feel like you have a good read on him, it’s important to remember that he is not a machine that responds the same way every time. He will fool you at times, and surprise you at others. He may be different tomorrow than he was today.
Studying opponents is not a perfect science. But if all you do is get a little better at your game because you took the time to read the handwriting on the wall that every poker player offers up to the table at large, you will have raised your game and that’s always a step in the right direction.
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By Lou Krieger
The author of many best-selling poker books, including “Hold’em Excellence” and “Poker for Dummies”. A true ambassador of the game and one of poker’s greatest ever teachers.
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The 'stop-and-go' play refers to a strategy sometimes used to good effect by short-stacked players in tournaments. It's a two-part move that begins before the flop then continues on the flop — kind of a delayed all-in push of your short stack that gives you one other option besides simply going all in preflop.
By 'short-stacked' we're referring to a chip stack of around 7-10 big blinds, although you could still try the stop-and-go with a little more or less. However, the play isn't really a viable option once you're down to five BBs or less.
Let's start out defining the play, then talk about some of the strategy involved when it comes to choosing the stop-and-go rather than simply shoving all in before the flop.
The Stop-and-Go: Definition
You are in a tournament and the blinds have increased to 500/1,000 with a 100 ante. You are down to your last 8,100 and in the big blind, so after paying your ante and posting the BB, you now have just 7,000 behind. It folds to the button who is one of the chip leaders with more than 70,000, and he raises to 2,500. The small blind folds, and you look down at .
One option here would be to reraise-push your stack all in. In fact, many players might view this situation and decide that's the only option — but in fact there's another way to play this hand.
Rather than go ahead and shove all in right here, you decide just to call the raise, then go all in on the flop — you 'stop' the action with the call, then 'go' all in. That, in essence, is the stop-and-go play.
But why play a hand this way? What's the benefit?
The Stop-and-Go: It's All About Survival
The primary reason for choosing the stop-and-go over a preflop-shove is that the play gives you a better chance of winning the hand by forcing a fold when you do go all in. It may only increase your 'fold equity' by a little, but that little can be worth a lot when the question of your survival in the tournament is at stake.
Common Poker Terms
When you're short-stacked in a tournament, you sometimes don't have enough chips to encourage opponents with bigger stacks to fold when you finally do commit your chips. That's why you're often better off open-raising all in than reraising all in (or even worse, calling all in) — then, at least, you might have a chance to earn folds if you're shoving for six or eight or 10 big blinds or more. That's also why you shouldn't let yourself get down below five big blinds, if you can avoid it, as then you're even less likely to win without a showdown when you shove.
Here, though, we have a situation in which a player has raised before you, then you finally look down at an above-average starting hand. If you were to reraise all in before the flop, your opponent might be tempted to call you even if — as you might well suspect — he is simply trying to steal the blinds and antes and is holding a weak hand.
By just calling his raise, though, then shoving the flop — regardless of whether or not it hits your hand — you increase your chance of earning a fold and winning without a showdown.
The Stop-and-Go: Making It Less Inviting to Call
Interestingly, the pot odds your all-in shove gives to your opponent are exactly the same whether you reraise-push before the flop or just call and shove after the flop. However, the decision he has to make becomes a much different one after the first three community cards have already been dealt.
Say it's a nine-handed table — that means at 500/1,000/100 when your opponent raises to 2,500 from the button, there's now 4,900 in the middle including your ante and big blind (900 for antes + 1,500 in blinds + 2,500).
You have 7,000 left behind. If you push all in before the flop, that makes your total reraise 8,000, meaning your opponent will have to call 5,500 to win 11,900 — pot odds of a little worse than 2-to-1.
If you just call and then shove after the flop, the pot odds would be the same. Your call would bring the pot to 6,400, then you'd shove your remaining 5,500. Again, your opponent is looking at calling 5,500 to win 11,900 — the exact same pot odds of a little worse than 2-to-1.
Let's say your opponent is indeed just trying to steal with a weak hand like or . If he thinks he has a couple of live cards, he might call your preflop shove with even a terrible hand like — and he wouldn't necessarily be making a mistake by doing so! If he puts you on two overcards (like the you have), he's still going to be nearly 32% to win the hand with . With almost 2-to-1 pot odds, it isn't such a bad call for him to make, especially when he has the chips with which to gamble.
But if he misses the flop — which will happen more often than not — he's going to be much less willing to call your flop shove and risk 5,500 to win 11,900 with only two cards to come (and very little apparent equity). Say the flop comes and you shove. He folds his or or many other hands, and you win the pot without having to go to a showdown.
There will be instances when he actually has a hand before the flop here — say a small pocket pair like — with which he'd definitely call your preflop shove. But after a flop he's probably tossing away his pair, and you win the pot with the the worse hand (your ace-high).
What about those times when he does hit the flop — say he had when the flop came to give him a pair of kings? He's definitely calling your flop shove. But he likely would've called if you had shoved before the flop, too, so in many cases the outcome wouldn't have been any different.
Final Thoughts
When deciding upon the stop-and-go, you should be ready to pull the trigger on the flop no matter what it brings — unless, of course, you happen to flop something big (like a straight or two pair or better) and don't want your opponent to be so eager to fold.
Poker Term Stop-and-go
Also, while the play is mostly rooted in the math of the situation, you'll want to be aware of your opponent's style and note whether or not it might lessen the effectiveness of the play. For instance, if he's the type who never folds after putting some chips in the middle, the difference betwen calling your shove before or after the flop may not matter much to him.
Poker Terms And Meanings
In any case, be aware of the stop-and-go play and how it can give you a second option besides reraise-shoving all in before the flop — and how it can increase your chance of survival in those crucial tournament hands when you've decided to put all of your chips at risk.
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