The stop and go play

Cool little play you can use whilst playing in tournaments.

used when you are a short stack it works some thing like this.....

the blinds are say 50 100 no antes..

you have only 900 left and you get dealt ace 5 off suit in the big blind.
not a great hand, but it plays ok heads up i guess. a late position player raises to 300. you really have no choice here but to move all in its a good spot to move all in.. butt...

instead of reraising you just call, then no matter what the flop is push all in with your remaining 600 chips. and hope to take the pot down.
this works extremely well and ive used it on numerous occasions.

It works so well because you take a play away from him. he will insta call your reraise preflop with any two cards and it would be correct for him to call the extra 600 preflop... so by calling and then shoving the flop, you are not giving him the odds to call you. as the most likely situation is that you will both miss the flop.


the math behind it, preflop the LP raiser is having to call 600 to win a pot of 1250, just over 2-1 good odds to call with any two cards as it is unlikely that you are more than a 2-1 underdog to lose the hand..

now with the "stop and go play" he is having to call the same 600 to with the same 1250, but if he has missed the flop completely (which happens a lot) it would be a major mistake for him to call..



Hope this helps, its a play that i believe will help you to stick around a bit longer in tournaments.

i have experienced this one before... but my advice is better play this with a good player who know when to lay down a hand. coz when you come across a calling station or loose one, mostly likely that the bluff wont work. study who you are up against before doin' this.

Me too, had to face this type of situations a lot of times...
But what i do is wait to strike the best hand.Once i get a pocket pair or an A WITH ABOVE 10 KICKER, i just go allin...
But frankly, i liked the idea behind your thinking as well...
Will try it few times and then come back here to post my experience...

Yes

Definately works well. Position plays a HUGE role in poker and you have to use it correctly, especially in super turbos. I try to use my position in every tournament, especially when it is late in the tournament. Good luck to you

depends on your read of them...can't do this against a stranger unless you're totally desperate. he might have AK and have hit jack squat...and if it were me with it, raising my AK on you as a shortstacker...figuring that's your style to call and shove, if i've seen you do it...i might just go ahead and shove all in preflop if i'm either not worried about the button, sb, or if i'm either or those...and put it on you to decide what you want to do with A5...which is most surely beat. if i'm A5 shortstack on the blind guy...it depends on the raiser...a min-raise is something you see often at microstakes too...i'll call that probably with any two cards. if there's just some bigstacker who's abusing the rest of the table with raises, i'll just shove all in right then and there to a std raise...if he turns over KK or something, then its just my bad luck. i'll shove anything once i know you're limptastic or min-raise fanatical, might take them a few orbits to pick up on the fact i'm exploiting their lameness on hands they're not willing to pay big chips for without seeing a flop...there's a limit though, because you'll tilt them after a while

Yes, I like this play because you've got more than one way of winning - though you really have to pick your spot for it. You want to play it against the right player (obviously) but also against the right chip stack. If you are down to last three, a huge stack will often call anyway, so it is effectively an all-in preflop. But against a medium stack who would become small stack if they lost the hand you are giving them a tough decision.

There are added benefits too to this kind of play. Presupposing we are already in the last chance saloon, you are happy for a coin toss to survive in the tourney. If you hold A5, the flop come something sweet like Q55, you shove, get called by AK and win the hand. This is really going to mess with someone's head and will be remembered when you are heads up with them later, or whatever. But if you are all-in PF I don't think it'll hurt them so much.

Whether you win or lose this hand is down to luck - if you lose you are out of the tourney, but if you win you want to maximise psychological damage, strengthen your image, make the villain feel outplayed etc etc.

Little cards

Inthis situation I would hope for little cards like 235 or 345 then and only then would I push all in if I was the first to act!

Olddog21 said:

Inthis situation I would hope for little cards like 235 or 345 then and only then would I push all in if I was the first to act!

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I think you may be missing the whole point of this play. The stop & go is a play you already have your mind made up before you even call PF. Theirs no turning back once you commit yourself to this play.
If your planning on seeing the flop before making a decision, then you probally should just fold preflop and save your chips.
I have used this play a number of times, with some good success; however like someone said earlier, you need to know the player first. A calling machine will call everytime, a good player probally would fold if he misses. He may call if he realizes what your doing though (assuming he has like AK,AQ, or a med pair)

yea i use this often,but also when i have chips..i do it to short stakes on bubble and also nits lol...
but alot of people do it in rebuys and short stakes do it too
but if i see they use it 2-3 times ill call them next time...

Works better when the villain consistently makes steal plays from Button or Cutoff.

i did this play last night with some stupidly short stack. if i can find it later i'll post it here. i had something like Q6o called a min. raise in the BB. i think the blinds were like 250/500 after calling the raise i had 160 left. i shoved it on the flop which i totally issed. they folded getting 15 to 1 odds. dont use this play all that much but am looking to work it into my game.

I had a similar thing online a while back - can't remember exact hand, but I was down to 2BB and some change in BB, SB completed so I went all in with ATC. Except I didn't quite - the slider on screen didn't go all the way to the right so I was left with something like 10 chips and the pot was 800. I shoved (if one can shove 10 chips) on the flop and blow me the villain folded! I could not believe it - I could only guess they hit the wrong button or were multi-tabling and confused two hands or something. I've tried the same thing deliberately since, but unsurprisingly without success.

cardplayer52 said:

i did this play last night with some stupidly short stack. if i can find it later i'll post it here. i had something like Q6o called a min. raise in the BB. i think the blinds were like 250/500 after calling the raise i had 160 left. i shoved it on the flop which i totally issed. they folded getting 15 to 1 odds. dont use this play all that much but am looking to work it into my game.

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WOW, strong play

Olddog21 said:

Inthis situation I would hope for little cards like 235 or 345 then and only then would I push all in if I was the first to act!

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this negates the whole purpose of a stop n go play... the thing is.. you are short and calling pre & c/folding flop is not happening.
Point of stop n go is... you're getting it allin regardless... but knowing villain is priced in to call when you shove over preflop there is still a good chance you'll lose (ie. let's say you're holding a small pp.. what flop looks good to you if you call pre but then consider folding on the flop?..and what hand could villain be on that isn't a coinflip with ya.. or even have you dominated by a bigger pp).... this is the benefit of the stop n go.. it gives you two ways of winning the hand (and 'extra' way)... instead of re-raising allin pre.. you just flat & shove any & all flops (and you obviously have to be out of pos. to do so.. ie. in SB.. or in BB if SB has folded).

ted80 said:

depends on your read of them...can't do this against a stranger unless you're totally desperate. he might have AK and have hit jack squat...and if it were me with it, raising my AK on you as a shortstacker...figuring that's your style to call and shove, if i've seen you do it...i might just go ahead and shove all in preflop if i'm either not worried about the button, sb, or if i'm either or those...and put it on you to decide what you want to do with A5...which is most surely beat. if i'm A5 shortstack on the blind guy...it depends on the raiser...a min-raise is something you see often at microstakes too...i'll call that probably with any two cards. if there's just some bigstacker who's abusing the rest of the table with raises, i'll just shove all in right then and there to a std raise...if he turns over KK or something, then its just my bad luck. i'll shove anything once i know you're limptastic or min-raise fanatical, might take them a few orbits to pick up on the fact i'm exploiting their lameness on hands they're not willing to pay big chips for without seeing a flop...there's a limit though, because you'll tilt them after a while

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if villain is on any decent hand they should obviously adjust their raise size, taking into account that the SS is pot committed by a call.
as far as the rest of your response here... i really think you're missing out on what OP is getting at here with the 'Stop 'N Go' Play. Maybe if they'd used a small pkt. pr. to illustrate their example it'd be more obvious (incidentally, the stop n go is more suitable for doing with a small pkt. pr.,.... remember too here that it's not relevant as to whether or not villain is stealing because they'll be priced in to make the call 100% of the time if hero chooses to ship it pre... instead of pulling a stop n go... incidentally again (<< lol @ all the incidentallys).... I see this HUGE leak often in micro stakes players (and ALOT in the CC games for eg.).. where villain raises to steal on a player in the blinds when the blinds ship will price them in to make the call and alot of the times the player in the blinds is pot committed once they've posted their blind).

Poker Orifice said:

if villain is on any decent hand they should obviously adjust their raise size, taking into account that the SS is pot committed by a call

(me talking now) ok, so this is typically what a non-shortstacker might want to do to the shortstack to, not so much combat the stop n go, but to either rob the blinds or put them all the way in...like my example with just shoving or raising enough to put them all in with AK? is this what you mean by adjusting?


as far as the rest of your response here... i really think you're missing out on what OP is getting at here with the 'Stop 'N Go' Play. Maybe if they'd used a small pkt. pr. to illustrate their example it'd be more obvious (incidentally, the stop n go is more suitable for doing with a small pkt. pr.,.... remember too here that it's not relevant as to whether or not villain is stealing because they'll be priced in to make the call 100% of the time if hero chooses to ship it pre... instead of pulling a stop n go... incidentally again (<< lol @ all the incidentallys).... I see this HUGE leak often in micro stakes players (and ALOT in the CC games for eg.).. where villain raises to steal on a player in the blinds when the blinds ship will price them in to make the call and alot of the times the player in the blinds is pot committed once they've posted their blind).

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i mean, i get the point of the OP, i just don't use it very often, it's kinda in the back of my arsenal. i do use it when i know they'll call a shove but fold post-flop --but even that's a guess (guess that's part of the point of the play, to steal their odds), but generally only when they've been pretty liberal raising from position on me. it is, however, always been a hard play to make myself do.