The Stop and Go Play

Every tournament poker player has a bag of tricks. A highly effective poker strategy utilizing the Stop and go play can help a tournament poker player really catch his opposition off guard. When this strategic play is appropriately used, the stop and go strategy can help you take your game to the next level. Whether you play at Fulltilt or Everest, this poker strategy article will help…

Use in Poker of the Stop and Go Play

The most effective time to use the stop and go move is in a no limit texas holdem tournament when your short stacked. So for example, the blinds are 100-200 with a 20 ante, and you have 1800 in chips left. Everyone folds round to the button whose big stack with 40,00 chips. He raises the pot to 600.

The small blind folds and in the big blind you hold A-J. You have a felling it’s the best hand. The decision your left with is to go all-in for a extra 1200, or just call and see what comes on the flop.

Most poker players would probably move all-in before the flop. But hopefully i can prove the stop and go can give you a better option in this situation, and see it’s better to call sometimes and see the flop.

Lets guess that the button raiser is trying to steal the blinds, and because he has such a big chip lead, he’d probably call your 1200 re-raise with any two cards. If he does call the all-in move from you with a hand like Q-8, 38% of the time he’d also knock you out of the tournament.

In this case your opponent only has to call an extra 1200 to win about 3500. So he is getting the right odds to call with almost any hand as there not many hands that are that much behind pre-flop. In fact, calling with 7-2 offsuit (the hammer) wouldn’t be such a bad call; cause even it will beat A-K about 35% of the time.

The thing is, tournament poker, it’s all about surviving. So sometimes survival is more important than value. In this case, if you wait until after the flop, you will actually increase your chances of winning the pot.

So instead of going all-in pre-flop, just call the 300 button raise. You can hopefully use your remaining 1200 to force your opponent to fold later in the hand.

But you have to remember, when you make the call before the flop, you are moving all your chips in regardless of what the flop is. The only time you might want to change from the plan is if you flop a really strong hand.

But if that doesn’t happen, and the flop comes something like 10-6-3, 8-6-6, or even K-8-3, you have to bet your last 1500 chips immediately, hoping that your opponent will fold. You might be able to make your opponent fold hands like 4-4 or 5-5 if the flop comes 3 over cards.

Now, if your opponent is holding Q-8, and the flop comes 9-6-3, and he calls your 1200 all-in bet, he’d win the pot only about 25% of the time. At this point calling would be a mistake for him and then you would benefit.

Stop and Go Benefits

So as you can see the Stop and Go play not only greatly increases your chances of survival, It also give your opponent more opportunities to make a mistake after the flop. If you had moved all-in pre-flop, your opponent would be making the correct call with his Q-8, but if he calls after the flop, it would be a mistake.

The Stop and Go gives you opponent more opportunities to make mistakes. As you’ve already made your decision pre-flop, putting your chips in on the flop doesn’t require any thought. However, your opponent, still has to make a choice that he wouldn’t if you had went all-in pre-flop.