The stop and go play is a tournament manoeuvre that takes place over the pre-flop and flop betting rounds. The stop and go is incredibly useful for when you are short stacked in a poker tournament.

1. Poker Term Stop-and-go
2. Poker Terms And Meanings
3. Common Poker Terms

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.

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.

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.

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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The 'stop and go' play is a tournament manoeuvre that takes place over the pre-flop and flop betting rounds. The play is typically used when a player is short-stacked in a tournament and has a hand that they are willing to go all-in with in an attempt to double up.

The stop and go play is where you have a hand that you intend on moving all-in with. However, you call an opponent's bet before the flop instead of pushing, with the intention of pushing all-in on the flop instead.

The stop and go play situation.

In a situation where you are short-stacked in a tournament with a decent hand, the standard play is to push all-in if an opponent has raised in front of you.

However, if you are so short-stacked that your all-in push is not enough to make another decent full size bet on top of your opponent’s raise, the chances are that they are going to have the odds to call your bet and see all five community cards to try and make the best hand. Therefore in these situations where you probably do not have enough chips to force your opponent to fold with your re-raise, you may consider making a stop and go play.

The stop and go play.

The stop and go play involves you calling your opponent’s preflop raise with the intention of moving all in on the flop, rather than pushing all-in over the top when facing the preflop raise from your opponent.

By calling the bet on the flop, you have the opportunity to make your opponent fold on the flop by pushing the remainder of your chips in then, because your opponent will now have to call your flop bet to see two more cards instead of the opportunity to see five by calling an all-in preflop.

Your opponent will have a tougher time calling your push on the flop than they will calling a push pre-flop.

The stop and go play reduces the odds your opponent has to call, and so they will have to think hard about whether they want to continue if they haven’t improved their hand, and 60% of the time they won’t.

Stop and go play example.

Say we are in the middle of a tournament and we are short-stacked with 1200 chips. The blinds are 100/200 and we are holding A J on the big blind. Everyone folds to a player in late position who makes a standard raise to 600, and lets say that we know for a fact that they are holding a pair of Tens.

The rest of the players fold and now the action is on us. Now in this situation we could happily move all-in, but our opponent would definitely be calling our 600 re-raise and we would be facing a 50/50 all-in coin flip. Instead however, we could improve our chances of winning by making a stop and go play.

So rather than coming over the top, we call our opponents raise leaving us with 600 chips left in our stack. The flop comes Q 6 2 and we move all-in. Our opponent is now faced with a tough decision, as they now have to call 600 into a 1300 pot with middle pair.

Our opponent has roughly 2:1 odds to call, and we may well have made a pair of queens on the flop or be holding a higher pocket pair. Therefore if they fold, we take down a decent size pot with the worst hand, whereas we probably would have been out of the tournament if we had pushed all-in preflop.

Stop and go play example hand history.

No Limit Hold'em STT tournament - t100/t200 blinds - 6 Players

SB: t2,600
Hero (BB): t1,200
UTG: t3,000
CO: t2,800
BTN: t2,400

Pre Flop: (t300) Hero is BB with A J
1 fold, CO raises to t600, 2 folds, Hero calls t600

Flop: (t1,300) Q 6 2 (2 players)
Hero bets t600 all-in, CO ???

Why the stop and go play works.

By putting our opponent’s to this tough decision on the flop, we are increasing our fold equity and thus improving our chances of winning the hand. Even if our opponent has improved on the flop and they decide to call, it would not make a difference if we played the hand alternately by pushing all-in preflop, as they still would have improved their hand either way.

Our fold equity increasing by pushing on the flop instead of pushing all in before the flop.

Therefore the cards that come out on the flop will have no influence on the way we play the hand, as our intention throughout the hand is to move all of our chips into the middle at some point.

A couple of tips for making the stop and go play a success.

Poker Term Stop-and-go

1. Always move in if first to act, and be prepared to call if bet in to if acting after our opponent.
2. Only use the stop and go play when you are heads up.

Always move in when first to act.

If we are first to act against our opponent when making a stop and go play, we should always be moving the rest of our chips into the middle. If we check to our opponent, we are losing our fold equity in the hand. Therefore we should always bet out and put our opponent to a tough decision.

If we are acting after our opponents however, we should always be prepared to call or raise any bet they make regardless of what we are holding. This is because we are more than likely going to be pot committed, and so it would be unprofitable to fold and leave ourselves with a small stack when there is still a chance that we may win the hand and a decent sized pot.

Only use the stop and go heads up.

Poker Terms And Meanings

It should be noted that the stop and go play should only be used when we are heads up against an opponent. If there is more than one player in the pot, it will increase the chances that one of our opponents will have a good hand after the flop comes down. Therefore in any situation where you are short-stacked with a hand that you are prepared to go all in with, it is better to move all-in preflop rather than call in an attempt to make a stop and go play.

Common Poker Terms

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