Before Greg Raymer was a World Series of Poker champion, he was 2+2 Forums poster Fossilman8. And even before his 2004 main event victory proved it to the world, his status as a world-class poker player and theorist was well-known to the 2+2 community. One of his most famous contributions to the game was the stop-and-go play, which has since appeared in such publications as David Sklansky and Ed Miller’s No Limit Hold ‘Em: Theory and Practice.
The idea is to pick up a little extra fold equity in a situation where you were going to move all in pre-flop by instead calling and then moving all in on any flop. If you’re pretty sure you were going to get called pre-flop anyway, then you don’t have much to lose.
The potential drawback is that you might give your opponent a chance to make a correct post-flop fold. For instance, if you have AK and your opponent folds AQ on the flop but would have called pre-flop, that’s bad for you. And it usually looks like such an improbable line that you don’t get a lot of fold equity anyway. After all, if you actually called pre-flop on a short stack and flopped top pair, wouldn’t you usually check?
For these reasons, the stop and go isn’t a play that I employ very often. I did find a useful spot for it recently, though:
Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold’em Tournament, 140/280 Blinds, 25 Ante, 9 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter
UTG+1: 6,650
UTG+2: 2,660
MP1: 6,510
MP2: 6,105
CO: 6,620
BTN: 4,389
SB: 2,705
Hero (BB): 3,460
UTG: 6,155
Pre-Flop: (645) 7
7
dealt to Hero (BB)
UTG folds, UTG+1 raises to 800, 6 folds, Hero calls 520
Flop: (1,965) J
A 3 (2 Players)
Hero bets 2,635 and is All-In, UTG+1 folds
Results: 1,965 Pot
Hero mucked 7 7 and WON 1,965 (+1,140 NET)
As you can see, I’ve only got about 12 BB left in my stack. With such a big chunk of my stack in the pot and a decent pocket pair, I don’t think I can fold, even to an early position raise. But with a stop and go, my flop shove is big enough that it won’t be a trivial call if my opponent makes like an underpair or misses with AK or something.
This looks like a bad flop, but this hand actually illustrates another important point about the stop and go, which is that once you decide to execute, it’s generally correct to grit your teeth and shove even if the flop looks bad for you. I don’t think my opponent folded an Ace, but I have gotten him off of 88 or KQ because I followed through on my plan.