It’s common knowledge that professional poker players have various strategies to employ depending on the situation. If you want to perform better, whether in online casino games or casual tournaments at home, you’ll need to study these strategies closely. 

While having such knowledge doesn’t guarantee success, lacking it certainly puts you at a huge disadvantage. This post will help you widen your poker strategy horizons with a discussion of the stop and go strategy. You’ll learn what this play is and why it works, as well as how best to use it.

What Is the Stop and Go Strategy?

Stop and go is essentially a delayed all-in play that’s best used when you’re short-stacked during a Texas hold’em poker game.

As the name suggests, the strategy consists of two actions. The first takes place preflop, when you call instead of shoving all in. In the second part, you push on the flop, regardless of how it looks. The whole idea is that you initially “stop” the action with a call, then “go” again postflop.

Shouldn’t you consider how good your hand is on the flop? Not really, no. When deploying this strategy you shove regardless of your hand strength. Why? 

Why Does a Stop and Go Work?

Firstly, you should only use this strategy when two things are true. One, you are short-stacked, meaning you’ve got between seven and ten big blinds left. Two, your hand is good enough to be fine going all in preflop.

The two crucial words here are “good enough.” Your hand doesn’t need to be incredible since you’re so short-stacked. Your range should be wider, especially if you’re playing from the blinds. You can’t afford to be passive, as that would result in the blinds eating your already tiny stack. It’s time to pick a hand and take a stand.

So, why wouldn’t you just go all in preflop? Well, if you do, that’s the end of the action. Should you find a call, you’ll just have to trust it all to luck and hope for the best. But with stop and go, you’re giving your opponent a chance to fold on the flop. That means there’s a possibility of picking up some chips uncontested and remaining alive in the tournament. 

Basically, stop and go increases your fold equity. Not by much, but it’s more than you would have from simply shoving preflop. If you’re unfamiliar with the term equity, it essentially refers to how often an opponent is likely to fold multiplied by the size of the pot.

Example

Imagine you’re playing in one of your favorite online poker tournaments. The blinds are 50/100, and you’re short-stacked with only 800 chips. You’re in the small blind with an offsuit ace-queen, and a player raises to 300.

You have the type of hand that might help you turn things around, so you’re perfectly happy with going all in here. However, if you do that immediately, it’s likely that the other players will fold, and you’ll only pick up a small pot. Except, that is, if they’re holding equally strong cards, in which case you might be in a pickle.

On the other hand, if you just call, you’re signaling that your cards might not actually be that good. Therefore, more players might stick around and build the pot. When the first three community cards are revealed, you’re first to act. Now you push all in, and your opponents have a decision to make. 

If they haven’t connected with the board, there’s a slight chance they’ll give you some credit and throw their hand to the muck. Your fold equity is increased by delaying the shove. It might be a small difference, but in a tough position, you need every edge you can get.

Stop and Go Tips

Here are some additional tips that can help you further understand and incorporate this strategy into your online poker games.

Read Your Opponents

Reading your opponents doesn’t just mean watching their body language at the table. You also need to observe their patterns of play. That’s something you can and should also do in online poker.

Are they playing tightly, rarely raising? Hit them with a stop and go since your chances of getting it through are better against this type of player. But if they’re playing loosely and calling a lot of raises with a wide range of hands, this strategy may not make much of a difference anyway.

Read Your Opponents Reading You

Beginner poker players sometimes forget that they’re up against other thinking human beings. While you’re trying to read your opponents, rest assured they’re doing the same with you.

So, if you’re playing live games, it’s a good idea to master body language. If your tells give away that you’re deploying a stop and go, your opponent might take advantage of that. Of course, this doesn’t matter when you play poker online. Still, you want to understand what image you’re presenting to your opponents. 

Do they take you for a tight or a loose player? Remember, when it comes to deploying a stop and go, the odds favor a tighter player. If an opponent thinks you only ever go all in with the best hands, they’re more likely to fold to you.

You could even go so far as to deploy this strategy with a mediocre hand, presenting it as something spectacular.

Stack Size Matters

Earlier it was mentioned that you should only apply this strategy when you’re short-stacked. But why? One might think that a good strategy is useful in every scenario.

Well, this is a somewhat risky strategy with relatively small rewards. When your stack is small, those rewards could still double your chips, so it’s worth it. But if you’re holding a significant number of chips, even if you win, your additional winnings only represent a small percentage of your stack. Essentially, the reward isn’t worth the risk.

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that a stop and go is fairly useless when you’re ultra short-stacked. The optimal range is 7–10 big blinds. Anything less, and it’s not likely to make much of a difference whether you push preflop or postflop.

Don’t Stop, Go Play

Now that you understand how the stop and go strategy works, you may want to use it next time you’re short-stacked in a tournament. Register at Borgata Online, where you can play in dozens of such events every day.

What’s more, there are hundreds of online slots, not to mention live dealer casino games. So, if your stop and go doesn’t come off and you find yourself knocked out of a tournament, at least you’ll have something else to entertain you.