If you are short-stacked in a poker tournament and on the edge of pushing all in, there is a certain play that you can make to help improve the chances of keeping your tournament life. The play that you can use is known as the ‘stop and go’ play, and it takes place over the preflop and flop betting round when you have a hand that you are prepared to move all-in with.
If you are short stacked with a decent hand, and you find that an opponent has raised before you, the typical action by most players would be to stick all of their chips into the middle. However, this is the perfect opportunity to utilize the ‘stop and go’ to help improve your chances of survival. So instead of pushing all in preflop, you call your opponents bet with the intention of moving all in on the flop when the action gets to you.
This play increases your fold equity, as your opponent will have to consider whether they want to continue with the hand for the price you are giving them. Whereas if you are moving all in preflop, you are more than likely to be giving your opponent the right odds to call and see 5 cards to try and make the best hand. On the flop however, they will now have to call a bet to see a further two cards, and so it may be in the their best interest to fold if they have not improved their hand significantly.
Even if it turns out that your opponent hits the flop hard and calls it should not bother us, as we should remember that our chips were going to be put into the middle at some point, whichever play we decided to make. By calling before the flop instead of pushing, we are giving our opponent the opportunity to make a fold on the flop, regardless of whether or not we improved our hand. Therefore it makes it more advantageous to make this sort of play when short stacked if we have a half decent but vulnerable hand. If we have a monster like AA or KK however, it would be better to push all in rather than make a stop and go play.
A good stop and go situation obviously depends on the size of your short stack. If your short stack is so small that you would not be able to make a decent bet on the flop to try and force your opponent off the hand, it would be better to push all in preflop rather than wasting your time with a stop and go play.
