Live to play again with 'Stop-and-Go'

If you’ve ever played chess or bridge or backgammon, you probably know some games have well-rehearsed moves executed by advanced players. Poker is no different. Sometimes poker strategy is less than intuitive. Here’s a move you may have seen, but not understood why a player acted the way they did. This is exclusively a Texas Hold’em tournament maneuver and takes place when you find yourself short stacked against an opponent.

Let’s figure you’re in the big blind with blinds at $100 and $200. You’ve only five or six big blinds left in your stack and a player on the button bets $600 and has $4,000 behind him. You look down to see you have bupkiss (the technical description of 4-6 off suit or something of that ilk). What are your options? You can fold, leaving you with one less big blind in your stack and hope for a miracle flop. You can just call, or you can raise. What happened in each of these scenarios?

If you fold, you’re even shorter stacked and you’ll be even more vulnerable to steals. And you’ll have less time to make a hand before you are literally blinded out of the tournament. You’d be playing tight, which is fine except you’re losing and time is running out quickly to double up. Players like me will attack you with raises mercilessly in this situation.

Your next option is raising, which at this point basically means you’re going to shove all in. If that happens, the big blind will call you almost all of the time. If they have a great hand, they want to call you. If they have an OK hand, they’ll still be getting pot odds against you and they’re unlikely to fold, as there’s a limit to how much damage you can do against them.

If you read last issue’s column, you know that they know they aren’t that far behind you even if you have a lucky monster of a hand. I’d say in about 90 percent of these situations your shove will be called down. If that happens, you both go to showdown and you likely lose.

Option fold makes very little sense. Of course, there’s a chance that the next hand will be the coveted, and I’m sure well-deserved, AA or KK, but don’t count on it. Option shove is fine but there’s a better way. That’s the Stop-and-Go play. Let’s say instead of raising here you call, but with the 100-percent intention of shoving on the flop no matter what. That second part is key. You are going to shove on the flop no matter what flops. Hmm. Then why not just shove, you ask? Good question.

In the worst-case scenario, the big blind connects to the flop with something. A pair, a straight or flush draw, sheesh, anything. They shove, as do you. In this case you’re in exactly the same place in respect to odds that you would have been in had you shoved preflop. You hope to get lucky, but you’re no worse off than you’d have been if you were all in before the flop. Make sense?

OK, but here’s the rub. The big stack, regardless of what they are holding, is still likely to miss the flop just due to the nature of the game. If they check to you and you shove, there is a chance, maybe even a good one, that they’ll fold. They weren’t going to fold preflop since they liked their position against you with five cards to come, but what if they have a medium pair or a 7-8 clubs and the flop comes AK9 all hearts, or two hearts and a spade.

Now with two cards to come and no real draw, they may see your shove as a representation that you have an Ace, a King, or even a set. Do they really want to double you up and lose over a quarter of their stack because they are that sure you’re bluffing and that their 8 high is good? Probably not.

In this case, you take the pot with the blinds and the raise and increase you’re stack by another 3 big blinds. That puts you in a stronger place to see another round and live to see another flop. Good luck trying this move.

- Mark B. Lasser is Denver writer and international poker player. He regularly plays in Colorado, Arizona, California, Missouri and Nevada. You can hear him talk about gambling and casinos every Friday at 5 PM on KEZW AM 1430. Readers can send questions and comments to him at ColoradoPokerMark@comcast.net.