teh ultimate stop'n'go guru advice thread

[ChuckNorris]

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Beat me to it.

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I'm sorry but english isn't my native language. Care to explain what you mean by this phrase? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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Beat me to it.

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I'm sorry but english isn't my native language. Care to explain what you mean by this phrase? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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Not sure if you're joking or not. It means you did it before me.

[tigerite]

Hang on a minute, I only said "best not to", not "there will never be a situation where you should stop and go with AK" - heck, I've done stop and go's with AK before.

As with everything in poker, it depends. But there is nothing wrong with getting it in as a 65% favourite, even if they are making a "pot odds" call, etc (they therefore made a mistake by raising in the first place). Stop and go'ing here lets them off the hook with regard to that mistake for less than it should.

[bennies]

Nice post.

The basic problem with a stop and go is this: You give your opponent the chance to see a flop. He can sit back, watch you push on the flop and then decide if it's worth calling. (By pushing preflop, at least we always double up when we win.)

But assuming we plan for a stop and go, having called preflop, on the flop I reserve the option not to go through with it. It makes sense to keep my last chips if the flop is bad for me and probably good for the opponent.

But what flops are good for me, and what flops bad?

Example: Good flop: 1) coordinated cards, 2) high cards (if your opponent has a pocket pair).

Example: Bad flop: JJ4 (your opponent will never put you on a J and will therefore not fold his pp, and not his high cards either. All they will fold are random starting hands, Q7o, whatever, meaning you could only push such a flop against someone who is very loose/stealing preflop.

Comments? Having Stopped, what flops would make you think twice about the Go?

[Myst]

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What is really sad, however, is that some people seem to really think that that's what the stop'n'go is for.

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Why is that a sad thing? Doesnt that work to your advantage as a player? Lets face it. Poker is a game where you are working in DIRECT competition with everyone else at your table. So why would you want your opponents to have one more tool in their arsenal to beat you?

[schwza]

this post has serious errors in it.

the problem with this argument is that it ignores the fact that villain will call with his good hands and fold the bad ones. the correct way to look at it is to figure when villain folds and you have AK, do you want him to?

assume villain never folds a pair on the flop. with 4k in the pot and a push of 2k, i don't think this is unreasonable. if villain will often fold a pair, then a stop n go might be right, but for now assume villain does not fold a pair.

so times that villain flops a pair or has a pp, sng is identical to push.

when villain does not flop a pair, do we want him to fold? it depends.

if we have a pair and he does not, his fold on the flop is very correct and we lose out big time, as he's drawing nearly dead.

if neither of us has a pair and we dominate him, his fold is correct, as he's drawing to 3 outs getting 3:1. so we don't want him to fold.

if neither has a pair and we don't dominate him, we're pretty indifferent. villain is getting 3:1 and is ~24% to win the pot, so we don't really care if he folds or not. remember we're heads up, so we don't care about variance.

it's possible we'll sometimes fold out a hand like 33, that's most likely to happen when an A or K is on the board - again, a disaster for us. i think any equity we gain from pairs folding when they're way ahead is totally swamped by making non-pair hands fold when we have them completely smoked.

edit: this was a response to chucknorris's AK stop n go post. forgot to mention we have AK though [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] thanks for pointing it out.

[bennies]

It seems to me you missed a few:

If neither has a pair and we're behind
If neither has a pair and we're dominated.

These are the times we want villain to fold and in fact the whole reason (as you know) for making the stop 'n go.

[schwza]

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You need a rule that formulates why I *shouldn't* do the stop and go with a great deal of hands.

IE:

5)My hand is unlikely to be a large favorite preflop.

This is why you would never make this play with AA, KK, QQ AK etc etc.

My *ideal* stop and go hand seems to always be KJ. Always seem to have that hand when the perfect situation arises. I think its pretty fitting of the hand ranges with which I like you use this move.

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i think this is on the right track, but it should be:

5a) when he folds on the flop, i am happy

[ChuckNorris]

Schwza, yes, you are right that my math was over simplistic. But when you stop'n'go you should always keep in my mind that if you like the flop enough, you have the option of checking and calling villain's flop push. In these kinds of situations they rarely check behind you, or fold to your very suspicious looking push on the turn after checking the flop. This is pretty essential when stop'n'going.

[ChuckNorris]

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What is really sad, however, is that some people seem to really think that that's what the stop'n'go is for.


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Why is that a sad thing? Doesnt that work to your advantage as a player? Lets face it. Poker is a game where you are working in DIRECT competition with everyone else at your table. So why would you want your opponents to have one more tool in their arsenal to beat you?

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Yeah, I thought about it when posting that. It's great that people at my tables make mistakes, obviously. But peoples' stupidity is still always sad too. Even if it's lucrative and funny.