Hey MTTer's,
I have been thinking about increasing the number of MTTs I play, both live and online, because I have had very good results over the small sample of MTTs I've actually played over the last year or so.

That lead me to starting a conversation with a well known live MTT pro recently (who will remain nameless of course) about the bust out hand he discussed on a poker podcast i was listening to.

He used "the 'ol stop n go" where he flatted pre-flop with intention to jam literally any flop. The flop came out and he ripped it in and was called and busted. Deep run in the main event.

Now, I discussed this hand and the stop n go play itself at length with this, long time, pro. On one hand I felt like my time was competely wasted and that I should have asked him how he's stayed relevant and how he continues to make these deep runs and post great results over the years. Really i was just trying to convince him the stop n go is a bad play and that it was worse in EV than just jamming pre-flop and would usually actually be -EV. And he was going to bat for the play like nobody's business. It was a waste of time for both of us i think. I was really hoping to "be the guy who made him see the light" and he was just CONVINCED that the play made a lot of sense in a lot of spots for a lot of reasons.

I left the conversation at least a little bit swayed. I still THINK the stop n go in it's purest form "call with a hand thats too good to fold but likely about a flip vs villains calling range if you jam in a spot where you have no fold equity pre-flop but will have fold equity on the flop by donk shipping SPR ~ 1."

He seems very smart.

He has great results.

He is POSITIVE that this play is one that every MTT'er ought to have in their arsenol.

So now I am confused. I mean, I guess I still know that I think the play is fundamentally worse than stop n thinking and that it really is just a poorly thought out and logically incoherent little piece of poker mythos but Im a bit confused as to whether or not there are a lot of good NLH MTT'ers that still think this is a solid play.

So, question is;
1) Is the stop n go still taken seriously by anyone who is taken seriously by anyone?
2) If so, can someone explain to me how this could ever be better than waiting till the flop comes to decide your action (i mean, it just fundamentally can't right?) but maybe try, i want to understand what people don't understand or if Im wrong about it somehow then I have A HUGE oppertunity to learn and get better at poker and at thinking because in my mind it is incorrect in a philsophical way.

So, if there are any stop n go believers out there...
Preach!!

I wrote a lengthy article for UpswingPoker about this very subject.

Tl;dr version is this: when stacks are supershallow (if we call the open, SPR= 1 or so), we can flat quite a few hands because the shorter you are the more equity you get to realize. BUT showing every flop blindly like in 2006 is completely moronic. There are hands you can call with a 4BB stack and still fold on 30% of flops. No one halfway competent uses stop and go in the very sense of the word anymore (flat BB, shove every flop). But flat BB shallow, shove lots of flops is a very viable strategy and a lot better than just shoving or folding your whole range.

I never use it.

The article looks good - there is an example where villain is assumed to call the flop shove with:

Probably the live pro's opponents in live tournaments don't call anything like that wide, so he still has tonnes of equity and it may well be profitable for him.

Yeah, I wanted to make those examples pretty grim for us on purpose toi point out that since we make a profit even in spots where villain essentially soulreads our hand, we are definitely going to make a *good* profit in most real-life scenarios.

thanks for the input,
yeah i guess i kinda know the answer. I mean, it just is a fact that it is stictly worse to shove all flops than it is to see the flop before deciding to proceed so, in that sense, the argument for making a stop n go play is sort of "reducible ad absurdum" but this guy wins his big arse off in these bigger buy in, high profile MTT's and has done so since at least the early 2000's.


I used the following example (sort of a toy game because i left blinds and antes out for simplicity)
we have 1500 effective stacks
villain opens to 500
we can call 500, go to flop with SPR of exactly 1
or
we can ship it pre-flop or fold pre-flop

assume we have the quintessential Stop n go hand, 77. If we move in pre-flop our opponent calls almost always and we are going to have something like 50% equity so we are in a flip for our MTT.

If we flat, the argument goes, and ship every flop then we win about 2/3 instead of 1/2 against over cards.
If we assume our opponent has exactly KQo then it's true we win 2/3 of the time if the villain plays fit or fold on the flop (which may be pretty likely) but we only win 500 chips when we win and we lose our entire stack of 1500 when we lose

So we lose 1500 once for every 1000 we win (just in general or, more or less)

that's obv -EV when shipping pre oughta at least break even.

The reason is because (again generally/approximately speaking)
Every time your opponent calls you wish you could go back to pre-flop and fold
every time your opponent folds you wish you could go back to pr-flop and shove

The stop n go as it used to be discussed allows your opponent to play perfect poker against you far too often and it gives your opponent an extra strategic option without giving you one.

So, yeah, it's bogus. I know it is. Just wondered, since this guy doesn't seem to get it, if everyone knows it's bogus.

Thanks

77s arent a hand i would typically stop and go with, they may have been years ago but not lately. id only use the stop and go in the blinds really

i use the stop in go sometimes in these types of scenarios. blinds are say 500/1000 antes 100, full table. so theres 2.4bb in the pot. we have Q4s with 6bbs in the BB and CO opens to 2x and will auto call our shove. i dont like shoving here, so since im getting 4.4 - 1 on a call ill flat. and ill shove any draw or low/mid pair i hit, top pair ill usually check/shove over his cbet. if i totally wiff on the board ill fold and move onto the next hand

not sure if that helps at all but thats just the way i use it

+1 I do the same and it's mathematically correct to do so when shortstacked. I guess this is new, gto stop and go play. Typical stop and go is bad now imo, and certainly 77 is not a hand to pull this move with, as its too profitable to reshove vs villains range

if the line generates EV it will never get "antiquated" it just villain are far more adaptable nowadays than 2-3-4 years ago but if it still generates EV why stop