Why is it that we don’t remember our winning hands as much as we do our losing ones? There’s clearly some weird psychological stuff hardwired into our brains. Maybe it’s a danger aversion thing. Caveman Grog touches fire. “Arhgh. Flame hot! Me remember no touch again!” We often learn more from our losses than our wins.
I can’t seem to shake the final losing hand I played a few weeks ago at the casino. If you recall, I was in the small blind. Blinds were 300/600 and I had 1500 in chips after I posted my SB. It folds around to the big stack on the button, who limps. I put him on a big ace. I have KQo. I raised all-in to isolate him and, hopefully, get him to fold. The BB folds, but the button says, "It only costs me an extra 1200 to play? I call." He turns up ATo, the board comes blanks, and he takes the pot with Ace high.
Okay, why can’t I forget this hand? Because I feel like I could have played it differently. On the one hand, getting the BB to fold was reasonable (so I could get heads up with the button), but if I trusted my read on the button (big ace), maybe I could have done a stop-and-go play instead.
What’s a stop-and-go? Funny you should ask. Alex mentioned this advanced play the other day, and then the guru also talked about it in a separate conversation. Basically it’s for situations like the one above. If I had called instead of raising all-in, I would still nearly be pot committing myself, but I would also be increasing the possibility of getting the button to fold after the flop. I would also have had a chance to get out of the hand if an ace or otherwise scary board hit. Here’s how it could have worked:
Instead of pushing, I simply complete the SB. The BB then checks his random hand. If the flop came rags (which it did), I could have fired my remaining chips into the center in a bluff move. This would tell the other players that the flop hit me (even thought it didn’t). If the BB also missed the flop, he would have folded. The button also missed the flop, so he would have been likely to fold too, thinking I hit that flop and he didn’t (after all, he still only had ace high).
One secret to a stop and go working is being able to fire first after the flop. In this case, it also depended on the BB missing the flop, too. But that’s a reasonable assumption; something like 70% of the time, the flop will miss a random hand.
By limping preflop, and then betting postflop, I was getting fold equity into play when it might have done more good. Compare that to the button getting the right price to play his big ace with my less than ideal all-in move preflop. In hindsight, I probably should have done a stop and go—assuming I had known what that was at the time. Now I do, however, and can add it to my arsenal.
This is also a reminder to Stop And Think before acting. I doubt I would have figured out the whole stop-and-go move on my own at the time, but by rushing into my hasty all-in, Grog left a lot of options off the table.
All-in for now…
-Bug
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