Floating

[WhiteKnight]

What is it?

[RyverRat]

the calling of a flop bet in position with the view to betting the turn. This is done with any two cards and used to combat the continuation bet from loose aggro players

[pzhon]

Floating means calling in order to bluff at the pot on a later street. It is not a play for beginners.

For example, suppose your opponent raises in early position, and you call with 8[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 7[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] in late position.

Flop: A[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 9[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] 3[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]

Villain bets. You might call as a float. If your opponent checks the turn, you might bluff to push out someone with a hand like KK. This is cheaper than making a bluff raise on the flop, and gets more information before committing as many chips.

Floating is an advanced play, to be used against players who do not double-barrel often without strong hands and who can fold. Floating is rare and is usually a bad play below about NL $200.

[aaokwitme]

I thought this was called the stop and go.

[MediaPA]

Stop and go (by my understanding). It's more a situation where you are happy to get all-in pre-flop. However, instead of going all in pre-flop, you wait to see the flop. If it looks harmless enough or you feel your opponent is weak, you push. Or just push regardless, hoping to represent a hand that your opponent won't call.

Basically, you are avoiding a coinflip hopefully to give yourself some added Fold Equity when you would be going all-in preflop regardless. (Note: I could be FOS)

[RyverRat]

agreed. call preflop and push on flop.

[jay_shark]

The stop and go is used when you're oop and you have a hand that is strong enough to push but that you believe you gain more by simply calling and pushing with almost any flop .

Here is an example of why the stop and go can be effective .

Suppose you're in a tourney and you're in the bb with pocket j's . You only have 6 bb's left after posting the blind . Utg raises and it's folded to you . If he shows you his cards and flips over A-K , then it's actually better you just call instead of raise . Since if the flop doesn't come with an A or a K , you may shove all in and he would fold . This means that he would fold to your flop shove about one-third of the time .

EV(call) = 4.5*2/3 - 2*1/3 = 2.333333
EV(shoving) = 8.5*0.57 - 6*0.43 = 2.265

So it's better that you just call with pocket jacks . Of course , this example is just to illustrate why the stop and go may be used in favor of simply raising all in .

[Mr. Ratface]

As mentioned, the stop N go is used when you are out of position and just call a preflop raise and push any flop. Had you reraised all in before the flop it would have resulted in a call by the initial raiser anyways so by waiting for the flop to push we might get him to fold a better hand and let him only see three cards if we are racing.

For example, we have 88 in the BB with a very small stack. The button raises and we elect to call and push any flop. The flop come AKQ and we push our remaining chips.

If the raiser calls with the winning hand, say A10, we may look silly, but the result would have been the same since he would have called your reraise anyways and went on to win the race. In the same situation, however, if the initial raiser holds 1010, then it might be a difficult call for him to make on this flop, even though he has us dominated.