Raise the stakes - or go between floors! (8)
I believe the answer is:
escalate
'raise' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
I don't understand how the remainder of the clue works.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for escalate that I've seen before include "Quickly increase in scale" , "Snowball" , "Tease Cal badly and mount up" , "mushroom" , "mount in tension" .)