As an animal explores an environment, hippocampal place cells are sequentially activated corresponding with the animal‘s ongoing trajectory. These neuronal spikes occur slightly faster than hippocampal LFP theta oscillations, termed theta phase precession, resulting in sequences of locations being encoded at different phases of theta oscillations. It remains unclear whether theta phase precession is involved in hippocampal network plasticity. Here, we designed a novel closed-loop stimulation protocol to selectively induce theta phase precession in pyramidal cells. In this system, hippocampal LFP theta power was continuously monitored online and photostimulation was applied to the hippocampus, allowing us to artificially mimic theta phase precession. We applied this stimulation protocol when rats ran on a linear track and found that place cell spikes occurred more frequently at the location where the stimulation was applied. In addition, we found that the photostimulation mimicking theta phase precession more reliably induced offline reactivation of place cells in the postrest period, compared with random phase photostimulation. These results suggest that theta phase precession in hippocampal place cells play crucial roles in both generation and stabilization of spatial maps.