Spin And Go Poker Strategy

11-05-2021 admin

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Spin And Go Poker Strategy

Sit & Go (SNG) Strategy. Sit & Go tournaments, or ‘SNGs’, are a great way to learn to play poker because they cover all the fundamentals of tournament play, but don’t take anywhere near as long. However be warned that SNG strategy differs in a lot of ways from traditional tournament play for a number of reasons, so make sure you check out.

PokerNews Staff

Since Spin and Go tournaments made their debut on the PokerStars poker software in 2014, an impressive number of casual players and recreational players took to the tables in the hope to turn lower stakes games into some of the biggest paydays in online poker.

If you are one of them, you know that winning big at Spin and Go tournaments isn't easy. Not only 2x multipliers are the most common result of the Spin & Go lottery, but also your usual Texas Holdem strategy might not be good enough to help you beat your opponents on spin and go games.

To increase your win rate and become a good Spin and Go player, you need to revisit the poker basics, adjust your range, and approach each poker hand from new angles.

You need to forget about your hand history as you know it, and learn to play Spin and Go games.

This is what you find on the PokerNews advanced strategy guide to playing Spin and Go games on PokerStars in 2020.

The best game strategy to win Spin and Go tournaments isn't necessarily the same that helps you do well in other poker games. Spin and Go strategies require a different approach to preflop strategy and a game plan you can develop only if you begin to get the ins and outs of the fast-paced lottery sit and go's.

Before we analyse together all the specificities that make Spin and Go tournament specials and we learn to play Spin and Go games together, let me give you one last word of warning.

This is not the average strategy article you find on most poker coaching and poker training sites.

Here on the 2020 Guide to PokerStars Spin and Go Poker, you don't waste precious time on a theoretical approach to Spin and Go tournaments. You get actionable poker tips to attack the games and turn the jackpot sit and go's into the most exciting (and rewarding) online poker games out there!

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What is Spin and Go Poker?

Spin and Go's are a fast-paced version of 'sit and go' tournaments that similarly have no set starting times, only requiring the needed players to register for the tournament to begin.

Spin and Go's are most commonly offered as three-player tournaments with 'lottery'-style prize pools that have become an increasingly popular option for online poker players. Indeed, sometimes they are referred to as 'Lottery Sit and Go's.'

How To Play Spin Poker

The format first appeared on Winamax in July 2013 under the name Expresso. Soon after came similar poker games on other platforms, including Twister on the iPoker network, Jackpot on Full Tilt, Twister Poker on TitanPoker, and the Spin & Go games on PokerStars.

Spin and Go's are an excellent example of the kind of innovative games that can be easily introduced in the online environment. Meanwhile, live poker can sometimes be restricted not only by physical limitations but also by whatever gaming regulation governs the operator.

The 'lottery' aspect of the game comes in immediately after enough players have bought into the game for it to begin.

Rather than having the prize pool be determined by the buy-ins, in Spin and Go's the payouts are randomly determined.

Spin and Go's are typically 'winner-take-all' tournaments with the payouts generally ranging from twice the buy-in to much higher amounts — even 1,000 or 10,000 times the buy-in. (Deal-making also usually is not allowed.)

This randomness adds some excitement for players at the start created by the prospect of enjoying what could be seen as a huge 'overlay' in the event.

A typical feature of the Spin and Go poker format is a 'turbo' or 'hyper-turbo' structure.

In most cases levels last three minutes, players start with small starting stacks of 500 chips, with each blind level and antes going up very rapidly, ensuring a swift end to the tournament.

In some cases, the length of the levels is connected to the 'prize pool multiplier.' For instance, on PokerStars if the prize pool is 2x the buy-in, levels last two minutes. If it is from 3-5x the buy-in, levels are three minutes, 10-25x the buy-in four minutes, and 120+ the buy-in five minutes.

How to Play Spin and Go Tournaments

Most sites have sped-up versions of Spin and Go's, such as Winamax where they offer Expresso Nitro and PokerStars where the game is called Spin & Go Flash.

In both, players start with just 300 chips and play one-minute levels as in hyper turbos. That's why they're given names like spin and go flash tournaments — they are over in a flash.

You register for these tournaments much like you do any poker tournament on most poker sites.

Once in the lobby:

Select it
Choose which type of Spin and Go you want to play

Looking at PokerStars as our example, you'll find not just the standard Texas hold'em Spin & Go games.

On PokerStars you find also pot-limit Omaha games and other variants like Spin & Go Flash (the flash games mentioned above) and Spin & Go Max.

This last one is a version featuring 3 to 8 players, a triple prize spin, and a hand countdown after which the game goes to 'all-in mode').

You'll notice a variety of buy-in levels. On PokerStars, real money games start at $0.25 and go up to $500. You can see with each buy-in what the maximum prize pool could be, should you happen to get lucky.

The multiplier on these games goes up to 10,000x; thus, the biggest possible prize pool in a $0.25 game is $25,000, and so on. You can also choose to play a certain number of games at once. On PokerStars, the maximum is five.

Once you've chosen your buy-in level and the number of games you want to play, click 'Play Now' and you will be immediately seated at a table.

Before the game starts, the prize pool will be determined by the randomizer, which on PokerStars is shown as a slot machine-like spin of numbers.

Then you're dealt your first two hole cards, and the game begins. In other words, first you 'spin'... then you 'go'!

How Much Can You Win?

The 'lottery' aspect of Spin and Go's means sometimes players do 'win the lottery,' so to speak, and enjoy enormous winnings.

Special promotions by sites have made it possible for players to win even more than is usually possible in these games. For instance, in December 2019 a player on PokerStars won $2 million in a $5 buy-in, limited edition 'Jackpot Spin & Go.'

Payouts and probabilities change with the stakes in Spin and Go's. Not only do the higher buy-ins yield bigger prizes, the probabilities slightly vary as well.

Also, when it comes to spin and go rake at the higher buy-ins, the rake is usually less than at the lower buy-ins.

To keep things relatively simple and to give you an idea of how the payouts work, let's look at the current prizes and probabilities for the lower stakes Spin & Go's on PokerStars.

Prize Pool Multiplier	$0.25 First-Place Prize	$1 First-Place Prize	$2 First-Place Prize	Frequency
12,000	$2,500	$10,000	$20,000	1 in 1,000,000
240	$50	$200	$400	30 in 1,000,000
120	$25	$100	$200	75 in 1,000,000
25	$6.25	$25	$50	1,000 in 1,000,000
10	$2.50	$10	$20	5,000 in 1,000,000
5	$1.25	$5	$10	85,000 in 1,000,000
3	$0.75	$3	$6	414,012 in 1,000,000
2	$0.50	$2	$4	494,882 in 1,000,000

As you can see, close to half the time (almost 49.5%) you sit down to play in a Spin & Go, you'll be playing for twice your buy-in. And nearly as often (41.4%) you'll be playing for three times the buy-in.

In other words, most of the time the winners won't be enjoying 'overlays' or prizes exceeding the amount of money coming from players' buy-ins.

Meanwhile, a little more than 9.1% of the time the prize pool multiplier will be 5x or higher, meaning the prize pool will be bigger than the buy-ins.

Also worth noting — as in most other tournaments, there's a rake taken as well. At these lowest buy-ins on PokerStars the rake is 8%, and it decreases to 5% at the highest.

Are Spin and Go's Profitable?

Spin and Go's are winner-take-all, so of the three players only one is going to come away with a profit. But thanks to the randomized prize pools that profit can sometimes be huge.

Spin and Go's have been around long enough for there to be expert players who specialize in the format, which in and of itself proves they can be profitable.

It is also a game type that attracts a high percentage of novice and recreational players, meaning even just some additional study of structures and strategies can give you an edge that can translate into profits.

Many people enjoy the adrenaline rush of games with rapid outcomes — the gambling industry thrives on that desire — and Spin and Go's certainly satisfy that craving among the poker-playing segment of the population.

The 'lottery' component of Spin and Go's also tends to attract players who play a 'loose' or high-variance style, which also can be beneficial to more disciplined players who are better judges of basic poker strategy and how to manage risk-versus-reward. That, too, can make Spin and Go's profitable.

Some players point to how spin and go rake requirements are higher than what you typically encounter in a cash game or other tournament types, and therefore can cut into potential profits. Also, playing a bunch of spin and go's in a row for the minimum prize pool (2x) can be a little

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Spin and Go Strategy: Tips to Win More

Winning Spin and Go players are often also versed in basic short-handed and heads-up tournament strategies where many of the same principles apply.

Having a good grasp of the poker hand rankings and the starting hand strengths is key as well since the fast structure generally means players become shallow-stacked relatively quickly.

Because of the fast structure, it is imperative to get involved and try to accumulate chips right away. There's also limited time to gather reads on your other two opponents, so pay attention from the start and recognize their tightness or looseness during the first two levels, as that will help you judge how best to play against them.

Three-handed play means the button acts first preflop, and often that means from the button you should be opening all above-average hands and many medium-strength ones as well.

And if the button folds to you in the small blind, you should similarly adopt an aggressive approach.

When you do open-raise, keep in mind the stack sizes start short and quickly get shorter. On PokerStars, for instance, players start with 25 big blinds — 500 chips at 10/20.

The blinds then increase to 15/30, 20/40, 30/60, 40/80, 50/100, and so on. That means early on min-raising from the button and making it a little more when opening from the small blind, but not raising too big to make it hard to manoeuvre post-flop.

That said, there comes the point relatively soon in Spin and Go's when you'll need to move into a push-fold strategy, particularly once the effective stacks have slipped to the 10 BB range or less.

For this, it will help to become familiar with the push-fold strategy — including charts that can guide your thinking when deciding whether or not to jam your stack.

'Just sit down and do your homework with regards to ranges,' advises Nick Walsh of PokerStars Team Online who sometimes live streams Spin & Go's and discusses strategy. ' Have some guidelines on the kinds of way you should be playing.'

'It's little things like adjusting your preflop raise sizes and ranges. Adjusting how wide you're playing from all of the positions is huge,' says Walsh. 'You want to be playing loads of buttons heads-up and defending your blinds extremely wide, but in a controlled manner.'

Walsh also recommends practising smart bankroll management when playing Spin and Go's. He suggests having at least 200 buy-ins per stake level, since 'it's rare that people have swings deep enough to go broke with 200 buy-ins.'

Spin and Go's can be great for those who want to play poker for just a few minutes here and there, or for those who enjoy faster-paced games in which the results come quickly.

Spin And Go Preflop Strategy To Crush Online Poker

And unlike other new online formats that only lasted a few months before being pulled, Spin and Go's have proven themselves to be appealing both to the casual player and the professional poker player.

Spin and Go F.A.Q.

What are the Spin and Go tournaments at PokerStars?

Spin and Go's are a type fast-paced sit-and-go tournaments available at PokerStars. These online poker tournaments feature a hyper-turbo structure, 500-chip starting stacks, and a randomized prize pool that can reach up to 12,000x the buy-in.

What is a 'lottery-style' poker tournament?

In these tournaments, the prize pool is not determined by the sum of the buy-in fees paid by the participants but is assigned, at random, by an algorithm.

What's the maximum you can win on a Spin and Go?

When the biggest multiplier applies, a Spin and Go tournament pays $1,000,000 in real money as the first prize.

Is PokerStars the only website with this kind of games?

No. While the Spin and Go games are exclusive to PokerStars, many other poker sites have similar types of hyper-turbo sit-and-go tournaments with a randomized prize pool.

How many players are in a Spin and Go game?

Spin and Go's are 3-max online events.

Are Spin and Go games profitable?

The multiplier that applies on the prize pool can make the Spin and Go games extremely profitable. This table shows how many chances you have to play for the maximum prize available.

What is the best strategy to win at Spin and Go games?

The best Spin and Go strategy depends on the size of your stack and the blind level.

Most professional poker players suggest to start with an aggressive strategy and try to rake as many chips as possible from the early stages.

In some specific moments of the game, it might be advisable to adopt a 'push-fold' strategy. For a more detailed description of the best strategy to adopt (and a few examples, too) check out these Spin and Go poker tips.

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Figuring out spin and go strategy to beat the new PokerStars tournaments is the tabu subject that’s on everyone’s mind these days, but it seems like no one has the courage to step forward and say “Alright boys, let’s have a broad discussion on this type of game and figure out how to beat it!”

Luckily, you don’t have to right now, because I have analysed the whole back-end of this new tournament type, and I've come to some conclusions that are both insightful and helpful. First off, let’s start with the math behind the Spin & Go’s, to give you a better understanding on how these tournaments actually work.

PokerStars Spin and Go Strategy - The Maths

Not knowing this mantra of math stuff behind Spin & Go’s is like playing poker without knowing what’s the chance to make a pair on the flop. You might get lucky at the start, maybe even hit some big ones, but if you want to keep playing these mini-tournaments, variancewill eventually get you.

‘Why learn the math behind this?’ you could ask. Isn’t playing well enough ? In this case it isn't, because you have to understand the volume that you have to put into these tournaments, how swingy they can get and also the fact that you’ll lose a lot of money until you hit a big one, and then lose some more, and then hit a big one again, and so on.

Ideally if you would be investing 1$ every time you play one, let’s say that there would only be 2$ returns on Spin & Go’s. This means that to break even, you have to win 1 time out of 2. That’s winning half of the time, a 3-man tournament. I agree that if the blinds were a little smaller and the game had somewhat slower pace, combined with your great poker playing abilities (this we cannot doubt!), it could work in your favor and you could maybe win half of them, with the bigger ones just being an added bonus.

You have to understand the volume that you have to put into these tournaments, how swingy they can get and also the fact that you’ll lose a lot of money until you hit a big one!

The problem here is that you start out with a shallow stack of 25 blinds, and that they go up so fast that you barely have any room for postflop poker where you have the biggest advantage over weaker players. This makes it almost impossible to win these tournaments half of the time.

Even if you know when to push or fold perfectly preflop (which becomes compulsory when you get to under 13 blinds, the 3rd level usually), it would still be questionable if you could have enough of an advantage to win 50% of all the Spin & Go’s you play. The good news is that you don’t have to!

Let’s examine the following table and see what the chances of hitting bigger Spin & Go prizes are. This is the official table of the Spin & Go prize distribution.

Becoming a Winner at Spin & Go Format

As you can see, you have about 73.5% chance to hit a normal 2$ one, 18.3% chance to hit a 4$ one, 7.5% to hit a 6$ one, 0.5% chance to hit a 10$ one and 0.1% to hit a 25$ one. We’ll exclude the other ones for now and come back to them later.
We leave these other tournaments out because we want to take into consideration the fact that you might not get lucky in the long run and just consider these tournaments as bonuses along your way.

Summing all these percentages up, you get to about 99.9%. So let’s see what’s the median win for Spin & Go tournaments without the biggest ones (which you will not get to if you’re not a high volume player or just extremely lucky).

The formula is this: (73.5%*2$ + 18.3%*4$ + 7.5%*6$ + 0.5% * 10$ + 0.1% * 25%)/99.9% = 2.729$, which almost adds up to the full 3 buyins (the rake is 7% so the full 3 buyins add up to a prizepool of 2.79$ so it’s really, really close; that’s exactly why the big ones are almost negligible).

So let’s see how many times you have to win the Spin & Go tournaments to be break even then.

The formula is (1 / 2.729) * 100 = 36.6%. That’s pretty close to the 33.3% mark, which is the win percentage if you win one time out of three, isn’t it?
Kind of amazing, right? What you can actually learn from this is if you win 1 in 3 Spin & Go tournaments, you’re still going to be losing money in the long run, if you play only 1000 of them (0.1% chance of getting a 25$ Spin & Go which means you have to play 1000 for the probability to be close to 100% to get one).

Variance in PokerStars Spin & Go tournaments

This is the point that I wanted to get to. The answer to this whole mathematical calculus and equation. The answer is VOLUME (of course) and BANKROLL (even more so). As proven, the variance in these games is so high that a normal SNG bankroll of 100 buy-ins won’t cut it. You’ll keep bleeding money until you get to play some big ones unless you win more than ~40% of the time, which is probably not going to happen because of the quickly raising blinds system and the nature of shallow stack poker.

It might even happen, if you’re really good at the format and learn to exploit opponents that you see for your first time, but you have only a few hands worth of information until you get to the push or shove phase. We’ll work on this in the advanced strategy section of this article.

One thing I cannot emphasize enough is: when starting to play these tournaments, you need a BIG Bankroll. Yes, capital B. Playing these tournaments is like being a TAG in the old days, you lose some small pots and take in big ones. But unless you’re extremely lucky (and few of us are), you’ll bleed a lot of your bankroll until you hit some larger ones. The good thing is that the moment you win the big one, that’s when you know your discipline, hard work and dedication have paid off.

I’m going to call it right now, the Bankroll for this type of tournament should be at least 300-500 entries

, to give you a chance to play at least 2000-4000 Spin & Go tournaments, so you can have loads of chances to hit bigger ones and actually win them.

You need big bankroll (with a capital B) to play these tournaments; it is like being a TAG in the old days.

The next thing I want to talk about is volume volume volume. This is the next most important thing in Spin and Gos. If you don’t play a lot of these, you won’t get to that glory point, you won’t reach that amazing moment when you get a super big one, and you’ll just say that you’re unlucky.
The key to overcoming variance in these games is putting a ton of volume in so you can outlast the luck factor, and this format makes it so that you have to play a whole lot (2000-4000 games at least) to prove that you’re a good player and show a consistent profit. And guess what? Your Bankroll is there to assist you! Are you up for the challenge?

More Advanced Spin and Go Strategy Tips

Don’t play the 5$ Spin & Go’s

The 5$ Spin & Go’s as we all know have the million dollar promotion. The problem is that if you want to profit constantly and have a good ROI from Spin & Go tournaments, you cannot play this promotion, because most tournaments will be 10$ prize-pool, so you have to win a bigger percentage of these to breakeven in the long run.

Honestly, that percentage is not even doable, even if your opponents have no idea what they’re doing, the format is made so that you can’t win more than 40% of these tournaments. You might win more if you’re an incredible player, but your reads are limited since the player pool for these tournaments is immense, so you’re rarely going to see the same face even if you play 5000 of them. And also if you’re an incredible player, your name is probably Mercier or Negreanu and you’re not reading this article.

But the best thing about these games I have yet to unravel:
90% of opponents in PokerStars Spin & Go's are recreational players, even at the higher limits
YEP. You got it. It’s a new type of tournament, and the format makes it so that if you’re lucky you can win a big sum by investing a minimum amount, in a very short time, and you can take shots every once in a while for fun. This means that it’s a perfect format for recreational players. The blind levels minimize the edge that good players have on them, so they will win more than in regular Sit & Gos or MTTs and that’s more fun for them obviously.
I have played a lot of Spin & Go tournaments and I can guarantee that only one player in 10 Spin & Go tournaments is actually decent. This is an encouragement for you guys to start playing these tournaments, because there’s a lot of money to be made if you play right and understand the system. Let’s now move to the more advanced strategy part!

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Learn to exploit your opponents in Spin & Go's

This is the way you win at poker: by exploiting your opponents. In every poker game you have different ways you can exploit your opponents, but their flaws can for the most part either be playing too loose, or playing too tight.
In these tournaments, playing tight is the worst thing that you can do, because you will get blinded out super-fast. Waiting for 15% top range type hands is just a no-no. You have to be raising all the time and trying to steal them blinds because that’s just the essence of under-25 blind game. You can’t expect to get a big pair every Spin & Go you play, so you have to keep repping good hands.

Spin Poker Strategy

In these tournaments, playing tight is the worst thing that you can do, because you will get blinded out super-fast. Waiting for 15% top range type hands is just a no-no.

Video Spin Poker

Here’s some moves that you have to make to be successful:

Triple Spin Poker Strategy

Never 3x pre. 2x is enough because your opponent is so short that he’s making the same decisions if you raise smaller than the usual 3x/2.5x raise. Even if it’s folded to you in the small blind, 2.5 is the max you want to raise. I’d go with the trusty min-raise tho.
Raise/fold a lot against tight players. There are still a lot of players that are tight in these games so they fold a lot and re-steal only with a small amount of their range. You can exploit these players by raising 100% of your range against them when you’re heads up and folding to his re-shoves unless you’re at the top 15% of your range. This way you will win in the long run against this type of opponent.
Train your ICM muscle. When you get under 8-9 blinds(in normal tournaments like SnG or MTT it’s 13 blinds), you can’t ever raise/fold so you’re pushing every time to steal the blinds or get it in with a decent amount of equity. You’re behind and if you stick to a tight range, you’re going to be blinded out. Knowing exactly when to push or fold is almost always non-dependant on your opponent so that’s a really good skill to have. There are a lot of tools for this on the Internet, so get searching and be sure that your ICM shove percentage is about at least 90% before playing another Spin & Go!
Top pair even no kicker is always good, mid pair good kicker (MPGK) is almost always good but you can put it to better use by checking back a lot of flops with it and using it as a bluff catcher / value bet on the turn. Flops like AT2r or K93r are perfect for this because you don’t have a lot of overcards to your mid pair and most players will bet the turn when the flop is checked back as a bluff.
Don’t do crazy moves like check-raising boards as a total bluff, because you’re bound to get called by a second pair. The players are not that good so don’t catch the Fancy Play Syndrome. Straight-forward poker wins these tournaments and there’s no reason you should play otherwise.
Play your strong draws aggressively. If you have at least 30% equity on the flop (open-ended straight draw), it is imperative that you put all your money in as fast as you can, either by check/shoving or bet pot/calling because you want to max out your fold equity, that’s one of the secrets to winning in the long run.

If you stick to these simple tactics and play a lot of these tournaments, you will be printing money and climbing the Spin & Go ladder in no time. Just skip the 5$ ones.