Spin And Go Poker Strategy

• Spin And Go Poker Strategy
• Pokerstrategy Spin And Go Strategy
• Spin And Go Preflop Strategy To Crush Online Poker
• Spin And Go Poker Strategy

Beginning to develop cohesive, well-balanced Spin & Go postflop ranges from the very beginning of your career will make moving up in limits immeasurably quicker, easier, and less expensive. The simplest way to achieve this is by utilizing the 4-category system outlined in The Postflop Engine. Just like in a heads up sit and goes, successful spin and go strategy requires constant adjustment to your opponents. As soon as the game starts and you still have some room to maneuver, try to figure out who are your opponents and how they play.

Table Of Contents

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.

Spin And Go Poker Strategy

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!

Register on the PokerStars website and use these poker tips and strategies to win your first Spin and Go games!

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.'

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:

1. Select it
2. 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.

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

Register on the PokerStars website and use these poker tips and strategies to win your first Spin and Go games!

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.

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?

Pokerstrategy Spin And Go Strategy

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.

Spin And Go Preflop Strategy To Crush Online Poker

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.

Register on the PokerStars website and use these poker tips and strategies to win your first Spin and Go games!

_{The Stars Group is a majority shareholder in iBus Media}

• Tags

  Advanced strategyBasic strategyFull Tilt PokeriPokerOmaha PokerPoker MillionUK Poker TournamentsUK Online PokerTournamentsSit and GoPot Limit OmahaPokerstars

• Related Room

  Full Tilt

If you have ever played online poker, especially on the number one site in the world known as Pokerstars, you have probably heard of the new poker format that is sweeping the poker world called Spin and Go tournaments. This is our favorite form of Sit and Go tournament to play and, judging by its massive growth in recent years, we are not alone.

Even though they were started very recently in 2014, this type of tournament has grown to account for an estimated 20% of Pokerstars' revenue. This is a massive weight for one poker format to pull on a site with so many different formats to choose from, especially when it is only a few years old.

As of May of 2017, there have been 16 poker players around the world who were made into millionaires in under ten minutes by winning a Spin and Go tournament. Six of these players won their prize all in the same week back in October of 2015. This just goes to show that you never know when lightning might strike multiple times!

These tournaments only have three entrants in each one, and all three players will receive 500 chips to play with. The blinds increase at a very fast pace, usually every three minutes. A tournament with this level of quickness is usually referred to as a hyper-turbo tournament. Once there is only one person left, the tournament is finished.

This format exists in many online poker rooms these days, but they sometimes have alternate names such as Jackpots on America's Cardroom, BLAST Tournaments on 888 Poker, or Twister sit and go tournaments on Coral Poker.

Payout Structure

The general idea behind these Spin and Go tournaments is that there is a random jackpot attached to each one. You will not know what the jackpot amount is until you register for the tournament, after which the table will show you how much you are competing for.

The range of the prize pools that are created by these jackpots can be anywhere from two buy-ins up to 12,000 buy-ins. Whenever the jackpot is less than 100 times the amount of the buy-in, only first place will be rewarded with a prize. This first-place finisher will take home the full amount of the jackpot that is attached to the Spin and Go, while second-place and third-place finishers will receive absolutely nothing.

However, in the event of a Spin and Go tournament with a jackpot attached to it that has a value of at least 100 times the buy-in amount, all three entrants will be paid a prize. The second and third place finishers will receive 10% of the jackpot amount that the winner receives.

For example, if you are playing a $100 Spin and Go tournament and you hit the big jackpot of 12,000 buy-ins, this means that there are 1.2 million dollars up for grabs. In this case, first place will receive one million dollars while second and third place both receive $100,000 for their efforts.

Rake

Just like regular sit and go tournaments, Spin and Go tournaments have a level of rake that decreases as the buy-in level increases. In the micro stakes of $3 and under, the rake is going to be 8% of the buy-in. The $7 Spin and Go level is where the rake begins to drop down to 7%. The $15 and $30 Spin and Go tournaments have a 6% rake. The final two buy-in levels of $60 and $100 charge a very reasonable 5% rake.

You might notice that these tournaments have a lower amount of rake compared to normal sit and go tournaments across the board. This is simply because of their high-variance nature, and this decrease in rake is normal for tournaments that increase blind levels at hyper-turbo speed.

However, the rake that is charged in a Spin and Go tournament is higher than the rake in plain old hyper-turbo sit and go tournament, even though they have the same structure. This is simply because the money for building the jackpots has to come somewhere, so they raised the rake a tad.

Don't worry, this does not mean that this format is unbeatable. Spin and Go tournaments attract such a large number of recreational players compared to other sit and go tournaments that it completely offsets the increase in rake, the hyper-turbo structure, and the variance of the jackpots all at once.

Jackpot Probabilities

One of the reasons that Spin and Go tournaments contain a high level of variance is that you never know which jackpot your tournament will get. The smallest jackpot possible, which is two buy-ins for whichever level you are playing, will occur around 70% of the time.

This means that most of the time you will battle two other people just to double your buy-in. While this is not ideal, it is a tradeoff that must be made in order to have access to such large jackpot prizes.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, one in a million of these Spin and Go tournaments will contain a prize pool of 12,000 buy-ins! This monster jackpot has been hit many times since these tournaments run millions of times per year at all buy-in levels.

As you can probably tell, there is a very wide spectrum of jackpot outcomes that can occur from day to day. This is even true from week to week or from month to month.

However, over the course of a year, you should be able to play enough tournaments to find out if you are truly a winning player in this format, no matter what jackpots you get. It is not required to hit the big 10,000 buy-in jackpot to make money in these Spin and Go tournaments.

Advantages

The reason why Spin and Go tournaments are exploding in popularity is that people are slowly realizing that there are a ton of benefits that come from playing this poker format.

The main explanation for why poker players are so attracted to Spin and Go tournaments is the speed in which they are finished. After playing thousands of these Spin and Go tournaments, we calculated the average amount of time that it takes to finish one is about nine minutes.

This lightning speed of nine minutes can be attributed to the short starting stacks combined with the two-minute blind level increases. This brings us to our next advantage to playing Spin and Go tournaments, which is that it favors players who are adept at playing with a short stack.

You will be starting the tournament with 500 chips at 10-20 blinds which works out to 25 big blinds. This is about as deep-stacked as you will get in these tournaments, which is relatively low compared to other poker tournament formats. For someone who knows profitable preflop all-in shove ranges well, these tournaments will be a blessing.

Other poker players who might prefer Spin and Go tournaments are those who do not enjoy playing postflop poker. While these tournaments do involve some play after the flop, this will generally only happen in the early stages of the tournament. Most of the hands that are played will be all-in preflop because the effective stacks will usually be too small to mathematically justify seeing a bunch of flops.

An additional reason why we love playing Spin and Go tournaments is that they offer a chance at hitting a huge score for a tiny investment in a very short amount of time. Before this thrilling poker format came along, the only way to hit a jackpot-sized score in poker for a small entry fee was to win a multi-table tournament. Multi-table tournaments are notorious for taking up to 12 hours to finish, but Spin and Go tournaments are finished in under ten minutes almost every time.

The final reason why we love Spin and Go tournaments is that the strategy for them is very simple in most situations. There will be no complicated four-betting going on in these tournaments since the chip stacks are too shallow for that to be possible, so raises and three-bets are all that you will normally see in these.

Most of the decisions made in these tournaments will be whether to go all-in preflop or not, so there will not be many triple barrel river bluffs to worry about either. We will now take a closer look at the strategy aspect of this special poker format in the next section.

Spin and Go Tournament Strategy

Bankroll Management

The first thing that you need to decide before coming up with a strategy is what stakes you are going to play. If you are completely new to this Spin and Go format, we recommend that you do not venture any higher than the 7$ buy-in level.

The $7 buy-in level is unique because it is the first level that features a decrease in rake and it is still full of recreational players. However, you should not attempt to play these tournaments unless you have at least 150 buy-ins in your poker bankroll. Therefore, if you are playing in these tournaments you should have a bankroll that is 150 times seven dollars which is $1,050.

Why do you need so many buy-ins? Some people might ask this because they think that requiring a $1,050 bankroll to play $7 tournaments is overly cautious. Well, the fact of the matter is that Spin and Go tournaments involve a ton of variance. This means that both the good luck streaks and the bad luck streaks will be even more dramatic than we are used to dealing with in other forms of poker.

ROI

The large amount of variance that is built into Spin and Go tournaments explains why even the best players have a relatively small return on their investment of 4%- 5% per tournament. If you are confused by what this means, we will now provide an example for you. Real money slots usa.

If you have a 2% return on investment or ROI, and you play 1000 of the $100 Spin and Go tournaments, you will have made $2 in each tournament. This comes out to a profit of $2,000 for every 1000 Spin and Go tournaments that you play. The best players will make double this amount over the long run for every 1000 of these tournaments that they play.

How does this return on investment match up to other forms of poker? Well, in freezeout tournaments, a player's return on investment can reach up to 100% or higher. However, these tournaments take up to 16 hours sometimes, so the hourly rate that you will make is not always that great. The low return on investment in Spin and Go tournaments is balanced by the fact that they only take nine minutes on average and therefore you can play a ton of them per hour.

Table Management

Since the return on investment is small this means that we should play 20 tables at a time to maximize our profit, right? Well, unfortunately, things are not that simple due to the fact that it is extremely easy to start missing profitable spots once you add a third table.

Since these tournaments only have three entrants, you could theoretically be heads-up on every table after just one hand. While this scenario rarely happens, it is very common for quite a lot of these tournaments to get to the heads-up stage rather quickly.

It is extremely hard to play 20 heads-up matches at the same time, much less three of them. There are a ton of factors to consider in each hand and it is simply impossible to play optimally with this many tables.

We recommend starting out with just one table for a few days until you feel comfortable and then move to playing two tables at once. You will still be able to play a large number of games per hour due to the fact that they are finished so quickly. This will also allow you to focus on your heads-up matches without having to make a bunch of other decisions at the same time, which will give you the best chance of winning.

Tilt Control

We know you have been told many times that you need to keep your cool when you play poker. This has never been more important than in Spin and Go tournaments. The sheer number of all-in situations that you will endure in any given hour can be enough to rattle the greatest of zen masters if things are not going as planned.

The best way to go about playing these tournaments is to assume you are making a small percentage of the buy-in every time you play one and not let the results in any hand bother you. The outcome of each hand is ultimately meaningless, all that matters is how well you are playing. Luck is cyclical and everyone gets to endure hot streaks and cold stretches eventually, so do not let the extreme swings of Spin and Go tournaments get to your head.

There is no guarantee that you will win if you keep a cool head. However, there is almost no chance of winning if you are in an angry mood. Poker is no game for mood swings so it is important to find a way to remain neutral during Spin and Go tournaments.

Three-Handed

Three-handed poker is a very small part of Spin and Go tournaments, but since there are only two stages so we must consider the strategy to use for both of them. The reason why this is not as important as our strategy for heads-up play is that normally the three-handed stage will only last a few hands. It is actually quite common to be heads-up after one or two hands, but occasionally you will be three-handed for 20 or 30 hands.

Considering you start the tournament with 25 big blinds, you should not just be open shoving all-in with any hand at this stage when you are on the button, except for the occasional small pocket pair. It will be more profitable to induce people to go all-in by min-raising when you have a big hand. If you have a weak hand, going all-in will only win 1.5 big blinds which is a big risk for a small increase to our stack. Therefore, we recommend doing the min-raise with any hand you choose to play from the button in this early three-handed stage.

If you are in the small blind, we do not recommend calling a bunch of raises from the button when you are out of position. You should be re-raising or folding in most of these three-handed situations.

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.

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?

Pokerstrategy Spin And Go Strategy

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.

Spin And Go Preflop Strategy To Crush Online Poker

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.

Register on the PokerStars website and use these poker tips and strategies to win your first Spin and Go games!

_{The Stars Group is a majority shareholder in iBus Media}

• Tags

  Advanced strategyBasic strategyFull Tilt PokeriPokerOmaha PokerPoker MillionUK Poker TournamentsUK Online PokerTournamentsSit and GoPot Limit OmahaPokerstars

• Related Room

  Full Tilt

If you have ever played online poker, especially on the number one site in the world known as Pokerstars, you have probably heard of the new poker format that is sweeping the poker world called Spin and Go tournaments. This is our favorite form of Sit and Go tournament to play and, judging by its massive growth in recent years, we are not alone.

Even though they were started very recently in 2014, this type of tournament has grown to account for an estimated 20% of Pokerstars' revenue. This is a massive weight for one poker format to pull on a site with so many different formats to choose from, especially when it is only a few years old.

As of May of 2017, there have been 16 poker players around the world who were made into millionaires in under ten minutes by winning a Spin and Go tournament. Six of these players won their prize all in the same week back in October of 2015. This just goes to show that you never know when lightning might strike multiple times!

These tournaments only have three entrants in each one, and all three players will receive 500 chips to play with. The blinds increase at a very fast pace, usually every three minutes. A tournament with this level of quickness is usually referred to as a hyper-turbo tournament. Once there is only one person left, the tournament is finished.

This format exists in many online poker rooms these days, but they sometimes have alternate names such as Jackpots on America's Cardroom, BLAST Tournaments on 888 Poker, or Twister sit and go tournaments on Coral Poker.

Payout Structure

The general idea behind these Spin and Go tournaments is that there is a random jackpot attached to each one. You will not know what the jackpot amount is until you register for the tournament, after which the table will show you how much you are competing for.

The range of the prize pools that are created by these jackpots can be anywhere from two buy-ins up to 12,000 buy-ins. Whenever the jackpot is less than 100 times the amount of the buy-in, only first place will be rewarded with a prize. This first-place finisher will take home the full amount of the jackpot that is attached to the Spin and Go, while second-place and third-place finishers will receive absolutely nothing.

However, in the event of a Spin and Go tournament with a jackpot attached to it that has a value of at least 100 times the buy-in amount, all three entrants will be paid a prize. The second and third place finishers will receive 10% of the jackpot amount that the winner receives.

For example, if you are playing a $100 Spin and Go tournament and you hit the big jackpot of 12,000 buy-ins, this means that there are 1.2 million dollars up for grabs. In this case, first place will receive one million dollars while second and third place both receive $100,000 for their efforts.

Rake

Just like regular sit and go tournaments, Spin and Go tournaments have a level of rake that decreases as the buy-in level increases. In the micro stakes of $3 and under, the rake is going to be 8% of the buy-in. The $7 Spin and Go level is where the rake begins to drop down to 7%. The $15 and $30 Spin and Go tournaments have a 6% rake. The final two buy-in levels of $60 and $100 charge a very reasonable 5% rake.

You might notice that these tournaments have a lower amount of rake compared to normal sit and go tournaments across the board. This is simply because of their high-variance nature, and this decrease in rake is normal for tournaments that increase blind levels at hyper-turbo speed.

However, the rake that is charged in a Spin and Go tournament is higher than the rake in plain old hyper-turbo sit and go tournament, even though they have the same structure. This is simply because the money for building the jackpots has to come somewhere, so they raised the rake a tad.

Don't worry, this does not mean that this format is unbeatable. Spin and Go tournaments attract such a large number of recreational players compared to other sit and go tournaments that it completely offsets the increase in rake, the hyper-turbo structure, and the variance of the jackpots all at once.

Jackpot Probabilities

One of the reasons that Spin and Go tournaments contain a high level of variance is that you never know which jackpot your tournament will get. The smallest jackpot possible, which is two buy-ins for whichever level you are playing, will occur around 70% of the time.

This means that most of the time you will battle two other people just to double your buy-in. While this is not ideal, it is a tradeoff that must be made in order to have access to such large jackpot prizes.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, one in a million of these Spin and Go tournaments will contain a prize pool of 12,000 buy-ins! This monster jackpot has been hit many times since these tournaments run millions of times per year at all buy-in levels.

As you can probably tell, there is a very wide spectrum of jackpot outcomes that can occur from day to day. This is even true from week to week or from month to month.

However, over the course of a year, you should be able to play enough tournaments to find out if you are truly a winning player in this format, no matter what jackpots you get. It is not required to hit the big 10,000 buy-in jackpot to make money in these Spin and Go tournaments.

Advantages

The reason why Spin and Go tournaments are exploding in popularity is that people are slowly realizing that there are a ton of benefits that come from playing this poker format.

The main explanation for why poker players are so attracted to Spin and Go tournaments is the speed in which they are finished. After playing thousands of these Spin and Go tournaments, we calculated the average amount of time that it takes to finish one is about nine minutes.

This lightning speed of nine minutes can be attributed to the short starting stacks combined with the two-minute blind level increases. This brings us to our next advantage to playing Spin and Go tournaments, which is that it favors players who are adept at playing with a short stack.

You will be starting the tournament with 500 chips at 10-20 blinds which works out to 25 big blinds. This is about as deep-stacked as you will get in these tournaments, which is relatively low compared to other poker tournament formats. For someone who knows profitable preflop all-in shove ranges well, these tournaments will be a blessing.

Other poker players who might prefer Spin and Go tournaments are those who do not enjoy playing postflop poker. While these tournaments do involve some play after the flop, this will generally only happen in the early stages of the tournament. Most of the hands that are played will be all-in preflop because the effective stacks will usually be too small to mathematically justify seeing a bunch of flops.

An additional reason why we love playing Spin and Go tournaments is that they offer a chance at hitting a huge score for a tiny investment in a very short amount of time. Before this thrilling poker format came along, the only way to hit a jackpot-sized score in poker for a small entry fee was to win a multi-table tournament. Multi-table tournaments are notorious for taking up to 12 hours to finish, but Spin and Go tournaments are finished in under ten minutes almost every time.

The final reason why we love Spin and Go tournaments is that the strategy for them is very simple in most situations. There will be no complicated four-betting going on in these tournaments since the chip stacks are too shallow for that to be possible, so raises and three-bets are all that you will normally see in these.

Most of the decisions made in these tournaments will be whether to go all-in preflop or not, so there will not be many triple barrel river bluffs to worry about either. We will now take a closer look at the strategy aspect of this special poker format in the next section.

Spin and Go Tournament Strategy

Bankroll Management

The first thing that you need to decide before coming up with a strategy is what stakes you are going to play. If you are completely new to this Spin and Go format, we recommend that you do not venture any higher than the 7$ buy-in level.

The $7 buy-in level is unique because it is the first level that features a decrease in rake and it is still full of recreational players. However, you should not attempt to play these tournaments unless you have at least 150 buy-ins in your poker bankroll. Therefore, if you are playing in these tournaments you should have a bankroll that is 150 times seven dollars which is $1,050.

Why do you need so many buy-ins? Some people might ask this because they think that requiring a $1,050 bankroll to play $7 tournaments is overly cautious. Well, the fact of the matter is that Spin and Go tournaments involve a ton of variance. This means that both the good luck streaks and the bad luck streaks will be even more dramatic than we are used to dealing with in other forms of poker.

ROI

The large amount of variance that is built into Spin and Go tournaments explains why even the best players have a relatively small return on their investment of 4%- 5% per tournament. If you are confused by what this means, we will now provide an example for you. Real money slots usa.

If you have a 2% return on investment or ROI, and you play 1000 of the $100 Spin and Go tournaments, you will have made $2 in each tournament. This comes out to a profit of $2,000 for every 1000 Spin and Go tournaments that you play. The best players will make double this amount over the long run for every 1000 of these tournaments that they play.

How does this return on investment match up to other forms of poker? Well, in freezeout tournaments, a player's return on investment can reach up to 100% or higher. However, these tournaments take up to 16 hours sometimes, so the hourly rate that you will make is not always that great. The low return on investment in Spin and Go tournaments is balanced by the fact that they only take nine minutes on average and therefore you can play a ton of them per hour.

Table Management

Since the return on investment is small this means that we should play 20 tables at a time to maximize our profit, right? Well, unfortunately, things are not that simple due to the fact that it is extremely easy to start missing profitable spots once you add a third table.

Since these tournaments only have three entrants, you could theoretically be heads-up on every table after just one hand. While this scenario rarely happens, it is very common for quite a lot of these tournaments to get to the heads-up stage rather quickly.

It is extremely hard to play 20 heads-up matches at the same time, much less three of them. There are a ton of factors to consider in each hand and it is simply impossible to play optimally with this many tables.

We recommend starting out with just one table for a few days until you feel comfortable and then move to playing two tables at once. You will still be able to play a large number of games per hour due to the fact that they are finished so quickly. This will also allow you to focus on your heads-up matches without having to make a bunch of other decisions at the same time, which will give you the best chance of winning.

Tilt Control

We know you have been told many times that you need to keep your cool when you play poker. This has never been more important than in Spin and Go tournaments. The sheer number of all-in situations that you will endure in any given hour can be enough to rattle the greatest of zen masters if things are not going as planned.

The best way to go about playing these tournaments is to assume you are making a small percentage of the buy-in every time you play one and not let the results in any hand bother you. The outcome of each hand is ultimately meaningless, all that matters is how well you are playing. Luck is cyclical and everyone gets to endure hot streaks and cold stretches eventually, so do not let the extreme swings of Spin and Go tournaments get to your head.

There is no guarantee that you will win if you keep a cool head. However, there is almost no chance of winning if you are in an angry mood. Poker is no game for mood swings so it is important to find a way to remain neutral during Spin and Go tournaments.

Three-Handed

Three-handed poker is a very small part of Spin and Go tournaments, but since there are only two stages so we must consider the strategy to use for both of them. The reason why this is not as important as our strategy for heads-up play is that normally the three-handed stage will only last a few hands. It is actually quite common to be heads-up after one or two hands, but occasionally you will be three-handed for 20 or 30 hands.

Considering you start the tournament with 25 big blinds, you should not just be open shoving all-in with any hand at this stage when you are on the button, except for the occasional small pocket pair. It will be more profitable to induce people to go all-in by min-raising when you have a big hand. If you have a weak hand, going all-in will only win 1.5 big blinds which is a big risk for a small increase to our stack. Therefore, we recommend doing the min-raise with any hand you choose to play from the button in this early three-handed stage.

If you are in the small blind, we do not recommend calling a bunch of raises from the button when you are out of position. You should be re-raising or folding in most of these three-handed situations.

If it happens to fold to you in the small blind, you should increase your standard raise to 2.5 times the big blind, instead of a min-raise. This will get more folds out of your opponent because they will be getting worse odds to call than they would against a min-raise, which is a good thing when you are out of position against them.

Your three-handed strategy from the big blind should be somewhat similar to the small-blind strategy where you are looking for good spots to re-raise people with your whole stack. However, you are also able to call more raises from this spot since you do not have anyone left to act behind you and you already have a full big blind in the middle. You will also be in position against the small blind, so calling or re-raising their raises with a wider range is a good idea since you will be able to see what they do after the flop comes before you act.

Heads-Up

Spin And Go Poker Strategy

As soon as the first person is eliminated, you will only have to go through one more person to win the jackpot prize. This means that you will need a solid heads-up strategy if you want to be a profitable player in Spin and Go tournaments.

The main difference between heads-up play and three-handed play is that you will be playing a lot more hands and therefore you will be folding a lot less often. This is especially true on the button, which is going to be the position where most of your profit will come from.

We do not recommend folding many hands from the button in heads-up play until your opponent gives you a good reason to do so. This means that you should be mixing in a steady blend of calling and min-raising with a balanced amount of strength and weakness in each action. If a hand is suited, you should certainly never be folding it from the small blind.

When you are heads-up in a Spin and Go tournament that has a huge jackpot attached to it, things will play out a little bit differently than usual. Most people will play very scared because they are not used to being heads-up for an amount of money that is so huge. You might find that you can bully other players a little more than usual in these situations, so we recommend ramping up the aggression instead of playing scared like everyone else.

The Wrap-Up

Spin and Go tournaments are fast and furious even though Vin Diesel is nowhere to be found. They are the only form of poker that allows players to hit huge jackpots in a small amount of time for the price of a small entry fee.

Even though the rake is higher than in other sit and go tournaments that also have a hyper-turbo structure, they remain a highly beatable feature of the online poker world due to their appeal to recreational players. We recommend taking these tournaments out for a spin to see how you like them, especially if you like to increase your chances of becoming a millionaire today.