Spin And Go Poker Strategy

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How to Beat the Spin N Go Games at PokerStars

PokerStars introduced Spin N Go in 2014. These games turned into an instant success – appealing to many recreational players thanks to the chance of winning a jackpot of up to 10,000x your buy-in. They are 3-handed, super-turbo and the prize pay out is only known after the game begins.

This page is a strategy guide for Spin N Go tournaments. I’ll show you how these games work, and the specific adjustments to your poker game required to consistently beat them. Here is what you will find below:

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. Spin & Go tournaments played prior to opting in will not count towards your progress. You can check the number of Spin & Go's played after opting-in at any time in your Challenges Window. You can check the standings by selecting 'Leader Board' in your Challenges Window after logging in.

  • How Spin N Go Tournaments Work (prize pools, blind structure and more)

Note that these games are now available in Omaha format. This guide focuses on the popular Texas Hold’em versions.

What Are Spin N Go Tournaments – and How They Work

PokerStars have created a fast and entertaining poker variant with Spin N Goes. You start with 500 chips, and blinds go up every 3 minutes. This keeps the format short, making it ideal for a quick poker session. Spin N Go tournaments only have 3 players. Most of the time, only the winner will get a prize – this rewards aggressive, positive play.

These games start with low buy-ins of 25c – and go up to $100. The prize pool is a multiplier of the buy-in level. The best prize is a huge 10,000 times the buy-in. You will not know what the prize pool is before the game starts. Here are the buy-in levels with the maximum prize pool for each:

  • 25c – $2,500
  • $1 – $10,000
  • $3 – $30,000
  • $7 – $70,000
  • $15 – $150,000
  • $30 – $300,000
  • $60 – $600,000
  • $100 – $1,000,000

Most of the time, the prize is 2x your buy-in. This is how PokerStars takes cash to make it possible for the bigger buy-ins. Sometimes this will be 4x, 6x or more. Only when you get to the bigger prizes of 100x your buy-in or more will more than one player collect prizes. When this happens, additional strategy considerations come into play. These concern making decisions based on prize pool equity.

While you do get some pro grinders in these games, they are more popular among recreational players. There is definitely a skill element to them – though for the most part, they feel like a gambling game!

Blind levels are only 3 minutes long. This means only a few hands are possible per level. With starting stacks at only 25x the initial blinds (and getting shallower fast), you don’t have time to wait for good hands. By the time you have climbed 4 blind levels, these games are all-in or fold – so you’ll need to know the math to succeed.

Pros and Cons of Spin N Go Poker Games

Compared to regular poker formats, these games are quick, and the variance is high. Despite this, they are popular – you will never have to wait long for one (or more if you are multi-tabling) to kick off. Here are the pros and cons of Spin N Goes:

Pros:

  • Chance of a big jackpot of 10,000x your buy-in
  • Fast games, there is no need to sit at your computer for hours
  • Work great on mobile devices
  • Attract a lot of recreational players, making them easier to beat

Cons

  • Most prizes are 2x your buy-in
  • Super-fast, meaning the variance is high and less time for your skill edge to show
  • Take recreational players away from regular Sit N Goes and cash games

Spin N Go Strategy for the Early Stages

Before I get into the types of hands to play while the blinds are small, there is another step you should take. This is to make a quick assessment of the players you are up against. During those first 4 or 5 hands, you should look to collect information on your opponents. You won’t have too much to go on, though anything you can spot can translate into a big advantage.

Look for the following:

  • Grinders: You will find people who multi-table these games, taking advantage of the “fish”. The best way to spot these types is to take notes. If you see someone in a lot of games, they are likely to know what they are doing (to varying extents).
  • Crazy Players: Look out for all-ins, crazy bet sizes and donk betting (betting out of turn when someone else had the betting lead). You will need to play against this type when you have a range advantage.
  • Tight / Passive Players: This is a losing strategy, and if you can spot players who are overly tight you can mark them out for steals as the games progress.

3-handed, the criteria in terms of hand strength for raising a pot first-in go way down. Any ace, suited king, pair or 2 high cards is enough to open a pot. When you are on the button, you have last position in the betting for the rest of the hand. This is a big advantage.

During the early blind levels, you have enough chips to play post-flop poker. I don’t recommend slow playing; selective aggression will get you more chips. At 25x the big blind in your stack, be careful not to commit yourself to a pot with a marginal hand. Betting pre-flop and on the flop will often mean that the pot is the size of the average stack – creating tricky turn situations. Since these games are so fast, you can’t hang around – selective aggression will get you the chips.

Middle Stage Strategy for Spin N Go Tournaments

As the blinds reach 100 / 50, the average stack plummets to 10x the big blind. Here you have 2 main weapons in your arsenal – steals and resteals. When only a single player gets paid, you don’t have prize-pool equity maths to consider. If you think your hand is better than the range an opponent would shove with (taking the dead money of the blinds into account), then go ahead and make the call.

Against tighter players, you should steal with a wide-range, going all-in. If you do get passive opponents who limp, or raise to 2x the blind often, then a resteal can be a better option. With a playable hand it makes little sense to call. The pot will be so big, that hitting any part of the flop means you will call a bet anyway. In this case you should go all-in over an opponent’s shove. Here you can win a welcome number of chips if they do fold.

Look out for players who shove all-in a lot, then suddenly limp or make it 2x the big blind. This can be a sign of a trap with a big hand – that player may be worried that they will not get value from their big hand. If you see this happen, make a note. You will know that next time that player opens with an all-in, they don’t have a monster hand!

Later Stages of a Spin N Go / Heads-Up

You really don’t have much option once the blinds get to 200 / 100 and above (if the game lasts that long). Any hand you want to play is an automatic all-in. The type of player you are up against will show what percentage of hands you can shove with. Most of the time, you’ll be heads-up here, and post-flop poker will be impossible.

If you are up against a tighter player, then you need to shove every hand. They will fold so often that you can pick up enough dead chips to boost your stack for when they do wake up with a hand. Against looser players you will also need to loosen your calling range. With ranges as wide as 70%, there are very few hands that you could call with which do not have the required equity against their range.

For more advanced strategy here, use the SAGE system or study Nash Equilibrium. This covers those scenarios where opponents are adjusting to your expected calling range, and how you can re-adjust to beat their new all-in range from there.

Bigger Prize Pools with 2 or 3 Players Getting Paid

This is infrequent, though an important part of winning Spin N Go tournaments is maximizing your profits when you are lucky enough to get a 100x prize (or bigger!).

Many small stakes players will be intimidated by the big money. Even a fairly experienced player will not want to make mistakes – and will tighten up as a result. You can take advantage of this by upping your aggression, especially from the dealer button position.

When 2 people get paid, prize pool equity comes into play. This is complex, though the idea behind it is not. The chips you win will have a decreasing value when more than one player gets paid, compared to the chips you lose. This means you need to not only have the best hand to call an all-in. You need to factor in that the ‘equity’ in the overall prize pool you gain is lower than the equity you risk.

Pokerstrategy

For this reason, you need to tighten up your calling range for all-ins. If an opponent is experienced enough to understand this – you can go all-in ‘lighter’ than you would otherwise. At the lowest buy-in levels, you can assume that the vast majority of players will not understand this concept. For further reading, look up the Independent Chip Model.

Alternatives to Spin N Go Tournaments

While Spin N Go tournaments at PokerStars are the most popular of this type of game – you’ll find them at a lot of different poker sites. Some have slightly different formats, though the random prize pool and super-fast structure is a common theme.

The first of this type of game came from the iPoker Network. They produced ‘Twister’ Sit N Goes. This was followed by Blast! Poker at 888 and ‘Jackpots’ at America’s Cardroom. An interesting alternative is the SNG Hero games at Party Poker. These have 4 players. As well as the random prize pool, one player gets a bounty on their head – awarded to whichever player knocks them out. This creates an interesting dynamic, as everyone guns for the player with the bounty!

You will find these games at PokerStars and elsewhere can be adapted to award prizes of entries into bigger buy-in multi table tournaments. This includes specials for live events, as well as entry into online championships.

Wrapping Up: Are Spin N Goes Right for You?

There is little doubt that the ‘Lottery Jackpot Sit N Goes’ format which Spin N Go tournaments are a part of has been a huge success. The big appeal for recreational players is the shot at winning up to 10,000 times your buy-in. That attraction to players with little or no poker experience in turn makes them profitable for more experienced players.

While you won’t have long for your skill edge to show – there are steps you can take to maximize your expectation over the long-run. This includes a quick assessment of what types of opponent you are up against, and aggressive, positive play.

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.
Strategy

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.

Spin Poker Odds

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.

Spin Poker Strategy

But the best thing about these games I have yet to unravel:

Pokerstrategy Spin And Go Strategy

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!

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.

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

Video Spin Poker

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.

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Stick to these simple guidelines and you should have no problems beating Spin & Go's, as long as you ride out the variance.