Master Spin And Go Strategy To Win More!

Jackpot tournaments, better known as Spin and Go games, offer a lot of action and fun. It is so much fun that a big part of recreational players jumped to these games straight away when they were introduced back in 2014 and left other forms of Texas Holdem poker without hesitation.

Even right now, they do not understand the basic spin-and-go strategy but keep playing these games. Apparently, this is not a bad thing if you are ready to spend some time studying and learning this game.

Spin and Go Strategy for Winning More!

Jackpot tournaments offer a three-handed hyper-turbo format, which is extremely fast and engaging. Blinds go up very quickly, and you find yourself with fewer and fewer big blinds in your stack.

Therefore, you might think that there is not much room to play and that PokerStars' spin-and-go strategy is relatively easy. However, this is very far from the truth. You need to work on your game because making even the smallest mistakes can cost you a lot in the long run. So, what makes this game so profitable?

Firstly, you will have more recreation players than in any other form of poker, making up for a relatively big rake.

Especially on lower buy-in spin and go tournaments, where you will be playing two recreational players who are ready to make crucial errors a lot of the time.

Even more so, these players tend to make enormous mistakes when they play for small multipliers. Knowing that you will be playing for such a prize around 70% of the time gives you a significant edge and a lot of room to exploit weaker players.

The largest possible multiplier is 10.000 times the buy-in, and this is the main reason why recreational players join these games. They hope to spin it and win big, without even thinking that there is only one chance in a 1.000.000 to hit it. Here are the probabilities for PokerStars spin and go tournaments:

Multiplier	up to $3	7$	$15 and $30	$60 and $100
12000	1 in.1 000.000	1 in 1.000.000	1 in 1.000.000	1 in 1.000.000
240	30 in 1.000.000	30 in 1.000.000	30 in 1.000.000	30 in 1.000.000
120	75 in 1.000.000	75 in 1.000.000	75 in 1.000.000	75 in 1.000.000
25	1.000 in 1.000.000	1.000 in 1.000.000	1.000 in 1.000.000	1.000 in 1.000.000
10	5.000 in 1.000.000	5.000 in 1.000.000	5.000 in 1.000.000	5.000 in 1.000.000
6	75.000 in 1.000.000	75.000 in 1.000.000	75.000 in 1.000.000	75.000 in 1.000.000
4	184.506 in 1.000.000	199.506 in 1.000.000	214.506 in 1.000.000	229.506 in 1.000.000
2	734.388 in 1.000.000	719.388 in 1.000.000	704.388 in 1.000.000	689.388 in 1.000.000

As you see, you are quite unlikely to hit high multipliers, and you will be playing for small prizes the vast majority of the time. So you may ask if it is even worth playing it, and I would give you a strong YES!

Obviously, a big part of a successful spin-and-go strategy is preflop ranges, but even this requires a substantial amount of work. The fact that you are starting out with just 25bb should not convince you that you can play recklessly. I would say quite the opposite is true.

If you make even small mistakes preflop, you will have a very hard time winning these games because every chip is valuable, and leaving some EV at the table is unforgivable. If you are interested in adding a bunch of money to your bankroll and want to master these games, get spin and go preflop strategy charts, and you will be surprised at how good results you can have.

Obviously, there are a few other things you should consider when building a winning spin-and-go strategy, and let's quickly go over those.

The Size of Spin & Go Prize

As you already know, in the vast majority of your jackpot tournaments, you will be playing for small prizes. No matter on which site you play, around 70 % of the time, you will be competing for only 2x your buy-in in a spin and go. However, it is not as bad as you may think.

First of all, many recreational players do not care about small multipliers. They are here to gamble, and their only goal is to win big. Remember, they are here to win millions, not pennies! Therefore, recreational players will make huge mistakes in low-multiplier spin-and-go tournaments, and you should take full advantage of this.

A lot of the time, when playing for small prizes, they will be too loose and try to gamble much more than they should. It gives you an opportunity for relatively easy money. To get the most of your opponents try to tighten up a little bit and play stronger hands.

Your opponent will not see any adjustments, which you make, nor does he care about it. Most of the time, he will continue overplaying his hands and eventually will over-level himself to hand over his entire stack to you.

However, if the prize is on the bigger side and you were lucky enough to hit that large multiplier in your spin and go, do not make the mistake of playing too tight. Contrary to the previous example, many inexperienced players commit this error, and they are not willing to take necessary risks where they should.

So instead of folding around, try to play more hands, raise more preflop, and bluff a bit more postflop as well. Recreational players will be scared to take risks, and in many cases, they will be overfolding. Therefore, playing an aggressive strategy will give you more chances to take down a high multiplier spin and go, and obviously, it is your goal to win.

You can easily exploit both of these tendencies, and you should do that. Just be aware that better players and regulars will not change their strategy much based on the multiplier, so do not overadjust against them. Therefore, to spot how your competition plays, you should not play too many tables at once, and that is our next point in building a winning spin-and-go strategy.

Adjusting for Big Multipliers

The bigger the multiplier in a Spin and Go, the bigger the excitement, especially for recreational players who mostly play to try and get lucky in one of them. When you find yourself in a Spin with a 25x+ multiplier, which will certainly happen if you play many of these, here’s what you need to keep in mind:

Don’t over-adjust your calling ranges to become too tight
Widen your opening ranges, especially if you don’t recognize the names at the table

In general, players will be much more reluctant to go out of big multiplier Spin and Go’s, which gives you every opportunity to ramp up your aggression. If you know that players won’t call you off without premium holdings, even being crazy aggressive can be fully justified.

It is hard to say just how wide you should go without specific numbers of having the feel for the table so that’s something you’ll need to work out. However, as a general rule, you should be the one attacking in the high multiplier tournaments and putting pressure on your opposition.

Likewise, you can’t fall victim to tightening up because you’ve been running bad, and this tournament is your “golden ticket” to get you back on track. If you let someone else control the table or simply let the cards dictate what happens, you’ll lose any potential edge. If you see someone being too aggressive, do not be afraid to re-shove wide, and you will be picking up a lot of dead chips.

Be the one to drive the action and stay in control and don’t sweat it too much if you bust. There will be another one coming around shortly, and you want to know you’re giving yourself the best chance in the long run.

Getting a Read on Your Opponents

Just like in a heads-up sit-and-go, a 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 your opponents are and how they play.

There are so many players in these games that you are unlikely to gather large sample sizes on many of them. Quite the opposite, you will often be playing new opponents whom you have not seen before. To gather some information, try raising a few more hands than normal from the BTN or SB and see how your opponent reacts.

It is important to know who defends their blinds enough and who tends to fold more, and for that, poker tools such as Holdem Manager or Poker Tracker come into play!

This information will be incredibly valuable later on because you will have a good idea of how to adjust your strategy. Against some of your competition, you could be raising any two cards heads up and stealing a lot of money, while others will be very aggressive and 3-bet shove a lot.

In this scenario, you should naturally be adjusting your play because raising wide would be a huge mistake. Therefore, folding your weakest hands and limping a lot will be your best strategy against him. You will let your opponent make many mistakes. Moreover, you will have a chance to outplay him postflop quite quickly while having a position.

Remember, this is always a moving target and to get the best results you have to adjust your sin and go strategy to your opponent, not just blindly play fixed ranges.

However, having a good starting strategy is crucial, and this is your best bet to become a winning player in these games.

You can get my course to get a bit more info on that, as well as all 49 spin-and-go charts for every possible preflop scenario, and take your game to the next level.

Play To Win Not for A Multiplier

As you probably understand, you should try to win every tournament and not chase big hits. No matter what prize comes up, you should not go out of your way to win it. Instead, stick to your solid spin-and-go strategy that you already built.

If you consider those 2x multipliers as not important, you will be facing significant problems because, as we said, around 70 % of the time you will be in a game with such prize.

So, you should look to play your A game in the 2x game, just like in any other. Without counting the lottery part, you should seek to win at least 36% of the tournaments. If you win, just 1 out of 3 will result in losing money because of the rake.

The end number will vary based on your buy-in level and the rake you have to pay. However, you need to keep in mind that these small multipliers account for a significant part of your winnings.

Threaten these games as simple hyper-turbo tournaments with plenty of weak players, and do not expect to spin these big multipliers.

If you play only a few games here and there, chances are you will never hit a big one, and if you will, just treat it like additional winnings. Therefore, you have to be able to beat these games without jackpots; otherwise, the variance will catch up eventually.

To sustain a good win rate, you should not just sit around waiting for big hands. There is simply no time for that. Therefore, the aggressive strategy is clearly a better one in the long run, and you should try to pressure your opponents as much as you can.

Keep Your Bankroll Under Control

Spin and goes could have a substantial short-term variance. However, in the long run, it evens out, and as proved over time, good players have very nice graphs going straight up. This is similar to heads-up sit and goes, where you could be experiencing big swings, but if you are a winning player, you will end up winning a lot.

To avoid any problems with short-term variance, you should have enough money in your bankroll. Obviously, the most important factor here is your win rate.

If you have a bigger edge over your competition, you will need less money, than someone having just 1 % return on investment (ROI). That being said, I suggest having at least 200 buy-ins at the beginning.

You can start at lower stakes and figure out your edge, how the game runs, what adjustments you should make, and how your opponents play? Then, try to move up and adjust your bankroll accordingly.

When you climb the limits and face tougher competition leave yourself some room for swings and do not take aggressive shots to higher stakes. Something that could be very beneficial in other formats will not work such great in spin and goes due to a very high short-term variance.

Master spin and go strategy preflop

Correct sizing of your pre-flop bets is vital as well.

I do not recommend you opening more than 2x from the button and 2.5x from the small blind when three-handed and suggest to only min-raise when you are heads-up.

This way, you will save a lot of money against aggressive players who tend to 3-bet or shove a lot. Moreover, your opponents will be forced to defend more hands while having good odds, and you will be playing more pots in position, which is always good.

To end this article, I want to touch on preflop ranges. They are a crucial part of any successful spin-and-go strategy. Many players have mastered them and have had incredible results. The bad news is that, often, you will get that information only in coaching for-profit (CFP) groups and will have to pay thousands from your winnings to have that privilege.

However, I decided to change that and created unbeatable preflop spin and go strategy course. Inside you will find 49 spin and go preflop charts for all possible situations and much more!

Spin and Go Strategy Adjustments for Postflop Play

Despite being extremely short stack game, Spin and Goes require postflop play, and with few small adjustments, you can increase your edge further on. First of all, it is worth noticing that you still should play an aggressive style and learn to balance your ranges versus good players. However, when you face weaker ones (and that is going to happen a lot of the time), I highly recommend adjusting your ranges as follows.

Tip#1. Continuation bet more

It is not surprising to see regulars c-betting 80% or even 90% of their hands on the flop in this format. While playing this way in a regular cash game or MTT would make you broke pretty soon, in Spin and Goes, you can and should take advantage of shorter stacks.

You start the play with 25BB, and pretty fast, the stacks shrink even more. Therefore, even if you decide to c-bet close to every flop, you will be doing quite well because this setup will not let your opponents float many hands, and they will end up massively overfolding.

If you decide to continue betting for half the pot size, you only need to see your opponent fold 33% of the time to make an instant profit, and you will see folds much more often than that.

Tip #2. Use smaller sizing

To enhance your aggressive betting strategy, you should usually use small sizing. This helps you create more opportunities to barrel multiple streets and still yields almost the same number of folds if you choose the spots wisely.

Obviously, you should always stick with smaller sizing on dry boards and never bet more than 1/3 of the pot. In this case, you only need your opponent to fold 25% of his range, and there will be almost no instances where your opponents can defend 75% of the hands, so you will end up printing money in the long run.

Tip #3. Playback versus c-bets

That being said, you should not make the mistake of overfolding when facing aggression. As we already recognized, c-betting many poker hands is the right strategy in Spin and Go, so many of your opponents will be doing that as well.

To counter that, you should defend every playable hand and even raise as a bluff holdings that are not strong enough to call. If your opponent is over c-betting (he will be in most cases), it is close to impossible for him to defend enough of the hands against a raise, so this will create another spot where you literally can print money.

But despite raising your bluffs, be ready to bluff catch many of your hands as well. Especially if you have blockers to his possible strong holdings and do not block any potential draws that your opponent could be barreling, calling down with the 3rd pair is not uncommon.

Obviously, all these strategies will require some time and practice, but when you get the hold of general short stack play, you will end up crushing lower Spin and Goes with an aggressive strategy and ability to bluff your opponents. If you want to boost your learning process, you can always check poker training sites and copy strategies that professional players use every day.

Tip #4. Use the stats

Both Holdem Manager 3 and Poker Tracker offer the ability to create a custom HUD and see how your opponents play in different stack depths and every spot you can imagine. Without going into details with the stats, just make sure you are using tracking software and the HUD not to leave any information aside and easily adjust versus your opponents.

You can also go even further and get additional poker tools that will help you on this journey, either to learn the strategy or to be more convenient when playing.

Spin & Go Strategy Summary:

Have a proper bankroll because you can encounter big swings
Preflop is the most important part that you should master firstly
Take small multipliers very seriously because you will be playing a lot of these games
Play more aggressively in bigger multipliers to take advantage of money pressure
Continue bet more, but use smaller sizing
Defend wide ranges against flop c-bets