Spin & Gos have taken over the online poker world and there’s plenty of money to be made if you know what you’re doing. Team PokerStars Online pro Andre Coimbra reveals his winning secrets
Have you heard about Spin & Gos on PokerStars? They offer all the excitement of fighting for a big payday with a small investment, but without the long hours you have to invest in a multi-table tournament!
How is this possible? You register for a Spin & Go and as soon as there are two more players ready to play you are randomly assigned a prize pool that varies from two buy-ins all the way up to 3,600 buy-ins!
At small multipliers, the prize pool is winner-takes-all, but at the bigger ones, the winner takes most of the money, with large prizes still available for the other two players.
If you’re lucky enough to get a 3,600 multiplier, the winner takes 3,000 buy-ins and the remaining two players get 300 buy-ins each. So, if it was a $30 Spin & Go, the winner would take $90k and the other players $9k each!
The games have a fast-paced three-minute structure that starts at 10/20 with each player getting just 500 chips. This means that most of the time you will have fewer than 25 big blinds, and that’s where the strategy comes in…
18-25 big blinds
With this stack you still have all your options available! I like to keep my raises small: 2BB from the button and 2.5BB from the small blind. From the button I will always have position, so I want pots to start small and play as many streets as possible.
When I’m the small blind I will be out of position, so I want to give worse odds to my opponent to call in order to get more folds and play bigger pots, since position matters less in pots with lower stack-to-pot ratios.
In three-bet pots there will most likely be at least 10BB in the pot by the time you reach the flop and players will have double that behind in their stacks. This means that most three-bet pots will end either on the flop or the turn, so you should try to get involved in these pots with strong high-value cards like A-K/A-Q, medium-big suited connectors and medium-big pairs.
Small pairs play really poorly in three-bet pots, since you’re not getting implied odds for set mining, and you won’t be able to continue on most turns with initiative and flops without initiative. Low suited connectors or offsuit medium-strength cards will also get dominated too often.
15-18 big blinds
If you are going to three-bet with this size stack, it will most likely be all-in. The reason behind this is that you will have to invest such a big chunk of your stack that you will be committed to call an all-in for your remaining chips, and by moving all-in first you maximize your fold equity.
As such, I don’t think that non all-in three-bets should be part of your arsenal, at least until you reach a very high level and you are seeking very small edges. As a consequence, unless other people are using those three-bets, there shouldn’t be any four-bets with this stack either.
Post-flop you will most likely get two streets of ammunition towards the shorter end of these stacks and maybe three at the high end if you size your bets really small.
10-15 big blinds
If you are raising from a stack of this size it should be for the minimum amount (2x) or very close to it, because it gives you the best risk/reward ratio and provides some playability post-flop.
If there are still three players left, the button folds, and I’m the small-blind, I like to move all-in very often in order to deny the positional advantage of the big blind and maximize fold equity. If you are heads-up you will have the button on the small blind, so you will have more incentive to play flops and not move all-in preflop!
<10 big blinds
Once you have fewer than 10BBs, unless you are an expert player, you should reduce your actions to check (if you are the big blind), all-in and fold. If you have 8BB and you make the smallest possible raise (2BB), you will have 6BBs left in a 4BBs pot and you’ll have no room left to play postflop. If you c-bet 2BBs and your opponent goes all-in, you will have to pay 4BBs to win a 12BBs pot, so you probably need to call with any draw that has eight outs, like bottom pair, and in some cases even Ace-high.
Also, if you raise preflop and your opponent moves all-in, you’ll have tough choices with hands that were good enough to move all-in with, but perhaps not good enough to call an all-in with.
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