Spin and Gos have taken the internet by storm. For those of you who live under rocks, these are 3-player hyper turbo SNGs where the prize pool is randomly drawn for each game.
Players can win between 2 to 10000 times their buy-in in any given game.
Though each network runs their Lottery Spin and Go version slightly differently, there are several principles that apply to all Spin and Go Strategy:
Spin and Go Strategy: Preflop
Generally speaking, you should not have a flatting or calling range in the SB. Why is this optimal Spin and Go Strategy?
We’e written before about the strategy of position. The SB is the crappiest place on a 3-handed table. You will always be out of position. You don’t want to see 3-way flops, and furthermore, flatting gives the BB an incredibly +EV squeeze opportunity.
Develop a good push/fold range and stick to it. A good place to start would be to read up on “minimum defense frequency”, and create your 3bet ranges with that in mind. There are also plenty of opening range charts for Spin and Gos available across the internet.
Spin and Go Strategy: Hand Selection
Drawing hands are great in cash games, or the early rounds of an MTT. Why? Because you are deepstacked, and you can invest a little for a chance to win a lot. This is called abusing implied odds.
In a hyper-turbo, you are super short-stacked and getting more short-stacked by the minute. It makes no sense to invest 3bb of your 12bb stack with 67s trying to hit a straight or flush against aces. Similarly, hands like 22, 33 that have a hard time reaching / winning at showdown lose value.
Stick to the top-pair, high card hands at the top of the equity table. These hands are the best for Spin and Gos because they optimize your showdown value, blockers and all-in equity.
Spin and Go Strategy: Steal Wide and Cheap
In cash games or MTTs, you will sometimes see raises as large as 4, 5x preflop. When discussing Spin and Go strategy, raising anything more than 2.5x would be a massive mistake.
Because of the small stack sizes, a minraise can represent 10% of your stack easily. Thus, it carries a lot more fold equity than a 2x raise does in 100bb cash games.
The best way to build a lead in Spin-and-Go’s is by chipping away at your opponents with constant raises. Small raise sizes mean you lose less when your opponents 3bet you as a resteal.
Spin and Go Strategy: Bankroll Management
We wrote previously about bankroll management for cash game players. The principles in tournaments is similar:
Downswings can and do happen, and you want to be well prepared to keep playing.
We recommend you keep at least 100 buy-ins for the Spin and Gos you’re playing. In fact, we recommend having even more than that if you could.
These games are particularly high-variance because of the jackpot prize pool spin. To be a profitable Spin and Go player means to wait for the higher prize pools and maximize your winrate there. Inherently, it’s a lot easier to go on winning and losing sprees.
Spin and Go Strategy: Maximize your Rakeback!
Relatively speaking, rake at lottery SNGs tends to be high. Because you will be playing a ton of these tournaments (they’re super fast), you will want a good rakeback % on your buy-ins.
Below is a list of rakeback deals for our partners that offer lottery SNGs.
See our best Spin and Go rakeback deals below:
- iPoker.com: Coral Poker, Winner Poker, Bet365 Poker, Netbet Poker, Betfair Poker and William Hill Poker.
- Party Network: Party Poker, bwin Poker
- Microgaming Poker Network: Betsson Poker, Betsafe Poker, Triobet Poker, Nordicbet Poker
- 888 Poker
