Charts and basic strategy for Spin & Go

The opportunity to become a millionaire in a few minutes makes Spin&Go tournaments extremely popular among amateurs. In turn, weak players become the main reason for the transition of professional players to a new discipline. As a rule, these players already have a decent knowledge about poker dispersion. What we can’t say about another group of players - beginners, who are attracted by a professional career in the spin and go. This material is intended for them, as well as just for players of a thoughtful approach to any poker format. There will be benefits for players of other disciplines who constantly get tickets for Spin&Go from Stars Reward chests. The desire to dispose of such a generous gift from Pokerstars as effectively as possible is quite natural.

The role of preflop charts in Spin&Go strategy

The right choice of starting hands is the key to success in any poker discipline. If you play too many hands you will often fall under the dominance and make many mistakes. An overly tight game threatens to turn into losses due to your vulnerability to aggressive and observant rivals. However, the specificity of the Spin&Go format determines the crucial role of preflop charts in the strategy of success in the tournament. It is not surprising, because in the starting stack you have only 25 big blinds, and the levels grow every 3 minutes. As long as you wait for really good cards (by the standards of other Sit&Go or MTT tournaments), only 3-4 blinds may remain in your stack.

With that weak-strategy you can’t win even in one single Spin&Go. Talking about a successful game over a long distance is completely ridiculous. Therefore, we should play quite widely, but not at the same time turn into an amateur inclined to play any two cards. You must to use more aggressive strategy in Spin&Go. However, it is important to avoid extremes and maintain a high concentration.

In such a situation, the ideal solution is to have a clear strategy and pre-prepared charts for the most common situations in Spin&Go. The additional benefit of a strong pre-flop is that you will no longer waste valuable time thinking about the benefits/dangers of entering a game with specific cards. For hyper-turbo Sit&Go for three people a few seconds can play a decisive role and determine the result of the entire tournament.

Spin&Go Preflop Charts

First of all, let’s say that these charts for Spin&Go should become the foundation for your strategy. At the initial stage of Spin&Go’s career, it’s the right preflop strategy that will allow you not to lose a bankroll, but to gain experience and gradually move forward. As your skills and confidence grow, you will understand when you can and even need to deviate from the charts.

The fact that only 3 people take part in tournaments should have a limited set of charts, right? Actually -no, because even with such a small staff, an incredible number of specific situations are possible. Situations in which you have no room for error due to short stacks and rapidly growing blind levels.

While we study the charts for Spin&Go tournaments, we will move clockwise from BTN to BB.

Ranges

Our base raise from the button in all situations should be 2BB, i.e. a mini-raise. Unlike cash games or MTT tournaments, we don’t have the task of reducing the number of players in the bank or preparing to pre-flop to invest all the chips in the bank with a potentially strong hand. We have only two opponents in the tournament, and with 25 or fewer blinds, it will not be difficult for you to place all your chips in the center of the table by the river. If your stack size is 10BB or less, then you are in the game stage called «Push-Fold».

BTN openings

The opening range is 34.8% or 462 combinations. This is a necessary minimum that you must play for successful results. With growth in limits, you will naturally increase the number of hands in your range. However, we do not recommend choosing a strategy that is too risky and expanding your Spin&Go charts beyond 50%, otherwise you run the risk of constantly finding yourself in difficult situations with the wrong hands.

BTN Pushes

The hands with which you should push with a stack size of 8 to 10 big blinds are highlighted in red; with the green spectrum you go all-in with 6-7BB; purple is used if you have 5BB or less.

SB openings

In the small blind, only 1 opponent remains against us and, it would seem, we can raise a very wide range here. It is so? Not really. Due to the very short stacks, even one bad decision can lead to disaster and defeat in the Spin&Go tournament. In addition, from SB you will have to do not mini-raises, but 2.5BB raises. Due to a larger preflop bet, we will be able to get more folds from BB. This is very important, because in the case of a call from the big blind, we will play out of position in very wide ranges. This situation will lead to an increase in unforced errors postflop.

If you notice that the opponent in the big blind is too tight, then you can use mini-raises as an exploit strategy for a specific Spin&Go. A sensible solution would also be to expand the steel chart with SB. So you risk fewer blinds, winning the same amount.

SB Pushes

The group of starting hands we go all-in with at 8-10BB is colored red, at 6-7BB it is green, 5BB and less purple.
After the departure of one of the opponents, the decisive stage of Spin and Go - Heads Up begins.

General strategy for HU of Spin&Go

In a one-on-one battle, the positional advantage passes to SB. It is for him that the last word will remain. We recommend playing in the small blind very aggressively: you should open about 80%. An exception may be for the situation where your opponent constantly goes All-In. In this case, you will simply lose chips, because you must call his push with decent hands, which will not be too many in the 80% range.

If your stack has less than 10BB, then your strategy comes down to strictly following the push/fold charts in Spin&Go.

Playing in the HU in the BB should be significantly more tight. This is due to the lack of a postflop position. Do not play speculative and garbage hands. With short stacks, trying to get into a good preflop draw is bad luck. Prefer Ah hands, pocket pairs and a Broadway.

How to improve your game and results in Spin&Go?

For a long time there was no specialized software for the new and very popular discipline. Almost 7 years have passed since the first tournaments at Winamax appeared. And only now, in the spring of 2020, players took the first tool for Spin & Go tournaments - PreflopHero.

This trainer will allow you to explore the many charts for Spin&Go in a playful way. You will master the most complex Spin&Go strategies without extra effort. Now there will no longer be a need to glue the entire wall with printed matrixes of starting hands and memorize them. You can instantly make the right decisions with perfectly honed preflop.

In order not to be unfounded, we advise you to try PreflopHero for free. It is available on the official website of the developer.

Conclusion

Spin&Go format evoke conflicting feelings. On the one hand, starting stacks and blind growth leave very little chance to demonstrate the advantages of strong players over amateurs. On the other hand, it is foolish to deny the usefulness of discipline to popularize poker and the huge number of recreational players who came in the hope of winning a huge prize in a few minutes.

For a successful long-distance game, you will need an aggressive strategy and perfect knowledge of the Spin&Go charts. We indicated the main guidelines for playing preflop with BTN, SB at full table, as well as the strategy features in HU. Once again, with the growth of experience and an ever deeper understanding of poker concepts, you can deviate from the proposed strategy and gain an even greater advantage over your rivals.

We also recommend taking a closer look at the poker simulator - PreflopHero. At the moment, this is the best way to learn all the preflop charts for Spin&Go in a short time.