Adjusting to Spin & Go from MTT or Sit-n-Go Play
A hand is a hand, right? Play good hands, fold bad hands. Whether it's cash or tournament play this is a good rule of thumb. However, when you are starting a Spin & Go with 25BB, with blinds that go up every three minutes, you don't have a lot of time to sit around and wait for top 10% hands. Also, with only two other opponents you need to define a "good" starting hand very differently than if you are playing nine-handed cash poker. Adjusting your MTT or Sit-n-Go play when you play Spin & Gos is critical to your success. Here are a few key adjustments you should be making to your game.
Increase your Opening Range: If you are on the button or in the small blind when the button has folded, you need to be open raising 2x to 2.5x with a lot of hands - like 50% or more of your starting hands. Press the "Advice" button in our Spin & Go training game, and your advisor will show you the complete range of hands you should be opening. The tighter the other two players in your game, the more you expand your pre-flop raising range. Until the other players adjust, keep the pressure on.
Defend Your Big Blind Wider Against Aggressive Players: If either of your opponents has mastered the first strategy, you are going to need to keep them in check by defending the big blind wider than you would in an MTT. Sure, muck 6♦2♠, but J♠9♥ is a hand you may need to take a stand with.
Be Prepared for a Lot of Pre-Flop All-ins in Early Levels - Similar to Late Stages of an MTT: With a starting stack of only 25BB, shove or fold mode gets going very early in a Spin & Go. You are going to have some tough decisions to make, but you cannot be the weak player who folds everything and gets chipped off. Building a big stack early is critical to winning a lot of Spin & Gos. You must build your stack either by aggression as above or by taking some chances. Particularly in low multiple games (2x), other players are going to gamble a lot. They'll be shoving very light, so you need to be prepared.
Don't Overfold Post-flop: You are going to need to pick off c-bets with a lot of hands that you might normally be hesitant to play. Middle or even bottom pair is often good, and you will need to look other players up with these, especially when it doesn't put you all-in. You have top pair with a horrible kicker? Who cares about your kicker! Your chips are all probably getting in.
Ride out the Negative ROI Until a Large Multiplier Comes: If you end up with a long string of 2x and 3x multiplier games, you'll likely be in the red unless you have phenomenal luck. This is akin to having a lot of min-cashes in MTTs. (In MTTs, you could min-cash 50% of the time and still be net negative! Long-range profitability is all about getting those top 3 finishes.)
In Spin & Gos, you need to hit some of those large multipliers to get returns. Those can be few and far between, particularly if you are on the short end of the variance. On average, a 10x or better multiplier comes up less than 1% of the time (around 0.6% to be more precise – see our Spin-N-Go payout chart)! So even with average luck, you'll see a large multiplier only every 1 out of 150 to 200 times. So if you run bad on your spins, you can go deep into your bankroll before things turn around.