Spin & Go tournaments are probably the most popular format on PokerStars, standing shoulder to shoulder with MTTs. Fast-paced, short, and offering potential for rare massive wins, it is quite clear why recreational players find them so attractive.
However, there is a certain notion that Spin & Gos are just that — a game for recreational players where professionals can’t find enough of an edge to make the format appetizing.
While a certain portion of the poker world still sticks to this idea, there are also those who recognized the PokerStars Spin & Go format as a hidden gem that has a lot to offer to those serious about playing poker for a living.
One of them is Nick Walsh, a PokerStars ambassador and Spin & Go expert, whom we talked to during the recently concluded NAPT in Las Vegas. During the interview, Nick shared his thoughts on why Spins aren’t to be overlooked and what makes them the perfect choice for certain types of pros who want to have more control over their time.
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Nick, tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into spins?
Nick: I’ve been playing poker pretty much since university times. Around that time is when I really started to consider playing the game. At first, it was recreationally, sort of as a hobby that I was playing a couple of times a week.
you can put in a serious amount of volume to realize your edge much faster than you would if you were playing MTTs
After university I really fell in love with the game and it became something that I did a lot more often. Eventually, I started to consider it as a potential professional career, or at least something I wanted to take seriously; a kind of a hobby that perhaps might have an income associated with it.
At that point I was like, right, where do I start? I started playing cash games because it’s what I was finding online. So, basically, I started playing online at first. From there, I wanted to try and learn how to play tournaments.
So, I moved into playing more sit and go in the traditional sense, because I was playing more nine handed and six handed where I could play X units per day. Each one is the same; each game starts the same with the same number of players in the same setup. I liked the sort of formality of that, that kind of made sense to me.
Many years later, I discovered Spin & Gos through a friend who was starting to see the game more seriously. He coached me to play Spin & Gos, to a pretty good level and I sort of fell in love with the game at that point.
It combined the super-fast paced heads up element, right, so it was like you were playing a heads-up sit and go, but with a little bit more “content,” as it were.
Having a deep understanding of the preflop makes you a post flop destroyer
I liked the fact that there was the possibility to win very large from just a single buy-in in the same way as you do in MTTs, but I also liked that they were something that I could play with freedom.
I loved the fact that you could kind of just go, “I’m going to play 100 today,” and if you got to 20, and you weren’t having a good time, you could just call it quits, whereas for all my friends who were taking MTTs more seriously it was always a grind. You always have to grind, you always have to be playing, and if you’re not playing, you’re falling behind as you’re not hitting your volume targets.
What do you think are the main points that make Spins attractive to pro players?
Nick: If you are a more serious poker player, or perhaps you already play cash games or MTTs, but you’re finding that you don’t have as much time as you did before to play them, I think that Spin & Gos offer you a way to get through very considerable volume with a considerable edge, given the fact that they are a hyper format, while also achieving reasonable reward targets, depending on where you live.
What that means is that, as a professional player or somebody that plays the game more seriously, you can put in a serious amount of volume to realize your edge much faster than you would if you were playing MTTs.
Obviously it’s still very high variance, but it’s still true, and you can also be rewarded very rapidly. If you want to unlock sort of rake back targets and stuff like that, it can be very beneficial.
What poker skills are needed to be a, a successful Spin & Go player?
Nick: First of all, a very, very deep understanding of the preflop theory is needed. I always tell people that I think it’s cool to learn GTO. It’s good to learn your pre flop GTO ranges.
it could be something that you use as a tool to improve your short stack, shorthanded play that will make you a better overall poker player and even make you a much better MTT player
A lot of people say to me that learning GTO is useless, because it’s not what you use when you’re playing recreational players or, you know, it’s not the best way to exploit your opponents. That is absolutely true! But having a basis from which to build, I think is very, very important.
And, actually, if you always know what you can do from a GTO perspective, learning what to do for tighter opponents or looser opponents or more aggressive opponents, more passive opponents becomes very simple after the fact.
So, that pre flop understanding is absolutely critical. And then also, I think that learning how to play a shorter stack, mastering the postflop game, is crucial to a lot of players who might play MTTs.
People say, how hard can it be? We’re only starting with 25 big blinds, it’s going to be push fold. First of all, that’s not true from a preflop perspective. And also post flop, it probably means they have a lot of leaks and not doing enough work on that finesse game when you have 15 big blinds and you are trying to line up a triple barrel bluff.
Learning the way to make that a reality is something that some people just don’t know about, full stop. A lot of people will start playing Spins and they’ll think it’s just a bit of fun. They realize very quickly that the devil is in the details.
Having a deep understanding of the preflop makes you a post flop destroyer, because you can understand ranges much better from a preflop perspective. But then postflop, also understanding the way we need to adjust our bet sizing in order to make it more of a three street game and actually maximizing our edge even though we have a limited amount of ammunition to play with.
What do you think is the most misunderstood aspect of spins?
Nick: I think by far, the most misunderstood aspect of Spins is, number one, you need to hit a jackpot to be profitable, which actually could not be further from the truth.
The majority of the skill that you present is in the consistency of the games that you play and with relatively low multipliers overall. Your average Spin & Go player is trying to play enough volume in order to get close to an average of two times your buy-in when you win or three times your buy-in when you win, of course, not including your stake.
So, actually, this sort of idea that you need to hit a big jackpot to be profitable is just completely false. In many cases, professional Spin & Go players will even calculate their expected EV or their expected ROI by removing the largest multipliers completely as a percentage ROI point.
The other point that is very common is that people think that Spin & Gos are all about learning your push-fold. It is so much more complicated than that. People that perceive that to be true will also struggle in MTTs in similar situations when they get to similar stock depths, because at that point, they have basically given up the opportunity to do anything alternative.
The takeaway from that I think is that players that already feel that way about Spin & Gos, you’re wrong!
But I’m not saying you’re wrong because I want to be right. I’m saying you’re wrong because actually, if you investigate it further, it could be something that you use as a tool to improve your short stack, shorthanded play that will make you a better overall poker player and even make you a much better MTT player, if that’s something that you prefer.
