Texas Holdem Spin And Go

What is HOT here:. Texas Holdem, a classy way to have fun. Sit-N-Go tournaments, 9 sharks, fixed buy-in and only Big Wins!. Jackpot Slot, love to gamble? Spin and win chips in between hands with the slot machine. In this short video tutorial our streamer OP-Poker Nick briefly explains why he uses StarsHelper, some of it's functions, and how to import the settings he uses to aid you in your next Spin & Go. 'If there weren't luck involved, I would win every time,' This iconic quote was said by a 15-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner whose nickname is the 'Poker Brat'.

1. Texas Holdem Spin And Go Online

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In the latest changes to features and product offerings at PokerStars, the operator has begun to offer Spin & Go Flash and also plans to trial anonymous tables in the next few months, according to an article published on Pokerfuse.

While several online poker sites have embraced or tried out anonymous tables, PokerStars has always maintained the policy of fixed aliases being displayed at all tables, until now. Many operators have been hard at work exploring ways to protect recreational players and thus protect their poker ecosystem, and PokerStars seems to be trying out anonymous tables for the same purpose.

“We are always working on new features and products and we have a lot coming up that we plan to test and gain player feedback on,” Rasset told Pokerfuse. “This includes testing adding some anonymous tables in upcoming months, which we will monitor very closely as the overall player experience and health of our poker ecosystem is top priority for us.”

Hand Histories Remain, But With a Twist

It is thought these new anonymous tables will be optional, unlike at other online poker sites such as Unibet Poker where everyone is under a blanket of anonymity. The hand histories do have a twist, however, with players’ aliases being displayed in the hand histories a day after they have been played. This fact should please users of tracking databases including Poker Tracker 4 and Holdem Manager 2 who can continue to track their own play as well as that of their opponents.

PokerStars explains that this feature also helps to ensure game integrity to prevent against collusion or predatory bot accounts from hiding behind anonymity.

“This feature has been developed with the integrity of the game at its core,” Rasset told Pokerfuse. “In order to ensure our players continue to feel secure, they will have access to hand histories with the UserID of their opponents exposed 24 hours after the hand has been played.”

Not a New Concept

Anonymous tables are not a new concept in the slightest. In fact, they have been around for the best part of half a decade. Unibet Poker was one of the first adopters of anonymous tables when it left the Microgaming Network for its own stand-alone platform in 2014.

Winamax allows alias changes every six months and optional anonymous tables. Unibet Poker takes things a little further in order to protect its players from predatory behavior by banning HUDs, removing downloadable hand histories and allowing players to change their aliases and avatars up to three times per day. Phil Galfond's recently launched site Run It Once Poker has also banned HUDs and made tables anonymous through a system of temporary IDs.

“In order to ensure our players continue to feel secure, they will have access to hand histories with the UserID of their opponents exposed 24 hours after the hand has been played.”

partypoker, which has seen a resurgence of late, recently forced its entire customer base to change their alias. It was a move designed to render the tracking databases useless. partypoker is yet to offer anonymous tables in any form, although players’ aliases are not visible in cash games until you are seated at the table.

The hand histories at partypoker only display your alias in cash games, while everyone else is anonymously labeled Player 1, Player 2, and so on.

A new feature recently launched at partypoker is the complete opposite of anonymous tables: real name cash games. Players who sit at these tables have their actual name displayed instead of their chosen alias.

Only time will tell if PokerStars’ huge customer base approves of these changes and whether or not the operator decides to apply them to all cash game types.

Texas Holdem Spin And Go Online

Speeding Things Up

Another change at PokerStars is the offering of a new and quicker variation of their popular lottery-style sit 'n' go, according to a Friday press release. In the traditional winner-take-all Spin & Go, three players pony up a set buy-in between $0.25 and $1,000 and a randomly determined prize pool is established between two-times the buy-in and 1,000-times the buy-in.

Spin & Go Flash will be no different, meaning it is still possible to play for a prize of $1 million in the biggest available buy-in, only the prizes will be won faster.

PokerStars' Spin & Go's have been around for five years and are already a fast variant, generally taking less than ten minutes. They also have an Omaha version and a 'Max' version that sets a maximum number of hands to speed things up. With Flash, blinds are reduced from three to one minute long and players start with 300 rather than 500 chips.

“Spin & Go Flash is a fun and exciting game, ideal for those who only have a few minutes to spare and want to have the chance to win big-money prizes.”

“We want to give our players plenty of choice and have a wide range of formats and variants available to cater for all player preferences,” said Severin Rasset, PokerStars’ Managing Director & Commercial Officer, Poker. “Spin & Go Flash is a fun and exciting game, ideal for those who only have a few minutes to spare and want to have the chance to win big-money prizes.”

According to PokerStars, Spin & Go Flash is already available on their .IT, .COM, and .EU clients, and soon to be appearing on their .FR, .ES, .UK, .DK, .DESH, .BE, .BG, .RO, .SE, .ASIA, and .EE sites too.

The faster-structured Spin & Go's should prove even more profitable for the operator than the versions already on offer, as French operator Winamax has already learned. Winamax was actually the first to come out with a lottery sit 'n' go variant back in 2013 and in July, they launched a sped-up version called Expresso Nitro.

A couple years ago, 888pokercame out with BLAST tournaments, four-handed sit 'n' go's with a six-minute game clock that changes the game to an all-in shootout when the timer expires. It appears that the industry is moving toward offering faster and faster formats, which will likely continue as long as players continue to fill the games.

Continued Trial-and-Error

PokerStars has made a handful or polarizing changes to its poker offering this year, including reducing the number of cash game tables a player can play at one time to four, slashing the time to act and offering all-in insurance.

According to Poker Industry Pro ($), PokerStars also has something called Swap Hold'em potentially moving toward launch after it emerged in the tournament lobby a couple months back. Whether this new variant will involve swapping of tables, seats, game types or something else, remains to be seen.

Poker Industry Proalso reported back in July that PokerStars would be adding a feature allowing players to 'throw' virtual objects at other players, as players at 888poker have been able to do for years. According to that announcement, soon players at PokerStars will be able to launch a pie plate, a fish, a horseshoe or a rose at their opponents.

_{The Stars Group owns a majority shareholding in iBus Media.}

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Table Of Contents

Since Spin and Go tournaments made their debut on the PokerStars poker software in 2014, an impressive number of casual players and recreational players took to the tables in the hope to turn lower stakes games into some of the biggest paydays in online poker.

If you are one of them, you know that winning big at Spin and Go tournaments isn't easy. Not only 2x multipliers are the most common result of the Spin & Go lottery, but also your usual Texas Holdem strategy might not be good enough to help you beat your opponents on spin and go games.

To increase your win rate and become a good Spin and Go player, you need to revisit the poker basics, adjust your range, and approach each poker hand from new angles.

You need to forget about your hand history as you know it, and learn to play Spin and Go games.

This is what you find on the PokerNews advanced strategy guide to playing Spin and Go games on PokerStars in 2020.

The best game strategy to win Spin and Go tournaments isn't necessarily the same that helps you do well in other poker games. Spin and Go strategies require a different approach to preflop strategy and a game plan you can develop only if you begin to get the ins and outs of the fast-paced lottery sit and go's.

Before we analyse together all the specificities that make Spin and Go tournament specials and we learn to play Spin and Go games together, let me give you one last word of warning.

This is not the average strategy article you find on most poker coaching and poker training sites.

Here on the 2020 Guide to PokerStars Spin and Go Poker, you don't waste precious time on a theoretical approach to Spin and Go tournaments. You get actionable poker tips to attack the games and turn the jackpot sit and go's into the most exciting (and rewarding) online poker games out there!

Register on the PokerStars website and use these poker tips and strategies to win your first Spin and Go games!

What is Spin and Go Poker?

Spin and Go's are a fast-paced version of 'sit and go' tournaments that similarly have no set starting times, only requiring the needed players to register for the tournament to begin.

Spin and Go's are most commonly offered as three-player tournaments with 'lottery'-style prize pools that have become an increasingly popular option for online poker players. Indeed, sometimes they are referred to as 'Lottery Sit and Go's.'

The format first appeared on Winamax in July 2013 under the name Expresso. Soon after came similar poker games on other platforms, including Twister on the iPoker network, Jackpot on Full Tilt, Twister Poker on TitanPoker, and the Spin & Go games on PokerStars.

Spin and Go's are an excellent example of the kind of innovative games that can be easily introduced in the online environment. Meanwhile, live poker can sometimes be restricted not only by physical limitations but also by whatever gaming regulation governs the operator.

The 'lottery' aspect of the game comes in immediately after enough players have bought into the game for it to begin.

Rather than having the prize pool be determined by the buy-ins, in Spin and Go's the payouts are randomly determined.

Spin and Go's are typically 'winner-take-all' tournaments with the payouts generally ranging from twice the buy-in to much higher amounts — even 1,000 or 10,000 times the buy-in. (Deal-making also usually is not allowed.)

This randomness adds some excitement for players at the start created by the prospect of enjoying what could be seen as a huge 'overlay' in the event.

A typical feature of the Spin and Go poker format is a 'turbo' or 'hyper-turbo' structure.

In most cases levels last three minutes, players start with small starting stacks of 500 chips, with each blind level and antes going up very rapidly, ensuring a swift end to the tournament.

In some cases, the length of the levels is connected to the 'prize pool multiplier.' For instance, on PokerStars if the prize pool is 2x the buy-in, levels last two minutes. If it is from 3-5x the buy-in, levels are three minutes, 10-25x the buy-in four minutes, and 120+ the buy-in five minutes.

How to Play Spin and Go Tournaments

Most sites have sped-up versions of Spin and Go's, such as Winamax where they offer Expresso Nitro and PokerStars where the game is called Spin & Go Flash.

In both, players start with just 300 chips and play one-minute levels as in hyper turbos. That's why they're given names like spin and go flash tournaments — they are over in a flash.

You register for these tournaments much like you do any poker tournament on most poker sites.

Once in the lobby:

1. Select it
2. Choose which type of Spin and Go you want to play

Looking at PokerStars as our example, you'll find not just the standard Texas hold'em Spin & Go games.

On PokerStars you find also pot-limit Omaha games and other variants like Spin & Go Flash (the flash games mentioned above) and Spin & Go Max.

This last one is a version featuring 3 to 8 players, a triple prize spin, and a hand countdown after which the game goes to 'all-in mode').

You'll notice a variety of buy-in levels. On PokerStars, real money games start at $0.25 and go up to $500. You can see with each buy-in what the maximum prize pool could be, should you happen to get lucky.

The multiplier on these games goes up to 10,000x; thus, the biggest possible prize pool in a $0.25 game is $25,000, and so on. You can also choose to play a certain number of games at once. On PokerStars, the maximum is five.

Once you've chosen your buy-in level and the number of games you want to play, click 'Play Now' and you will be immediately seated at a table.

Before the game starts, the prize pool will be determined by the randomizer, which on PokerStars is shown as a slot machine-like spin of numbers.

Then you're dealt your first two hole cards, and the game begins. In other words, first you 'spin'... then you 'go'!

How Much Can You Win?

The 'lottery' aspect of Spin and Go's means sometimes players do 'win the lottery,' so to speak, and enjoy enormous winnings.

Special promotions by sites have made it possible for players to win even more than is usually possible in these games. For instance, in December 2019 a player on PokerStars won $2 million in a $5 buy-in, limited edition 'Jackpot Spin & Go.'

Payouts and probabilities change with the stakes in Spin and Go's. Not only do the higher buy-ins yield bigger prizes, the probabilities slightly vary as well.

Also, when it comes to spin and go rake at the higher buy-ins, the rake is usually less than at the lower buy-ins.

To keep things relatively simple and to give you an idea of how the payouts work, let's look at the current prizes and probabilities for the lower stakes Spin & Go's on PokerStars.

As you can see, close to half the time (almost 49.5%) you sit down to play in a Spin & Go, you'll be playing for twice your buy-in. And nearly as often (41.4%) you'll be playing for three times the buy-in.

In other words, most of the time the winners won't be enjoying 'overlays' or prizes exceeding the amount of money coming from players' buy-ins.

Meanwhile, a little more than 9.1% of the time the prize pool multiplier will be 5x or higher, meaning the prize pool will be bigger than the buy-ins.

Also worth noting — as in most other tournaments, there's a rake taken as well. At these lowest buy-ins on PokerStars the rake is 8%, and it decreases to 5% at the highest.

Are Spin and Go's Profitable?

Spin and Go's are winner-take-all, so of the three players only one is going to come away with a profit. But thanks to the randomized prize pools that profit can sometimes be huge.

Spin and Go's have been around long enough for there to be expert players who specialize in the format, which in and of itself proves they can be profitable.

It is also a game type that attracts a high percentage of novice and recreational players, meaning even just some additional study of structures and strategies can give you an edge that can translate into profits.

Many people enjoy the adrenaline rush of games with rapid outcomes — the gambling industry thrives on that desire — and Spin and Go's certainly satisfy that craving among the poker-playing segment of the population.

The 'lottery' component of Spin and Go's also tends to attract players who play a 'loose' or high-variance style, which also can be beneficial to more disciplined players who are better judges of basic poker strategy and how to manage risk-versus-reward. That, too, can make Spin and Go's profitable.

Some players point to how spin and go rake requirements are higher than what you typically encounter in a cash game or other tournament types, and therefore can cut into potential profits. Also, playing a bunch of spin and go's in a row for the minimum prize pool (2x) can be a little

Register on the PokerStars website and use these poker tips and strategies to win your first Spin and Go games!

Spin and Go Strategy: Tips to Win More

Winning Spin and Go players are often also versed in basic short-handed and heads-up tournament strategies where many of the same principles apply.

Having a good grasp of the poker hand rankings and the starting hand strengths is key as well since the fast structure generally means players become shallow-stacked relatively quickly.

Because of the fast structure, it is imperative to get involved and try to accumulate chips right away. There's also limited time to gather reads on your other two opponents, so pay attention from the start and recognize their tightness or looseness during the first two levels, as that will help you judge how best to play against them.

Three-handed play means the button acts first preflop, and often that means from the button you should be opening all above-average hands and many medium-strength ones as well.

And if the button folds to you in the small blind, you should similarly adopt an aggressive approach.

When you do open-raise, keep in mind the stack sizes start short and quickly get shorter. On PokerStars, for instance, players start with 25 big blinds — 500 chips at 10/20.

The blinds then increase to 15/30, 20/40, 30/60, 40/80, 50/100, and so on. That means early on min-raising from the button and making it a little more when opening from the small blind, but not raising too big to make it hard to manoeuvre post-flop.

That said, there comes the point relatively soon in Spin and Go's when you'll need to move into a push-fold strategy, particularly once the effective stacks have slipped to the 10 BB range or less.

For this, it will help to become familiar with the push-fold strategy — including charts that can guide your thinking when deciding whether or not to jam your stack.

'Just sit down and do your homework with regards to ranges,' advises Nick Walsh of PokerStars Team Online who sometimes live streams Spin & Go's and discusses strategy. ' Have some guidelines on the kinds of way you should be playing.'

'It's little things like adjusting your preflop raise sizes and ranges. Adjusting how wide you're playing from all of the positions is huge,' says Walsh. 'You want to be playing loads of buttons heads-up and defending your blinds extremely wide, but in a controlled manner.'

Walsh also recommends practising smart bankroll management when playing Spin and Go's. He suggests having at least 200 buy-ins per stake level, since 'it's rare that people have swings deep enough to go broke with 200 buy-ins.'

Spin and Go's can be great for those who want to play poker for just a few minutes here and there, or for those who enjoy faster-paced games in which the results come quickly.

And unlike other new online formats that only lasted a few months before being pulled, Spin and Go's have proven themselves to be appealing both to the casual player and the professional poker player.

Spin and Go F.A.Q.

What are the Spin and Go tournaments at PokerStars?

Spin and Go's are a type fast-paced sit-and-go tournaments available at PokerStars. These online poker tournaments feature a hyper-turbo structure, 500-chip starting stacks, and a randomized prize pool that can reach up to 12,000x the buy-in.

What is a 'lottery-style' poker tournament?

In these tournaments, the prize pool is not determined by the sum of the buy-in fees paid by the participants but is assigned, at random, by an algorithm.

What's the maximum you can win on a Spin and Go?

When the biggest multiplier applies, a Spin and Go tournament pays $1,000,000 in real money as the first prize.

Is PokerStars the only website with this kind of games?

No. While the Spin and Go games are exclusive to PokerStars, many other poker sites have similar types of hyper-turbo sit-and-go tournaments with a randomized prize pool.

How many players are in a Spin and Go game?

Spin and Go's are 3-max online events.

Are Spin and Go games profitable?

The multiplier that applies on the prize pool can make the Spin and Go games extremely profitable. This table shows how many chances you have to play for the maximum prize available.

What is the best strategy to win at Spin and Go games?

The best Spin and Go strategy depends on the size of your stack and the blind level.

Most professional poker players suggest to start with an aggressive strategy and try to rake as many chips as possible from the early stages.

In some specific moments of the game, it might be advisable to adopt a 'push-fold' strategy. For a more detailed description of the best strategy to adopt (and a few examples, too) check out these Spin and Go poker tips.

Register on the PokerStars website and use these poker tips and strategies to win your first Spin and Go games!

_{The Stars Group is a majority shareholder in iBus Media}

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