Poker Weekly Update: Spin & Go domination

Hi everyone, Alex here.

I played a few games at the $1 spin & go level on pokerstars last week. 138 in total and I didn’t touch any cash games. In spin & gos the main thing that determines your profitability in the games is your chip ev per game. This chip EV (expected value) goes up whenever you win a hand that doesn’t go to showdown or when you do go to showdown with the odds in your favour and vice versa.

To have an expected ROI of break even at the $1 games you need to have an average chip EV per game greater than 44. Last week I had an average chip EV of 88.2 over 138 games which isn’t too large of a sample but it’s large enough considering the starting chips are 500. This gives an expected ROI of 8.2% which is huge. Unfortunately I ran a little under EV and only broke even in winnings. Overall I was pretty happy because according to my average chip EV there’s a good chance that I have a huge edge playing these games.

Expected ROI =(500 + avg chip EVper game15000.92 3-1) 100

And the graph for all hands from the 138 games.

Firstly ignore the winnings axis being $$$ they are only tourney chips not real money. The All-In EV line is the most important for me because that’s the chip EV won over all the hands. The green line ( Net Won ) is an indicator of how many chips were won so if that line is below the orange line it generally means that I was a bit unlucky. The other lines don’t really matter other than the fact that they tell me how people are getting exploited by me.

I have made quite a few adjustments to my spin & go game since reviving my schedule around it two weeks ago. There are few good exploitation spots that i have found that give me a large edge over the general population.

The first not really being an exploit but more an adjustment to being exploited is that people have a tendency to 3bet shove sb+bb vs button+sb a lot wider than I initially thought they did. So the adjustment I made was to raise call a lot more in those spots, as they seem to just shove Ax,KT+,22+,QJ,JT at a pretty high frequency. Well some of the more spicy guys are doing the JT,QJ stuff.

The second adjustment that I have found is that people tend to limp (complete the small blind) a lot of trash hands when the stacks are shallow. On A,K,Q and sometimes J high boards they tend to fold a lot to lead bets and even when they do defend the flop they fold at high frequency to turn and river bets as they mostly just have unpaired hands or bottom pairs. I have been careful though to gauge the opponent first. If I think he is range aware I will not overbluff in these spots or I risk getting exploited.

While it has been fun working out how to exploit the russian and ukrainian spin & go regs I have been tinkering a bit with the idea of moving to a similar game on party poker called sit & go hero. The reason for this is that the games charge lower rake and the variance is much lower as the games are also bounty sit & gos.

Here are some interesting hands that I played:

PokerStars Hand #157250212620: Tournament #1643127772, $0.92+$0.08 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level III (20/40) - 2016/08/14 0:34:32 ET
Table '1643127772 1' 3-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 2: missey77 (578 in chips)
Seat 3: goingpaper (922 in chips)
missey77: posts small blind 20
goingpaper: posts big blind 40
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to goingpaper [4h 9c]
missey77: calls 20
goingpaper: checks
*** FLOP *** [6c Kd 5d]
goingpaper: bets 40
missey77: calls 40
*** TURN *** [6c Kd 5d] [Ts]
goingpaper: bets 160
missey77: calls 160
*** RIVER *** [6c Kd 5d Ts] [2d]
goingpaper: bets 682 and is all-in
missey77: folds
Uncalled bet (682) returned to goingpaper
goingpaper collected 480 from pot
goingpaper: doesn't show hand
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 480 | Rake 0
Board [6c Kd 5d Ts 2d]
Seat 2: missey77 (button) (small blind) folded on the River
Seat 3: goingpaper (big blind) collected (480)

PokerStars Hand #157209913909: Tournament #1642342521, $0.92+$0.08 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level III (20/40) - 2016/08/12 23:55:36 ET
Table '1642342521 1' 3-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 2: wichtel135 (1078 in chips)
Seat 3: goingpaper (422 in chips)
wichtel135: posts small blind 20
goingpaper: posts big blind 40
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to goingpaper [9h 5h]
wichtel135: calls 20
goingpaper: checks
*** FLOP *** [6d Ac 6c]
goingpaper: bets 40
wichtel135: calls 40
*** TURN *** [6d Ac 6c] [3c]
goingpaper: bets 160
wichtel135: folds
Uncalled bet (160) returned to goingpaper
goingpaper collected 160 from pot
goingpaper: doesn't show hand
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 160 | Rake 0
Board [6d Ac 6c 3c]
Seat 2: wichtel135 (button) (small blind) folded on the Turn
Seat 3: goingpaper (big blind) collected (160)

These are just examples of exploiting people in A and K high boards.