In this series of posts, we are going to review every hand from playing some Spin & Go’s on Pokerstars!
We will go over all the key hands and all the thought processes behind them…
Firstly just a little bit of general strategy before we go into the specifics of how we ended up winning this game, an excerpt from our previous post on playing Spin & Go’s
Play more pots!
We are going to want to play a lot of pots in these 3 handed games. We are going to have to get involved and see boards, limping from the small blind is a good way to see cheaper boards and doing so with a balanced range will allow us to trap our opponents with our stronger holdings as well as see cheap boards with the bottom of our range.
We are going to want to raise wide from the button and play most of our hands in this position…
Here we have a rough guide on around 45% of hands which can make a nice opening range to start your Spin & Go strategy from the button
Our reasoning for playing a range like this is that most players that are in these Spin & Go pools are going to be over folding and passive with poor post flop play, so look to play your button with a wide range and take advantage of these types of players that will not be continuing correctly post flop…
For more general advice on playing this format CLICK HERE to view the post on Learning how to crush spin & go’s
Hand #1
We pick up the monster AKs in the small blind, we decide to limp in, the reasoning for this is it allows us to come over the top of our opponents raises, we can also stay balanced as we will limp our junk hands looking to see flops, so limping strong hands also allows us to be unpredictable…
Underselling our hand, in this case, works out great as our opponent just moves all in preflop, not giving us a monster in our range…
Our opponent tables A9o for a strong holding but not good enough to trump our AKs on this run-out, so after playing just one hand we are in heads up play.
Hand #2
Sticking to our limping strategy we decide to limp A5o on the button, we could also raise the minimum, however, we feel we want to play as much post flop poker as possible in these heads up, keeping them as deep stacked as possible, so entering with limps keeps the game deep stacked, if we start raising our range then we will have fewer chips when we get to post flop play.
In this hand with blinds at 10/20 still we limp for 20 chips, our opponent raises to 60 chips out of position and we choose to call from the button, we will get to be in position for the rest of the hand…
The flop brings Q 6 4 with two diamonds, so nothing that favours our holding other than a back door straight draw, however, we can’t just give up on this pot to a small C-bet from our opponent, as they bet 40 into 120
Although we don’t love calling with this hand we still beat all King high hands, all flush and straight draws and we can’t just continue with pairs on this board we are going to have to continue with some Ace high hands some times or we will be overfolding in the long run, so we take a card off…
However the turn card brings one of the worst in the deck with the Jack of Diamonds hitting the board, we now have a terrible hand for this board and with our opponent sizing up their bet to half pot we are not going to continue with this holding, we will have far better hands in our range to call with such hands with at least one diamond in, made flushes and pairs, we are just going to muck our ace high here.
Hand #3
Continuing our balanced limping technique we limp with AKs the next hand we play, we flop Top pair, top kicker and decide to check back the reason for this is that we are protecting our check back range to include some strong hands, we will also get action from worse hands on the turn and induce bluffs by checking this flop, this is exactly what happens with our opponent leading out for a near pot sized on the turn.
We have two options here, because obviously, we are never folding, so we need to choose between calling and keeping ranges wide and keeping our opponents bluffs in, however on this card I like to raise too, it allows us to get value from pairs, flush draws and straight draws that don’t want to give up and lets us build a bigger pot with the top part of our range.
Sadly our opponent was probably just firing a complete blank in this exact scenario and they instantly fold to our raise.
Hand #4
A tricky hand comes our way, we defend vs our opponents 3x raise out of position with K4s, which is simply too strong to fold heads up and has good playability post flop.
We hit a good flop for our hand with 2 to our suit on the Ace high flop. We have a draw to the complete nuts! Our opponent bets 66 chips into a pot of 120, so around 55%
How should we continue?
This is a tough spot because we are too deep stacked to raise and look to get this all in, we are only going to be getting action when we are crushed… but it can be tough to realise our equity by just calling.
We choose the second of the two options and just call, hoping to improve with a club or pair on the turn…
A swing and a miss, the turn card comes in the shape of the 5 of hearts, so now we just have King high and are faced with another healthy bet, if this was a tournament with deeper stacks we could call again, beating hands like QJo and smaller flush draws, however with such shallow stacks calling here leaving ourselves with less than 500 chips is not an exciting prospect, so we choose the disciplined option of mucking our draw and move on to the next hand.
Hand #5
Sticking to our plan in this game of limping our buttons to play with deep stacks, we limp Q4s and flop a flush and straight draw! An exciting flop, we could easily bet here to make the pot bigger and hopefully hit our hand, however we want to keep in some worse hands and as we don’t even have a made hand yet I don’t mind checking this hand back some of the time, it will allow us to call any bet on the turn…
Betting here is just fine too, there is basically no bad way to play this flop as we have unlimited equity so we are just looking to continue in some fashion…
Gin Turn!
The 5 of Diamonds rolls off vs our aggressive opponent and they check it over to us… We need to get some money in this pot with the second nuts, so we just minimum bet for 20 chips into 40 and our opponent goes for a big check-raise! Making it 120 chips to play, Great news for us.
We decide to slow play our hand here and just turn, the reason being our opponent is polarised in this spot, meaning they either have a huge hand or a bluff and they will either bet for value on the river or look to continue to bluff, so we don’t want to chase away our action by raising…
They pull the trigger!
The river is a blank with the 8 of Clubs hitting and our opponent moves all in for a big overbet to the pot with our effective stack of 478 chips on the line, only one hand beats us which is the King high flush and we beat all over two pairs, flushes, straights and three of kinds that our opponent could have for value, so we make the easy call…
Airball!
Our opponent tables the 46s for Six high, they just went for a complete bluff with the check-raise on the turn and overbet all in on the river, a strange line by them but tough to play against with anything other than a hand like ours…
Hand #6
We are now heads up with effective stacks at sub 10bbs, with our opponent having just 8.5bbs with 249 chips with blinds at 15/30
So it’s time to know our short stack shoving ranges, here we have the Nash game theory optimal shoving and calling charts for your reference, you will want to know these inside out for playing these short stack games…
As you can see from the ranges the darker colours in the charts are the suited combinations, we are dealt T5s which is a profitable all in with 11.9bbs, so with 8.5bbs effective, we would shove this hand all in as well as hands as bad as J2s, J7o, Q4o etc… This is a big leak in peoples heads up game, so be sure to be shoving and calling with the correct ranges and make sure to slightly change these if your opponent is too tight or too loose
Try and think of these charts as a starting guide as to what is correct for short stack play and build on them with other information from the type of player you are up against.
So we move all in with T5s, but our opponent folds.
Hand #7
Our opponent moves all in for 219 chips or around 7.5bbs and we have an easy call with 55, we could call here with hands as weak as T7s+ and Q6o+ so any pair is an easy call… We flop a 5 with our opponent needing to hit runner, runner perfect cards to beat our flopped set we manage to seal the win with this one.
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