Spins or lottery SnGs have become the most successful poker format introduced in last years. Its distinctive structure attracts waves of recreational players looking for winning a big prize with a low investment, and the regular players moved from hyper-turbo SnG to spins because the profitability increased in the last one.

Three online poker rooms with Spins for regular players

Today we'd like to share our thoughts about the best poker rooms for playing Spins in 2019, considering key criteria for regular players: good traffic, high rakeback, and HUD support. According to the first three parameters, we recommend the following networks:

How to Play SPINS Sit & Go Poker. SPINS is the name of partypoker’s exciting Sit & Go Jackpot game, where players can win huge cash prizes from a relatively low buy-in. They are fast, fun and easy to play, with buy-ins available for players of all levels, ranging from $0.25 up to $250. Joining BPC basically made me go from being a loser on NL2 to currently being a 4bb/100 winner on NL25. It teaches discipline and work ethic. This community is probably the best in the world. It really makes no sense to pursue poker without the help of a professional coaching team such as BPC's. Spin & Go’s are the fastest way to become a play money billionaire. Each tournament has a randomly assigned prize pool, and you could win billions of chips in minutes.It’s the exciting poker format where the action is fast, and the prize pools can be huge!

  • partypoker — SnG Jackpots;
  • iPoker (Betfair Poker) — Twister;
  • Winning (PokerKing) — Jackpots.

As the traffic in Spins for certain room is unknown, we took the total traffic of the room. If the Spins traffic is not good enough at the beginning, players can always play at several rooms, especially because of the blind structure which is the same in all Spin formats.

PokerStars was not the first site to introduce Spin and Go games since it did that as soon as they were launched elsewhere by Winamax. They noticed that this poker concept works really well. PokerStars went all in with Spin and Go format and made it very popular. A Sit and Go an on-demand poker tournament that begins as soon as the seats are filled. It’s usually a single table of 2, 6, or 9 players, although more popular poker sites can fill multi-table Sit and Go’s. Every player starts off with the same amount of starting chips. Aside from Turbo variations blinds are increased every 8-10 minutes.

  • SnG Jackpots — nine stakes from $0,25 up to $250;
  • Twister — seven stakes from €1 up to €100;
  • Jackpots — four stakes from $2 up to $40.

Right now, only partypoker can provide enough traffic for regularly playing Spins, and not at all stakes. For regular Spins players (from $50), playing at several rooms is a 'must'.

Rake and rakeback in the best poker rooms for Spins

Rake and rakeback must be discussed together when we talk about Spins. The easiest ones are iPoker Twisters: the rake is 7% at all stakes and Betfair's players (network's best skin) get a fixed rakeback of 35% of the real rake paid. Therefore, rakeback equals 2,45% of the rake of each tournament played.

On partypoker and Winning Poker Network (PokerKing) the rakeback is different according to the stake as the rake varies at each one, so it's not that easy to determine a fixed rakeback percentage per tournament.

If you play the highest stake available on partypoker ($250 spins), which has a rake of 4% and considering the maximum rakeback from the room VIP system (excluding our private deal) of 40%, 1,6% of the rake paid in each tournament will return. The real commission will be 2,4% against 4,55% in Betfair, but we must say that achieving the top-level of the partypoker VIP system requires playing massively and not everyone plays that much.

It's possible to conclude that in terms of rake and rakeback if you play Spins of $10 buy-in and above, it's more profitable to play Spins at partypoker: the rake is 5%-6% and you can get 35%+ rakeback. But, if you play at lower stakes (with a rake of 8%), it's more profitable to play at iPoker. Of course, we are just talking about numbers and additional factors such as traffic (which is better at partypoker) must be considered.

About Winning Poker, all spins have a rake of 6% and the rakeback ranges from 10% up to 40% (plus payments from the weekly rake race). The conclusion made before applies here too: if you can get the maximum rakeback, it's better to grind Spins at Winning compared to iPoker. Otherwise, it's more profitable to play at Betfair Poker. Also, in this room, a special rake race is held only for Spin players, but only the TOP-5 get a prize.

Best online poker rooms for playing Spins without HUD support

If you want to play Spins without HUD support (which of course means more recreational players at the tables), two more rooms need to be considered: Microgaming Network (RedKings) and Pokerdom:

The rake structure is as follows:

  • Fish Party (RedKings) — 5,85%
  • Pokerdom — 7% (including deductions to the total jackpot)

RedKings offers only five stakes of Spins, which is a plus compared to other rooms with 9 or more levels which leads to traffic erosion.

In terms of rake and rakeback, Pokerdom will be the best choice because the maximum rakeback of the room is 50%, but it's difficult to get it as $2,400 in weekly rake are needed. Regarding RedKings, the top deal is 30% which needs about $600 in rake per week.

The good news is that Worldpokerdeals players will receive the top rakeback deal (50%) at Pokerdom during the first weeks after the registration, so during this period the cashback will be higher.

Multipliers in the best online poker rooms for Spins

Party Poker

MultiplierProbabilitiesPrizes
Buy-inx2x4x6x10x25x120x240x12,000
$0,25734,388 ($0,50)184,506 ($1)75,000 ($1,5)5,000 ($2,5)1,000 ($6,25)75 ($25)30 ($51)1 ($2,550)
$1734,388 ($2)184,506 ($4)75,000 ($6)5,000 ($10)1,000 ($25)75 ($100)30 ($204)1 ($10,200)
$3734,388 ($6)184,506 ($12)75,000 ($18)5,000 ($30)1,000 ($75)75 ($306)30 ($612)1 ($30,600)
$5734,388 ($10184,506 ($20)75,000 ($30)5,000 ($50)1,000 ($125)75 ($510)30 ($1,020)1 ($51,000)
$10704,388 ($20)214,506 ($40)75,000 ($60)5,000 ($100)1,000 ($250)75 ($1.020)30 ($2,040)1 ($102,000)
$20704,388 ($40)214,506 ($80)75,000 ($120)5,000 ($200)1,000 ($500)75 ($2.040)30 ($4,080)1 ($204,000)
$50689,388 ($100)229,506 ($200)75,000 ($300)5,000 ($500)1,000 ($1,250)75 ($5,000)30 ($10,000)1 ($500,000)
$100689,388 ($200)229,506 ($400)75,000 ($600)5,000 ($1,000)1,000 ($2,500)75 ($10,200)30 ($20,400)1 ($1,020,000)
$250687,238 ($500)226.631 ($1,000)75,000 ($1,500)10,000 ($2,500)1,000 ($6,250)100 ($25,500)30 ($51,000)1 ($1,020,000)

Betfair Poker

MultiplierProbabilitiesPrizes
Buy-inx2x3x4x5x10x100x1,000
€ 157,185 (€2)25,710 (€3)15,000 (€4)1,500 (€5)500 (€10)100 (€100)5 (€1,000)
€ 257,185 (€4)25,710 (€6)15,000 (€8)1,500 (€10)500 (€20)100 (€100)5 (€2,000)
€ 557,185 (€10)25,710 (€15)15,000 (€20)1,500 (€25)500 (€50)100 (€100)5 (€5,000)
€ 1057,185 (€20)25,710 (€30)15,000 (€40)1,500 (€50)500 (€100)100 (€100)5 (€10,000)
€ 2057,185 (€40)25,710 (€60)15,000 (€80)1,500 (€100)500 (€200)100 (€100)5 (€20,000)
€ 5057,185 (€100)25,710 (€150)15,000 (€200)1,500 (€250)500 (€500)100 (€100)5 (€50,000)
€ 10057,185 (€200)25,710 (€300)15,000 (€400)1,500 (€500)500 (€1,000)100 (€100)5 (€100,000)

PokerKing

MultiplierProbabilitiesPrizes
Buy-inx2x4x6x8x20x100x200x2,500
$270,518 ($4)21,366 ($8)7,500 ($12)500 ($16)100 ($40)10 ($200)5 ($400)1 ($3,750)
$1070,518 ($20)21,366 ($40)7,500 ($60)500 ($80)100 ($200)10 ($1,000)5 ($2,000)

1 ($18,750)

$2570,518 ($50)21,366 ($100)7,500 ($150)500 ($200)100 ($500)10 ($2,500)5 ($5,000)

1 ($46,875)

$4070,518 ($80)21,366 ($160)7,500 ($240)500 ($320)100 ($800)10 ($5,000)5 ($8,000)

1 ($75,000)

RedKings

MultiplierProbabilitiesPrizes
Buy-inx2x4x6x10x25x50x100Jackpot
€ 1699,745 (€2)250,000 (€4)40,000 (€6)7,000 (€10)3,000(€25)200 €50)50 (€100)5
€ 5699,745(€10)250,000 (€20)40,000 (€30)7,000 (€50)3,000 (€125)200 (€250)50($€500)5
€ 10699,745(€20)250,000(€40)40,000 (€60)7,000 (€100)3,000 (€250)200(€500)50 (€1,000)5
€ 20699,745 (€40)250,000 (€80)40,000(€120)7,000 (€200)3,000(€500200 (€1,000)50 (€2,000)5
€ 50699,745(€100)250,000(€200)40,000 (€300)7,000 (€500)3,000(€1,250)200 (€2,500)50 (€5,000)5

Pokerdom

MultiplierProbabilitiesPrizes
Buy-inx2x4x6x10x25x100Jackpot
1071,65021,3006,500400100502 (2,5%)
2571,65021,3006,500400100502 (5%)
5071,65021,3006,500400100502 (7,5%)
10071,65021,3006,500400100502 (10%)
25071,65021,3006,500400100502 (15%)
50070,95021,4007,000500100502 (22,5%)
1,00070,95021,4007,000500100502 (30%)
2,50070,95021,4007,000500100502 (40%)
5,00070,95021,4007,000500100502 (50%)

** for Pokerdom the jackpot is common to all stakes and the players get only a fraction of it, depending on the limit

Conclusion

Despite the popularity of Spins among poker players around the globe, this format is only suitable for regular players in a limited number of sites.

The best rooms (high rakeback, HUD support, traffic) to play spins are:

  • partypoker — SnG Jackpots;
  • iPoker (Betfair Poker) — Twister;
  • Winning (Poker King) — Jackpots.

If besides rakeback, you are looking for the weakest fields to play, and you can develop your game without HUD, we would like to add two more rooms:

  • RedKings — Fish Party;
  • Pokerdom — WindFall.

Also, keep in mind that in all cases playing at several rooms is needed in order to get good rakeback and have enough traffic to play.

PokerKing
Winning Poker Network
Deposit bonus $2,000
Rakebackup to 90%
Redkings
Microgaming Poker Network
Unfortunately deal is stopped at the current moment
Pokerdom
Independent
Deposit bonus -
Rakebackup to 50%
Betfair Poker
iPoker Network
Deposit bonus €200
Rakeback35+%
partypoker
GVC Network
Deposit bonus hasta $30 en bonos
Rakebackup to 50%

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If you have ever played online poker, especially on the number one site in the world known as Pokerstars, you have probably heard of the new poker format that is sweeping the poker world called Spin and Go tournaments. This is our favorite form of Sit and Go tournament to play and, judging by its massive growth in recent years, we are not alone.

Even though they were started very recently in 2014, this type of tournament has grown to account for an estimated 20% of Pokerstars’ revenue. This is a massive weight for one poker format to pull on a site with so many different formats to choose from, especially when it is only a few years old.

As of May of 2017, there have been 16 poker players around the world who were made into millionaires in under ten minutes by winning a Spin and Go tournament. Six of these players won their prize all in the same week back in October of 2015. This just goes to show that you never know when lightning might strike multiple times!

These tournaments only have three entrants in each one, and all three players will receive 500 chips to play with. The blinds increase at a very fast pace, usually every three minutes. A tournament with this level of quickness is usually referred to as a hyper-turbo tournament. Once there is only one person left, the tournament is finished.

This format exists in many online poker rooms these days, but they sometimes have alternate names such as Jackpots on America’s Cardroom, BLAST Tournaments on 888 Poker, or Twister sit and go tournaments on Coral Poker.

Payout Structure

The general idea behind these Spin and Go tournaments is that there is a random jackpot attached to each one. You will not know what the jackpot amount is until you register for the tournament, after which the table will show you how much you are competing for.

The range of the prize pools that are created by these jackpots can be anywhere from two buy-ins up to 12,000 buy-ins. Whenever the jackpot is less than 100 times the amount of the buy-in, only first place will be rewarded with a prize. This first-place finisher will take home the full amount of the jackpot that is attached to the Spin and Go, while second-place and third-place finishers will receive absolutely nothing.

However, in the event of a Spin and Go tournament with a jackpot attached to it that has a value of at least 100 times the buy-in amount, all three entrants will be paid a prize. The second and third place finishers will receive 10% of the jackpot amount that the winner receives.

For example, if you are playing a $100 Spin and Go tournament and you hit the big jackpot of 12,000 buy-ins, this means that there are 1.2 million dollars up for grabs. In this case, first place will receive one million dollars while second and third place both receive $100,000 for their efforts.

Rake

Spin And Go Poker Sites

Just like regular sit and go tournaments, Spin and Go tournaments have a level of rake that decreases as the buy-in level increases. In the micro stakes of $3 and under, the rake is going to be 8% of the buy-in. The $7 Spin and Go level is where the rake begins to drop down to 7%. The $15 and $30 Spin and Go tournaments have a 6% rake. The final two buy-in levels of $60 and $100 charge a very reasonable 5% rake.

You might notice that these tournaments have a lower amount of rake compared to normal sit and go tournaments across the board. This is simply because of their high-variance nature, and this decrease in rake is normal for tournaments that increase blind levels at hyper-turbo speed.

However, the rake that is charged in a Spin and Go tournament is higher than the rake in plain old hyper-turbo sit and go tournament, even though they have the same structure. This is simply because the money for building the jackpots has to come somewhere, so they raised the rake a tad.

Don’t worry, this does not mean that this format is unbeatable. Spin and Go tournaments attract such a large number of recreational players compared to other sit and go tournaments that it completely offsets the increase in rake, the hyper-turbo structure, and the variance of the jackpots all at once.

Jackpot Probabilities

Spin And Go Poker Sites Real Money

One of the reasons that Spin and Go tournaments contain a high level of variance is that you never know which jackpot your tournament will get. The smallest jackpot possible, which is two buy-ins for whichever level you are playing, will occur around 70% of the time.

This means that most of the time you will battle two other people just to double your buy-in. While this is not ideal, it is a tradeoff that must be made in order to have access to such large jackpot prizes.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, one in a million of these Spin and Go tournaments will contain a prize pool of 12,000 buy-ins! This monster jackpot has been hit many times since these tournaments run millions of times per year at all buy-in levels.

As you can probably tell, there is a very wide spectrum of jackpot outcomes that can occur from day to day. This is even true from week to week or from month to month.

Spin And Go Poker Sites For Real

However, over the course of a year, you should be able to play enough tournaments to find out if you are truly a winning player in this format, no matter what jackpots you get. It is not required to hit the big 10,000 buy-in jackpot to make money in these Spin and Go tournaments.

Advantages

The reason why Spin and Go tournaments are exploding in popularity is that people are slowly realizing that there are a ton of benefits that come from playing this poker format.

The main explanation for why poker players are so attracted to Spin and Go tournaments is the speed in which they are finished. After playing thousands of these Spin and Go tournaments, we calculated the average amount of time that it takes to finish one is about nine minutes.

This lightning speed of nine minutes can be attributed to the short starting stacks combined with the two-minute blind level increases. This brings us to our next advantage to playing Spin and Go tournaments, which is that it favors players who are adept at playing with a short stack.

You will be starting the tournament with 500 chips at 10-20 blinds which works out to 25 big blinds. This is about as deep-stacked as you will get in these tournaments, which is relatively low compared to other poker tournament formats. For someone who knows profitable preflop all-in shove ranges well, these tournaments will be a blessing.

Other poker players who might prefer Spin and Go tournaments are those who do not enjoy playing postflop poker. While these tournaments do involve some play after the flop, this will generally only happen in the early stages of the tournament. Most of the hands that are played will be all-in preflop because the effective stacks will usually be too small to mathematically justify seeing a bunch of flops.

An additional reason why we love playing Spin and Go tournaments is that they offer a chance at hitting a huge score for a tiny investment in a very short amount of time. Before this thrilling poker format came along, the only way to hit a jackpot-sized score in poker for a small entry fee was to win a multi-table tournament. Multi-table tournaments are notorious for taking up to 12 hours to finish, but Spin and Go tournaments are finished in under ten minutes almost every time.

The final reason why we love Spin and Go tournaments is that the strategy for them is very simple in most situations. There will be no complicated four-betting going on in these tournaments since the chip stacks are too shallow for that to be possible, so raises and three-bets are all that you will normally see in these.

Most of the decisions made in these tournaments will be whether to go all-in preflop or not, so there will not be many triple barrel river bluffs to worry about either. We will now take a closer look at the strategy aspect of this special poker format in the next section.

Spin and Go Tournament Strategy

Bankroll Management

The first thing that you need to decide before coming up with a strategy is what stakes you are going to play. If you are completely new to this Spin and Go format, we recommend that you do not venture any higher than the 7$ buy-in level.

The $7 buy-in level is unique because it is the first level that features a decrease in rake and it is still full of recreational players. However, you should not attempt to play these tournaments unless you have at least 150 buy-ins in your poker bankroll. Therefore, if you are playing in these tournaments you should have a bankroll that is 150 times seven dollars which is $1,050.

Why do you need so many buy-ins? Some people might ask this because they think that requiring a $1,050 bankroll to play $7 tournaments is overly cautious. Well, the fact of the matter is that Spin and Go tournaments involve a ton of variance. This means that both the good luck streaks and the bad luck streaks will be even more dramatic than we are used to dealing with in other forms of poker.

ROI

The large amount of variance that is built into Spin and Go tournaments explains why even the best players have a relatively small return on their investment of 4%- 5% per tournament. If you are confused by what this means, we will now provide an example for you.

If you have a 2% return on investment or ROI, and you play 1000 of the $100 Spin and Go tournaments, you will have made $2 in each tournament. This comes out to a profit of $2,000 for every 1000 Spin and Go tournaments that you play. The best players will make double this amount over the long run for every 1000 of these tournaments that they play.

How does this return on investment match up to other forms of poker? Well, in freezeout tournaments, a player’s return on investment can reach up to 100% or higher. However, these tournaments take up to 16 hours sometimes, so the hourly rate that you will make is not always that great. The low return on investment in Spin and Go tournaments is balanced by the fact that they only take nine minutes on average and therefore you can play a ton of them per hour.

Table Management

Since the return on investment is small this means that we should play 20 tables at a time to maximize our profit, right? Well, unfortunately, things are not that simple due to the fact that it is extremely easy to start missing profitable spots once you add a third table.

Since these tournaments only have three entrants, you could theoretically be heads-up on every table after just one hand. While this scenario rarely happens, it is very common for quite a lot of these tournaments to get to the heads-up stage rather quickly.

It is extremely hard to play 20 heads-up matches at the same time, much less three of them. There are a ton of factors to consider in each hand and it is simply impossible to play optimally with this many tables.

We recommend starting out with just one table for a few days until you feel comfortable and then move to playing two tables at once. You will still be able to play a large number of games per hour due to the fact that they are finished so quickly. This will also allow you to focus on your heads-up matches without having to make a bunch of other decisions at the same time, which will give you the best chance of winning.

Tilt Control

We know you have been told many times that you need to keep your cool when you play poker. This has never been more important than in Spin and Go tournaments. The sheer number of all-in situations that you will endure in any given hour can be enough to rattle the greatest of zen masters if things are not going as planned.

Video spin poker

The best way to go about playing these tournaments is to assume you are making a small percentage of the buy-in every time you play one and not let the results in any hand bother you. The outcome of each hand is ultimately meaningless, all that matters is how well you are playing. Luck is cyclical and everyone gets to endure hot streaks and cold stretches eventually, so do not let the extreme swings of Spin and Go tournaments get to your head.

There is no guarantee that you will win if you keep a cool head. However, there is almost no chance of winning if you are in an angry mood. Poker is no game for mood swings so it is important to find a way to remain neutral during Spin and Go tournaments.

Three-Handed

Three-handed poker is a very small part of Spin and Go tournaments, but since there are only two stages so we must consider the strategy to use for both of them. The reason why this is not as important as our strategy for heads-up play is that normally the three-handed stage will only last a few hands. It is actually quite common to be heads-up after one or two hands, but occasionally you will be three-handed for 20 or 30 hands.

Considering you start the tournament with 25 big blinds, you should not just be open shoving all-in with any hand at this stage when you are on the button, except for the occasional small pocket pair. It will be more profitable to induce people to go all-in by min-raising when you have a big hand. If you have a weak hand, going all-in will only win 1.5 big blinds which is a big risk for a small increase to our stack. Therefore, we recommend doing the min-raise with any hand you choose to play from the button in this early three-handed stage.

If you are in the small blind, we do not recommend calling a bunch of raises from the button when you are out of position. You should be re-raising or folding in most of these three-handed situations.

If it happens to fold to you in the small blind, you should increase your standard raise to 2.5 times the big blind, instead of a min-raise. This will get more folds out of your opponent because they will be getting worse odds to call than they would against a min-raise, which is a good thing when you are out of position against them.

Your three-handed strategy from the big blind should be somewhat similar to the small-blind strategy where you are looking for good spots to re-raise people with your whole stack. However, you are also able to call more raises from this spot since you do not have anyone left to act behind you and you already have a full big blind in the middle. You will also be in position against the small blind, so calling or re-raising their raises with a wider range is a good idea since you will be able to see what they do after the flop comes before you act.

Heads-Up

As soon as the first person is eliminated, you will only have to go through one more person to win the jackpot prize. This means that you will need a solid heads-up strategy if you want to be a profitable player in Spin and Go tournaments.

The main difference between heads-up play and three-handed play is that you will be playing a lot more hands and therefore you will be folding a lot less often. This is especially true on the button, which is going to be the position where most of your profit will come from.

We do not recommend folding many hands from the button in heads-up play until your opponent gives you a good reason to do so. This means that you should be mixing in a steady blend of calling and min-raising with a balanced amount of strength and weakness in each action. If a hand is suited, you should certainly never be folding it from the small blind.

When you are heads-up in a Spin and Go tournament that has a huge jackpot attached to it, things will play out a little bit differently than usual. Most people will play very scared because they are not used to being heads-up for an amount of money that is so huge. You might find that you can bully other players a little more than usual in these situations, so we recommend ramping up the aggression instead of playing scared like everyone else.

The Wrap-Up

Spin and Go tournaments are fast and furious even though Vin Diesel is nowhere to be found. They are the only form of poker that allows players to hit huge jackpots in a small amount of time for the price of a small entry fee.

Even though the rake is higher than in other sit and go tournaments that also have a hyper-turbo structure, they remain a highly beatable feature of the online poker world due to their appeal to recreational players. We recommend taking these tournaments out for a spin to see how you like them, especially if you like to increase your chances of becoming a millionaire today.