This is a follow up Spin & Go lesson designed to offer you practical tips and broad generalities that you can apply immediately to improve your game. We recommend checking out the previous nine lessons before watching this video. After that, you’ll be ready to jump straight into Spin & Gos.

Playing Postflop in Position – Practical Tips

The following are general tips that apply when you are postflop in position, such as when playing from the button or big blind versus small blind. Of course, poker is incredibly nuanced, but in most situations you can apply the following directly to your game:

• Attack flops in limped pots aggressively when in position, especially when you are heads-up. A standard bet sizing of 1bb is enough to get bluffs through and to start to build the pot with value hands.
• Attack single raise pots aggressively in position, such as when you raise the button and the big blind defends. With more dead money in the pot, you are highly incentivised to c-bet, for example.
• Use pot control and check to showdown more frequently as stack sizes get shorter, especially on wet boards. This is to prevent awkward situations in which you’re put to the test when opponents check-raise draws or turn their hands into bluffs.
• Use ¼ pot bets in single raise pots on dry flops. Use ½ pot bets in single raise pots on wet flops. Use bets of around 3/5 (60 percent) of the pot on the turn. These bet sizes will get you consistent enough folds when you are bluffing and value from your hands.
• Attack scare cards aggressively on the turn. Scare cards are those that favour your range and make it less likely your opponent can call a bet.

Playing Postflop Out of Position – Practical Tips

Playing out of position is a more difficult endeavour, as your opponent will have the advantage postflop when it comes to information, as well as control over the action. Still, given that ranges in three-handed Spin & Gos are so wide, you’ll want to defend with a lot of hands postflop, as well as looking for opportunities to check-raise. Here are some postflop out of position tips to follow:

• Defend any draw in a limped or single raised pot. This can include backdoor draws, as they still have some equity to improve and can be turned into bluffs on later streets.
• Defend any pair in a limped pot or to a single raise. A paired hand is easily good enough to call a flop c-bet with and even weak pairs will often be ahead given that your opponent should be betting very wide.
• Defend Ax, Kx and even Qx on a paired board, for example a T-T-2 board, as your opponent should be bluffing very often. You are ahead of their bluffs and can still catch up against small pairs by hitting one of your cards.
• Check-raise two pair plus on wet boards, as well as strong top pair hands and weak draws that have less showdown value that you can turn into bluffs. As stacks get shallower, you don’t need to check-raise for value as often because it’ll become easier to stack off without doing so.
• Lead with draws and made hands on the turn versus a missed flop bet. Use a sizing of ¾ to full pot for the most effective balance between getting bluffs through and getting paid for value hands.
• By careful not to check-raise or lead the turn too often on boards that heavily favour your in-position opponents raise, particularly dry Ax and Kx boards. It’s more likely that your opponent has caught a strong hand.
• All of the postflop out of position tips are bet sizing sensitive and are based on your opponent making reasonable size bets given the situation. They may not apply to ridiculous or bigger sizings. For example, if your opponent bets pot then you won’t be able to call with all of your draws.

Postflop Practical Gameplay

If you want to see practical gameplay from a PokerStars Team Pro player, watch the Spin & Go lesson video now for over 40-minutes of practical examples from real games. This will serve as an excellent session to solidify what you’ve already learnt so far so that you can put into practice your preflop ranges and postflop method.

We hope that you’ve found these Spin & Go lessons to be enlightening and useful both as a guide to the format itself and more generally for your poker strategy across all games.

Why Play Spin & Gos?

Spin & Gos are sometimes looked down upon as a trivial, recreational game. Although it’s true that they attract a broadly recreational player base and have a built-in lotto element, Spin & Gos are still very much a winnable format. There’s an opportunity there to become a profitable player if you can master the fundamentals of short-handed, short-stacked strategy.

Even better, Spin & Go strategy can be applied directly to other poker formats, especially tournaments. The button, small blind and big blind are all positions that are well worth learning how to play. Likewise, 10 – 25 big blind stack scenarios are common in tournaments and crucial to know how to play.

Learning the contents of this Spin & Go course will set you up not only to become a great Spin player, but also a competent tournament player who is armed with knowledge of preflop ranges and postflop methodology that will result in a winning strategy.

You can find Spin & Gos on the PokerStars client. Buy-ins start from $0.50 and run all the way up to $1,000. Multipliers generally run from 2x to 10,000 the buy-in. Be sure to use responsible bankroll management and watch our Spin & Go lessons to give yourself the best chance of coming out on top.