Spin&Goes - from Beginner to Winner - a course with Collin Moshman

Looking forward to it - yeah!

AMAZING!!!!

Thank you very much Master Moshman ...

There aren't words to describe better the great feel of joy for this, appreciation doesn't describe properly the value you add to the community; Thanks Sir

Awesome!

increibleeeeeee

Best way to learn, from Master!!

Thanks guys, week 1 was a lot of fun and great to see all of you there.

Course: Spin & Go Beginner Strategy

In this lesson you will learn:

• How to correctly utilise our Spin & Go beginner strategy
• Characteristics of a strong player
• Bankroll management

Three vital skills for a poker player: game plan, hand reading, adjustment to opponents

Basically, a strong poker player only has to do three things well. First of all, he needs a solid fundamental strategy, called "game plan" in technical jargon. Your game plan serves two purposes: on the one hand, it specifies how to play profitably even when you don't yet have any information on your opponent. On the other hand, it also serves as your foundation for adjustments to special conditions.

"Hand reading" has nothing to do with life lines on your palms. Instead, it refers to the ability to recognise patterns in the game of your opponent, enabling you to make better assumptions about their current hand.

Once you've found these patterns in your opponent's play, it's time to adjust your game plan accordingly in order to profit from the information you've gathered with hand reading.

This course will teach you the relevant basics for these three skills.

The Spin & Go beginner strategy is your first game plan

The Spin & Go beginner strategy offers advice for every situation in which you'll have to make a decision. In this course, your game plan will be cultivated and made more profitable. Still, it's recommended that you initially start out by playing 30 Spin & Goes with the normal beginner strategy. This will provide you with a better feeling for the game and you'll get used to detecting the relevant factors at a poker table.

Here's the article which you can always use to read up on certain details:

And here's the corresponding video:

You're playing the beginner strategy with a 3x $30 bankroll management

The best player will not always prevail against his opponents in Spin & Goes. There are two luck factors that can lead to weaker players winning more frequently during a short time frame. First and foremost, there's always card luck. If your opponent gets a lot of strong hands at critical stages while also hitting better on the flop, turn and river, he'll ultimately win that tournament. Naturally, runs like that will be balanced out in the long term; however, in the short term, you need to be able to deal with losing streaks.

We recommend that you start your Spin & Go career with a bankroll of $30. You can consider yourself "established" once you've reached a bankroll of $150. Once you have that much money or even more in your account, you can start playing Spin & Goes with a buy-in of $3. However, if your bankroll goes below $150 again, you have to switch back to Spin & Goes with $1 buy-ins.

If you lose your initial $30, you can deposit another $30 two more times. But that's definitely the maximum. If you don't manage to break through with that investment, chances are high that this can't be explained only with bad luck.

Good luck!

Charts are also available as PDF & JPEG:

as Picture:

as PDF: Download

I've got a simple maths question - I think I know the answer, but am not sure.....

If I'm playing spins with 500 starting stacks and 7% rake - what chip ev indicates break even? Is it as straightforward as 7% of the starting stack (so, in this case, 35 chips)?

Going further - at what sample size can I start to think about my chip ev as being reasonably likely to be indicative of my ROI? I'm not talking about being statistically significantly, just to have a small degree of confidence that it is likely to indicate my approximate ROI....

A $3 spin I played earlier - I'm sure I could have played it better, but not sure exactly how.....

The hand I'm interested in is the second hand of the tournament - for context, here is the first hand....

Having seen both players get involved in the first hand, I think there's a chance that they are both weak players and will be getting involved in many hands with weak holdings.
When I am dealt JJ in the second hand, I am happy to get it all in pre flop and want both players involved in the hand.....
However I try to be a bit cleverer ..... I set my raise low enough that if the short stack shoves on me, then the betting is reopened and I can get the big stack to come along if he has called and I then shove after shortie has reraised all in.....

It all went to plan until shortie called instead of shoving (I should maybe have given that possibility more credence given his relative passivity in the first hand - though he did min reraise pre flop....).

A horrible flop with two overcards, 2 opponents and enough chips left in my stack to worry about...... I check/fold and give up on the hand....

So two questions:
1) Did I outsmart myself preflop - should I have just shoved all the chips in? I could be confident that shortie should come along, and I should take what equity I can from the hand?
2) Given the way it played, could I have done anything else post flop? Should I have tried to be stronger, or was I right to give up on the hand?

I don't mind losing the hand - that's poker ... I am concerned that I lost so many chips without realising the equity I had in the hand and feel I could have done better....

Originally posted by 8runo
I've got a simple maths question - I think I know the answer, but am not sure.....

If I'm playing spins with 500 starting stacks and 7% rake - what chip ev indicates break even? Is it as straightforward as 7% of the starting stack (so, in this case, 35 chips)?

In order to break even, you need to win BuyIn/(average prize pool in Buy Ins). The average prize pool is 3x0,93$, so 2,79$.
Hence, you need to win 1:2.79, which is 35.8%
35.8% of 1.500 chips in play means you need to win on average 37.6 chips per tournament.

Going further - at what sample size can I start to think about my chip ev as being reasonably likely to be indicative of my ROI? I'm not talking about being statistically significantly, just to have a small degree of confidence that it is likely to indicate my approximate ROI....

This is very hard to answer accurately.
Please make yourself a picture here in our German forum, posted by my colleague KTU who developed this course. All that matters are the graphs, which are all calculated with 37% won Spin&Go, so being a winning player.
The first two graphs are over 1 Million Spin&Go with the same winrate - and still have a difference of 10.000 BI won! The following ones go more in detail: over 6.000 Spin&Go there are huge swings possible.
In the end this is heavily influenced by your luck in hitting the multipliers - unfortunately these graphs do not look at the win ratio or Chip-EV, but at money won (so your EV adjusted by your luck in winning bigger prizes)
Win simulations (it is for twisters, but calculation is the same)
I hope that helps a little bit...

Very nice answer by Sven.

Remember that every chip has the same value in a spin, which is 0.186 cents in a $1 with 7% rake.

For the second part of your question, that is difficult to answer, but you may want to check out simulators like the Poker Dope Tournament Variance Calculator which can calculate confidence intervals for your results based on assumed ROI (which is the same as average chips won per game because of constant chip value) and sample size. A very very rough answer for having a small degree of confidence might be around 500 games.

In terms of the JJ hand, don't worry you played it fine. Be careful about being too results-oriented. Taking that thinking to an extreme, you could consider it a mistake anytime you didn't just openshove AA preflop because an opponent calls and ends up sucking out. The best approach with strong hands versus loose-passive opponents is often not to just shut them out of the pot with a large enough raise preflop, but instead give them every possible opportunity to make a significant mistake, even if sometimes that means they get there against you or you're forced into folding. (Of course, in this week's beginner strategy we play only shove or fold preflop, which as a starting point works well but will be improved upon in future weeks.)

Good luck!

Course: Spin & Go Beginner Strategy – Post-flop play

Now you will learn how to play on the flop with an effective stack size (see Strategy article on Spin & Gos) of more than 10 big blinds instead of simply going all-in all the time.

In this lesson we will discuss the most important post-flop plays. The next lesson will then show you how to adapt your play before the flop.

Step 1: Determining the pre-flop aggressor and your hand strength

The pre-flop aggressor is the player who raised last before the flop. You can determine him by recalling the pre-flop action and checking which player raised last before the flop was dealt.

Examples:

The strength of your hand is determined by allocating it to one of three categories:

1) You have a made hand when your hand is a top-pair or better.
K♥:T♥: on K♠:3♦:4♣: - Top-pair/Made hand
5♦:6♦: on K♦:2♦:9♦: - Flush/Made hand
9♣:9♦: on 3♣:3♠:7♣: - Over-pair/Made hand

2) You have a strong draw when you're holding an OESD or flush draw.
• Flush draw: Four cards of the same suit, i.e. only one card of that suit is missing for a flush
• OESD (open-ended straight draw): Four connected cards in rank, i.e. only one card of the next lowest/highest rank is missing for a straight
A♥:2♥: on 4♥:Q♥:T♠: - Flush draw/Strong draw
8♦:9♦: on T♠:7♥:2♣: - OESD/Strong draw

3) Any other hands are called trash hands.
5♦:5♣: on K♦:Q♣:J♠:
A♠:7♣: on K♠:K♣:9♦:

Step 2: Determining how to play your hand

First of all, you have to ascertain whether you are the pre-flop aggressor or not.

As the pre-flop aggressor...
...you've raised last before the flop, thereby representing a strong hand. Therefore, you're playing another bet on the flop, even with trash hands. This play is called a continuation bet and you're always betting half the pot with it.

If a player bets before it's your turn, move all-in with strong draws and made hands, while folding any trash hand.

If a player calls your continuation bet, bet again half the pot on the turn with strong draws and made hands. If your opponent also calls your bet on the turn, only move all-in on the river with made hands.

As the pre-flop caller...
If your opponent confronts you with a continuation bet, raise his bet by a factor of 2.5 with strong draws and made hands and move all-in as soon as you get the opportunity.

If your opponent doesn't play a continuation bet, take the initiative and bet 2/3 of the pot on the turn with any hand.

Thanks for the coaching and especially for laying the 'postflop strategy' out in the written form so that I could navigate it quick [I wasn't able to tell that in the chat as I got disconnected near the end and the join button was already gone then.]

Hopefully you're able to bring it all together in the next episode - it's a major educational leak on Pokerstrategy's side that you've been told to present a more advanced postflop strategy before being able to explain what to do preflop ourselves instead of push/folding. After all, those who want to follow the strategy will want to grind this week and will have to roll back to push/fold because otherwise they'd get stuck halfway.

An example of a properly incrementally upgraded strategy (imo) would be:

Lesson 1 - Push/fold
Lesson 2 - Default play in position, both preflop and postflop (users can combine advanced play IP with p/f OOP, it's not that terrible)
Lesson 3 - Default play out of position, both preflop and postflop
Lesson 4 - Adjusting to opponents
Lesson 5 - Live play & final tips

(I understand the urge to put live play earlier, but I imagine how bad you'll feel in 2 weeks when you'll have to forget your usual style and play without opponent profiling.)

Oh, and again, HU Nash p/f charts aren't that difficult to use, could be included from the very beginning.

He Tony,

we decided on purpose to go from postflop to preflop.
Reasons:
- we want to deter (real) beginners to simply take our preflop strategy and try it on their own - being lost postflop. Of course this does not apply to players who simply change gametypes.
- we did not want to do IP/OOP because our postflop strategy is based on made hand(or OESD/FD) vs the rest, not minding the position. Also, this would give a strange distribution preflop, where we care about BU and BB (but only vs SB), while OOP would mean SB and BB if vs BU.

Please judge again after next lesson, I personally like the third one most because of our nice charts there that make it easy for everyone!

CU,SvenBe - anyways thx for tuning in!

Also, the advice to try thrice to spin $30 up instead of bringing the full $90 looks very fishy. The thing is that, if the user succeeds on the first try, s/he will turn the total BR $90 into $90 + (150-30) = $210; if on the second try, then to just $(90-30) + (150-30) = $180; and $90 -> $150 if s/he succeeds on the third try. This is rather inconsistent.

A plan that I'd prefer:

Start with $90
If up to $180 -> move up to $3s
If down to $60 -> stop and reassess your game (review hands in the HM2 / PT4 / ICMIZER2 trial or w/e)
If down to $30 after restarting -> stop again and leakfind very seriously
If down to $0 -> gl next time if you fail to find a more satisfying job than a card game

Originally posted by SvenBe

- we did not want to do IP/OOP because our postflop strategy is based on made hand(or OESD/FD) vs the rest, not minding the position.

That alone is a rather big hit on the ROI. There have to be two separate hand strength categorisations for IP and OOP.

Originally posted by SvenBe
Also, this would give a strange distribution preflop, where we care about BU and BB (but only vs SB), while OOP would mean SB and BB if vs BU.

That would be still understandable given the importance of position. At least that's how I was learning PLO. And as I said, the push/fold from the first lesson can still be used quite successfully in the OOP cases (SB first in, plus play vs BU), exactly because postflop play OOP is harder and doesn't give as much improvement over restealing ROI-wise as does postflop play IP over push/fold IP.

Originally posted by SvenBe
Please judge again after next lesson, I personally like the third one most because of our nice charts there that make it easy for everyone!

I would adore a bunch of charts that would allow me to 9-12-table €5 Twister so effortlessly (multitabling does require a simplified decision-making process), but then I need to be sure that the charts are not very exploitable, which is not going to be the case because you're aiming at exploiting the population tendencies of specifically the $1s. So I'll still have to go back to the drawing board myself.

Thanks for your explanation, though.

Originally posted by tonypmm
I would adore a bunch of charts that would allow me to 9-12-table €5 Twister so effortlessly (multitabling does require a simplified decision-making process)

Thanks for your comments in this thread and during the coachings Tony, you have a very analytical perspective that gets people thinking.

In terms of the quoted comment, IMO it would be very difficult to come up with a purely mechanical system to play spins at a high level. There are so many different possible situations that can come up, particularly postflop, that the strategy would have an enormous number of rules and be impractical to use when multi-tabling. And even if it were possible, the games would instantly be much tougher through the release of the strategy, with botters also having a ready template.

The Beginner Strategy is a series of lessons that build on each other and give newer players a good way to build up their game and get experience before moving on to a more advanced strategy.

Wooohoooo ... I was having the day off today, being the end of the month and having already got my Pokerstrategy Points (Ipoker) and silverstar (Pokerstars) - but I couldn't resist and just opened up my first spin of the day - hit my biggest spin - 25x (@ $5) and took it down .....

Self congratualtion aside - the serious point is that it really shows the extreme of variance that the spins add...
- prior to this single spin, I had played 467 Spins (varying stakes from $0.50 to $7) so far this month, for a chip ev of 35,682, but an EV profit of just $27.97 (I ran a bit good on the tables, so actual profit was $75)
- Now after one Spin, my results are 468 Spins for an EV profit of $147.97

My average EV profit per spin has increased from $0.06 per game to $0.32 per game.

Thinking about it, I suppose its not as bad as MTTs (but I dont play MTTs ... so I'm not used to that kind of variance)

I feel like I'm profitable up to $5 spins (knowing I have no evidence from my history due to sample size) - but as soon as I hit the $7 games, I'm clearly out of my depth, and I'm finding a HUGE difference between the $7 and $5 spins .... I really hope that after the beginners course is finished, there will be something that can get me over the line in the $7 games (unless the beginners course will go that far?).....