16 Mar 2024 mental game exploit GTO Today we will discuss 5 pillars that we consider as imperative for progressing in Spin&Go. Some concepts are purely technical, such as ranges and exploitative adjustments, while others are more subtle, like room-selecting and the rakeback they offer. Let's go! 1. Pre-flop Range Charts Pre-flop charts help you to be precise in the game when selecting hands you want to play. It is crucial because we encounter the pre-flop stage in every hand, and it significantly impacts our overall strategy throughout the game tree. The ranges we use vary depending on several factors: Our position Effective stack size Previous actions Potential adjustments based on our opponents' tendencies GTO ranges are unexploitable by opponents, but they often require simplification to be practically applicable. We can use them as a starting point and adjust them to exploit our opponents' weaknesses and imbalances effectively. Preflop Range is the foundation of your entire strategy 2. Bankroll Management and Room Selection Proper Bankroll Management (BRM) is another essential pillar of professional poker that you want to engage in. Without proper BRM, there's a risk of losing the entire bankroll and going broke. Since poker rooms don't offer loans, it's necessary to play with the money that you can afford to lose. How many buy-ins are required? It's crucial never to play the entire bankroll in one game. The number of buy-ins required depends on several factors, such as the variance associated with the format being played, distribution of jackpots, your skill level expressed in chip-EV, rakeback, and how often it is paid out. Therefore it's challenging to provide an exact estimation of the number of buy-ins needed. For the Spin&GO format, we recommend having at least 300 buy-ins of your current stakes. Let's consider an example: I have $500 in my bankroll and estimating my average chip-EV (CEV) at 25. So at $10 Spins I have 50 buy-ins of the limit. Now, let's simulate 10,000 games using SwongSim and see what we get. I'll have positive pre-rakeback results only 50% of the time, and I'll have roughly an equal chance of going completely broke before 10,000 games. Of course, I need to consider rakeback. It's 25% (excluding races and occasional promotions). With this rakeback, I'll be positive 80% of the time, but I still have ~20% chance of losing the entire bankroll in the first month if I start with only a 50 buy-ins. How to select a poker room? Rooms don't necessarily offer exactly the same formats of Spins and % rakeback, so choose the one you prefer. It's also essential to consider promotional offers, particularly in formats where they are heavily relied upon. Rules differ across poker rooms. Some permit the use of trackers, while others do not. Similarly, some rooms allow players to use range charts, while others do not. Depending on the room, players may have varying levels of anonymity. For instance, some rooms require a permanent username, while others allow users to change it daily. Jackpot distributions can also vary significantly. Generally, to maintain an effective rake closest to the theoretical rake, it's advisable to prioritize rooms with lower jackpots and a lower frequency of 2x multipliers. The distribution of jackpots will directly impact our bankroll management strategy. Room traffic, both in terms of the quantity of players and their skill level, should also be carefully considered. Ideally, the best room would offer a large player pool for high traffic and include a significant number of less skilled players. Additionally, the room interface is crucial for ergonomic reasons, including factors like visual quality, absence of bugs, availability of hot keys, etc. 3. Volume and Rakeback Spins is format where volume is crucial. To earn big money, you will need to be able to play a significant number of games. Total winnings will be determined by the amount of rakeback received and consequently by the rake and volume generated. The more you play, the more you mitigate variance. Indeed, the variance is very important factor to condider, since the shallow stacks reduce the edge between the players. And in addition to the variance of the game, we also experience variance reletaed to multipliers we come across. So we have to play a lot of games to mitigate the all type of variance. This is simply the law of large numbers that states that as a sample size grows the closer it gets to the expected value. If we revisit the previous example in SwongSim simulation (25 CEV and 25% RB) but extend the simulations to 100,000 games — a volume achievable in a year — then we notice that we become positive in all possible outcomes. Loyalty Status Rakeback offers vary among rooms but generally, the more rake you generate, the higher percentage of rakeback you get. From middle stakes onwards, it's often difficult to be a winning player without rakeback. Spin grinders heavily rely on rakeback as significant part of their income in poker. It's quite obvious that a player who plays more than another will earn more money due to their higher volume, resulting in a better loyalty status and therefore more rakeback. Offers should be monitored regularly because they are constantly evolving. 4. Know Your Opponents and Adapt The Spin format involves playing a big volume. You will encounter many regulars of different skill levels depending on the room. To maximize EV it's essential to adjust to your opponents in order to exploit their weaknesses. To identify a weakness you must first know the theoretical play (GTO) to understand how an opponent deviates from optimal strategy and comprehend the adaptations needed. Through observing the tables and analyzing the statistics collected by the tracker, we can identify deviations and determine the necessary adjustments. In less crowded rooms, you will encounter more regulars. You might even find yourself playing against the same opponent across all your tables for several consecutive hours. That's why learning to adapt to each unique player is essential there. On the other hand, in a larger room, it's more advantageous to prioritize adapting to entire player pools or specific types of players. Devoting too much time to adjusting your strategy for a single player, whom you may encounter in only 5% of your games, could be not effective and not necessarily the most optimal approach. The most crucial adjustments to make are preflop ones, as preflop is the street played in every hand and arguably the most obvious to master. The simplest way to learn GTO is to study gameplay using solvers, such as GTO Wizard. To adapt optimally, we must observe how opponents' strategies deviate from GTO and adjust our own accordingly. And for optimal adjustments, we especially recommend learning to use the nodelock feature. 5. Discipline and Mental The mental aspect is another underestimated pillar in Spin format and should not be neglected. It's essential to avoid tilt at all costs, as it can lead to substantial losses in a short period. Developing mental robustness in poker enables you to consistently bring your A-game to the table. Your A-game represents your optimal performance, based primarily on your skill level, but above all, on making the best decisions possible. Fatigue, stress, lack of sleep, lifestyle — all these factors can significantly impact your performance in poker. Addressing these factors requires substantial effort, as there are always parameters to improve upon. The mental game is an important aspect for long-term winning play, especially at the highest limits. Now when you have all the keys to be a winner in Spins, we can only advise you to join our GetCoach team to progress even faster and be accompanied by professionals in the format. Source: spinelite.fr