Adjusting to recreational players in Spin & Go: the six profiles and what they change

Reference ranges are built against an equilibrium opponent. A Spin & Go almost never contains one. Against a player who shoves every other hand, completes every small blind or never lets go of a pair, the chart is still a good starting point, but it leaves chips on the table.

The hard part is not knowing what to do against a recreational player: it is recognising him in time. A spin lasts a dozen hands in median, and the same screen name rarely comes back from one game to the next. Everything happens inside the spin, with what the opponent has shown since the first hand.

A short window that opens late

Over 3,000 analysed spins, an opponent takes ten preflop decisions and seven postflop actions in median. It takes six to eight decisions for a tendency to rise above noise: a player who limped five times out of six may just have been dealt five mediocre hands. The profile is only reliable from the second third of the spin, and the window to exploit it is the last one.

Two rules follow. Never judge a decision with what you learned afterwards: when it is your turn, only the previous hands count. And only leave the chart when the gap is clear; an absolute threshold means nothing. A player at 6 BB who shoves 90% of his hands plays correctly: the reference is what the solver does at the same depth, and a marked profile is 20 to 25 points away from it.

The shover: he goes all-in far more than the reference

The reflex is to call wider, and it is right most of the time: the wider his shoving range, the weaker it is. But watch which way it widens. The solver does not shove its premiums at 9 or 10 BB, it min-raises or limps them; its shoving range is made of small aces, small pairs and connectors. A shover who goes all-in with 40% of his hands puts his pairs and broadways in there too.

Against him, the call-off range widens towards hands that hold up against a wide range: aces, kings, pairs. It does not widen towards connectors and small suited cards, which earned their place against a polarised range and lose it against a linear one.

The limper: he completes most of his hands

The most common profile at low stakes, and the simplest to exploit. A player who limps 70 or 80% of his small blinds limps hands he will not defend against a shove. The iso-shove widens, often a lot: at 9 BB the reference goes all-in with 19% of hands facing a limp, the answer to a wide limper climbs past 30%.

The flip side is postflop: when he calls, he calls with the top of a wide range, so slightly stronger than the reference assumes. Marginal iso-shoves with hands that have no showdown value (72o, 83o) stay folds or checks.

The maniac: he raises and bets almost everything

He min-raises most of his opens and bets on almost every street. Preflop, the answer is the re-jam: his min-raising range is too wide to call a shove often, and every fold earns two and a half blinds. The re-jamming hands widen towards anything with equity against a wide range: weak aces, kings, medium pairs.

Postflop the rule is the opposite of the one you apply to the pool: a made pair facing a single bet is a call, not a fold, because his bet means nothing. What does not change: you do not bluff a player who bets without looking at his cards, you let him bet into your made hands.

The station: he calls and never folds

Against a player who never lets go of a bet, every bluff is a chip thrown away. The air c-bet on a dry board, correct against the pool because the pool folds two times out of three, becomes a dead loss. Conversely, every made hand must bet, and bet thinner than usual: a medium pair on the flop, an ace without a kicker on a safe board, are value hands against someone who calls with less.

Preflop, the station shows in his calls of raises without ever re-raising. Shoves to steal his blinds lose their appeal; value shoves, with hands that dominate his calling range, gain some.

The nit: he folds far too much to raises

The most profitable profile at short stacks, and the most discreet, because he does nothing spectacular: he folds. A player who gives up 70 or 80% of his hands to a raise gives his blinds away. At 4 or 5 BB in the small blind, hands the reference folds (54o, 72s) become profitable shoves: he folds often enough for the uncontested pot to pay for the times he calls.

The trap is that a nit who calls has a hand. When he goes all-in or calls a shove, do not expect to see 86 suited. Widen your own shoves against him, yes; widen your calls against his rare aggression, no.

The passive: he never bets or raises after the flop

Against a player who checks everything he does not call, the flop belongs to whoever bets. The c-bet extends to the whole range, dry or wet, and so does the second barrel: he gives up most of the time, and when he does not let go, he just told you he hit. His checks are free information: a passive who suddenly bets has a hand.