Hello everybody,

a little bit more than 3 years ago where I decided to take poker seriously. During this time, I got private coaching from “bernardc” for Spin&Goes. I was a student by “bestpokercoaching”, where I had regularly 1-on-1 coaching with “bencb789” and “HealTheWorld” for MTTs and I also was a student by “BluffTheSpot” where I had group-coaching’s with “MMASherdog” for Cash-Games.

After all that coaching and studying, during the last years, I finally be ready to work on my own. I have seen all those different formats and now I must decide on which I want to focus on.

Spin&Go:

Advantage:

• A lot of recreational players getting attracted by that game.
• It is fast. Therefore, Grind is easy to plan.
• Possibility of big Jackpots.
• Only 3 short-stacked players, therefore creating a strategy is less difficult compared to 6- or 9-handed games.

Disadvantage:

• High-Rake.
• Hitting the Jackpot is very seldom.
• Small Edges.
• Rumors of not beatable.

MTTs:

Advantage:
• A lot of recreational players getting attracted by MTTs, because of the small buy-ins and big prize-pools.
• You can play it all over the world.
• Very popular format.
• Very rich in variety, therefore bigger edges are possible.

Disadvantage:
• High-Rake.
• Huge Variance.
• Very slow. It is very hard to grind and schedule the day if a MTT can easily last longer than 10h.

Cash-Game:

Advantage:
• Easy to schedule.
• Big Edges possible.
• You can play it all over the world.

Disadvantage:

• High-Rake on low stakes.
• Toughest opponents.

It was a tough decision between MTTs and Spin&Goes, but I decided to go with the Spins just because I can easily schedule my grind and creating a strategy is less time expensive.
So, I decided to google the Spins and I was surprised by how little information’s I was able to find, compared to MTT’s and Cash-Games. I liked that of course, but the most interesting thing was that there are websites that say that Spins aren’t beatable at all. I mean, we all know the forum talks if poker is still beatable and those kind of things, this is also the reason why I decided to name the blog “Is poker still beatable?”.
Anyway, I do believe it is a totally different level if even poker strategy webpages announce that Spin&Goes aren’t beatable. Here a quote:

“Due to the high amount of rake that is charged, recreational players will actually lose their money at a high rate and won't be able to sustain the combination of rake and variance at these games. Which effectively makes these games unbeatable for not only recreational players, but everyone.”
“www.cardschat.com“

And on the other side there are also staking sites like “smartspin” that are just focusing on Spin&Goes, so they do believe of course that this game is profitable.
And I definitely do believe that the Spins are profitable and even in 2019, where the rake is higher than ever and the opponents more educated than ever:

That poker is still beatable and that it is a profitable game.

To proof this, I will make a bankroll-challenge and I will play every single hand live on twitch.
The Challenge will start on Tuesday the 08.01.2019 and it will last until the 31.09.2019.
I am going to start with $50 and I will build my bankroll up to $25000.

I decided to start with a small bankroll, to show that you can even nowadays, start with low budget and grind through the stakes and make a decent amount of money. I limited the duration to 9 months and 30h per week of grinding, so I must win an average of 22$/h to reach my goal. I mentioned this because it is an average hourly rate of a normal working person in Germany. I thought it’s a nice challenge to reach this in 9 months and hopefully it is also interesting for you.

Twitch Link:

https://www.twitch.tv/thepokerdudes

Twitch-Schedule (CET):

Mo: 19-21 o'clock & 22-01 o'clock
Tu: 19-21 o'clock & 22-01 o'clock
We: 19-21 o'clock & 22-01 o'clock
Th: 19-21 o'clock & 22-01 o'clock
Fr: no streaming
Sa: 19-21 o'clock & 22-01 o'clock
Su: 19-21 o'clock & 22-01 o'clock

Hello everybody,

Here is my first update:

I wasn't able to make profit today, but I do believe that I played very well, besides a few mistakes based on streaming the first time. That's why I decided to just start with 1-tabling until I get used to streaming, before I am going to multitable.

It was definitely a tough day, with a lot of bad runouts and I would have loved to see me making some profit the first day, but anyway, I am happy that everything with the stream went good and I had already my first viewers, which was really motivating.

And as a poker player: we always look for the long run and I still have more than 8 months to go.

Here is the graph:

Hello everybody,

I was able to play profitable today and beeing break even now overall. I would say that I played pretty decent again, but not my best game just because I was pretty tired today.

The good thing is that I got profitable in chip/EV today, sth. around 47 chips per game if we substract rake of 8% we won 7 chips per game.
Of course that's not the goal but at least profitable, so I am happy about that.

Here is the graph:



Info:

Day: 2
ROI: 0%
chip/EV (per game): 47
Profit (incl. RB): 0

Keep grinding, cheering you on.

Good luck

I,m looking to learn about Spin and go,s so will look out for you on twitch

P

@potluckneeded2 those posts are always very motivating to me, thanks a lot for that

@joebananas that's very cool, I'm happy about viewers, esp. if I may be able to help them build their own game. Looking forward to see you on twitch, I am live in 1h

Hello everybody,

Today I definitely made some big mistakes at the beginning, after focussing again I played pretty fine until the end but still run into a lot of bad run outs.
I am also not happy about my chip/EV, but luckily I made some profit today.
I will definitely review my game at the weekend.

Tommorow I take a day off and I'll be back on Saturday.

Here is the graph:




Info:

Day: 3
ROI: 5.5%
chip/EV (per game): 37
Profit (incl. RB): $7

Hello everybody,

I am pretty happy with my game today, I was able to improve my chip/EV and makink profit. The only downside is that my concentration drops in the last hour of streaming a lot, but I will work on that.

Here is the graph:



Info:

Day: 4
ROI: 12.6%
chip/EV (per game): 55
Profit (incl. RB): $22

good luck!

thanks man

Hello everybody,

We lost 10 BI today, but we played again pretty decent, we we're able to slghtly improve our chip/EV but still not happy with that, we wanna reach >70 chips per game on the $1 stake, but yeah on the short run it is not guaranteed that I am going to do that. Anyway I definitely will try to hit that mark.

Here ist the graph:



Info:

Day: 5
ROI: 5.6%
chip/EV (per game): 58
Profit (incl. RB): $12

GL Buddy!

Will keep following

Hi

I,ve been trying Age of the Gods twisters. Just wondering what you thought of them and if they are beatable?

GL

P

@Inflation thank you

@joebananas, I didn't played those or heard of them before, but i did googled them now and it looks like they have 8% rake on it which is the same amount compared to party, so it does seem to be ok.
But definitely also look at your rakeback on ladbrokes and of course how strong are your opponents and are you having an edge on them and so on, but it does seem to be fair overall.


Review of today:

It was super hard today, the hardest day so far, it really felt like nothing works out, this are really the moments where you get unsure about your strategy, but I'm experienced enough to know that this can change very quickly and I also know how much work I put in the game and that I can trust on that. So I just continue the grind, prepare myself to play more tables, at least one more, it's just very important to beat the variance.

Here is the graph:



Info:

Day: 6
ROI: 2%
chip/EV (per game): 46
Profit (incl. RB): $5

Hello everybody,

Today we already had a little bit action on our twitch channel, was pretty fun and motivating.
I did played pretty decent overall, but no big changes.

Here is the graph:



Info:

Day: 7
ROI: -2.4%
chip/EV (per game): 48
Profit (incl. RB): -$7

Good luck Arnie.

@Top Pig thank you xD

And I also need to anniunce, that there is no stream today. I need a new graficcard, so I take off today but therefore I will stream on friday.

I got an e-mail few days ago from pokerstars.es that they have some kind of Spin&Go challenge going on. If you play certain amount of Spins be able to participate on a Grand Slam FInal with 50k guaranteed.
Therfore I need to play those Special Edition 5€ spins with 1M prizepool. I do know that the rake is horrible there but there will be a lot of non spin and go player and recreational participitating so it should be fine.
That's why we going for it as long as it goes.

gl gl gl

thanks @dev1ant

Review:

Today went pretty well, I played good and run pretty good so it's fine. I also were able to increase my chip/EV.

Here is the graph:



Info:

Day: 8
ROI: 26.6%
chip/EV (per game): 58
Profit (incl. RB): $135

Good morning!
I'll definitely be following with high interest. I'm a BPC student for Spin&Go and it will be very inspirational to follow your work.
If you don't mind a couple questions, do you have a set amount of games you want to achieve daily/monthly? Or maybe hours of grind daily/weekly?
I saw you jumped from a -7$ profit to 135$ the next post. How? Did you start playing the 5$ stake as you mentioned and with what kind of bankroll?

I hope its not too many questions, wish you all the best !
See you around

@JvlivsCaesar, I'm really happy about everybody who is interested in my challenge/work, I really do appreciate that, so feel free to ask whatever you want.

- Yes, my goal is to grind 5h per day 6 times a week, that's the maximum for me because I still work half-time as a math tutor. And I try to play as many games as possible, BUT quality comes for quantity and at the moment I am just able to play 1 table but I am preparing myself to add the 2nd table and so on.

- Yes I started the 5€ spins and I had a nice start thats why I had this huge jump. I decided to just shot those so I invested 100€ (20BI) for that I either make profit or just lose 100€. I think as a poker player you have to invest you money wisely and you also need take chances. And like I already mentioned I do believe that a lot of recreational and non spin&go players getting attracted from the 1 million Jackpot so the games should be very soft and I will definitely not miss that chance playing those games. But yeah I also would never invest more than the 100€.

- Talking about BM in general is very hard, because it really depends on the skill level of the player, the higher the ROI the smaller are the swings. So for a beginner I would recommend a huge BM (> 200 BI) and as soons as we settled down we can loosen that. I recommend to have a look at www.pokerdope.com where you can calculate your variance.

hey man hope all is well, I remember your blog from BPC you had great work ethic. May I ask what happened with BTS, did you finish the contract and what stakes did you get to? Oh and gl to you I'm sure you will do well.

@KetoMind, it is really cool to finish the grind and see some cheering messages, so thanks a lot

Yes the contract with BTS is finished and I was only capable to reach NL25 ZOOM, I may should not have been that sticky with ZOOM, because rake is pretty high on lowstakes and you really wanna play normal tables where you can look for recreational players which increases the winrates.

Review:

Today I catched up the missing stream from wednesday, I am very happy with my game and I also were able to increase my chip/EV. I also be able to play faster already and I think I definitely can add one more table until end of the month.

Here is the graph:



Info:

Day: 9
ROI: 21.9%
chip/EV (per game): 65
Profit (incl. RB): $152
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/thepokerdudes
Schedule: Daily 19-21 o'clock & 22-01 o'clock (unless Friday)

IMO spins are mongo format with allmost 0 edge and is beatable by a very laughatable roi in a big sample as my observation over a lot of blogs where players had 1-2% roi over big samples and its seems very poor $/h .When i watched blog before 2017 with rakeback they we're pretty good but now i dont think are the best choice of games .Very few people make good profits unless they are on heater or lucky enough to pick a jackpot and win it but these are very low at numbers.Overall population grinders and rec only pays big rake and doesnt win or are breakeven,rake is super high IMO .I watched smartspin bloogers for 7,15s and they were profiting 300-600$ for 5-6 k games which is quite low ,u win less than u pay for rake .I play small sample and what i see is my profits if i dont hit super bad beats and suckouts which occurs very often are allmost same as the rake i paid which is funny ,like theres is algorithm which makes u win nearly as much and maximum the rake u paid .Mongo game which must be deleted ,killed sng which is very sad .