Preflop Charts for Spin & Go

1. What are preflop charts?

In Spins (Winamax Expresso, PokerStars Spin & Go, GG Poker Spin & Gold, etc.) more than in any other poker format, preflop play is crucial.

This is mainly due to the short stack depth (less than 25 BB at the start):

• Many hands are played or end before the flop.
• And many spots go all-in very quickly. A preflop mistake is expensive, as it can cost you your whole stack — and it’s often hard to recover from it later.

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Preflop charts are 169-cell grids that tell you the best preflop action to take for every possible hand combination (e.g., AK or 98).

Let’s look at an example together.

We’ll place ourselves in the following situation: we have 25bb, we are in the Small Blind (SB), and the Button (BTN), who acts first preflop, opens to 2bb.

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Now that the situation is set, let’s see what the preflop chart tells us to do:

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2. How to read a preflop chart

Reading a preflop chart like the one above is very simple.

Each cell has a color that indicates the recommended action. For example, in the chart above:

🔵 Blue = fold

🟢 Green = call

⚫ Dark red = all-in

Inside each cell, besides the color, there is the name of a hand, like: Q2o, 72s, 66, etc.

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And that’s all you need to know!

So, for example, if we go back to the chart above:

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• With J♥️7♦️ (that’s "J7o"), the best action — the most EV+ action — is to fold.
• With K♣️8♣️ ("K8s"), the best action is to call the Button’s open.

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3. How were these charts built?

At this point, you might be asking yourself:

This feels almost like magic... Can it really be this easy to beat opponents in Spin & Go?

The answer is... yes — and no.

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1. Yes, because GTO is “unbeatable”

Each action — that is, each cell in every chart — is based on GTO.

GTO (Game Theory Optimal) is calculated using solvers that rely on complex mathematical computations to produce a strategy that cannot be exploited.

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In other words, even if your opponents know exactly how you’re playing, they won’t be able to take advantage of you in the long run.

With a GTO strategy, you simply cannot be beaten.

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2. But playing perfect GTO is (very) difficult

In practice, playing perfect GTO is extremely hard.

One of the most extreme examples is probably the GTO preflop chart for the Small Blind in heads-up with 25bb:

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That’s why, in the Spin & Go charts, we’ve created simplified versions of each chart — human-friendly, understandable, and easy to memorize.

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That’s also why we’ve written a mini-course for each situation (we call them Strategic Guides).

They help you understand each chart instead of trying to memorize everything blindly — which would be nearly impossible anyway, since there are hundreds of them.

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If you want to learn more, you can read our Strategic Guide for the Button — it's free:

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3. And there’s something even better than GTO

In reality — as surprising as it may sound — following GTO principles is not always the best strategy.

Most of the players you’ll face in Spin games are recreational players whose play is very far from GTO.

I won’t go into too much detail here about the difference between GTO and Exploitative play, as it would take too long.

But I’ve explained it with diagrams in Chapter 13 of our beginner Spin course. — feel free to check it out if this isn’t 100% clear to you!

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That’s why in our Spin & Go Charts, for every GTO chart, we also created an Exploitative version.

Conclusion

We’ve reached the end of this short explainer on preflop charts in Spin games.

I hope I’ve convinced you of how important it is to study your preflop game — regardless of which Spin format you play (Expresso, Spin & Gold, Spin & Go, Hexapro, etc.).

And that preflop charts are one of the best tools to help you do that.

To go further, here are your options:

Check out our Spin & Go Charts 👇

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Download a free sample of our Spin & Go Charts 👇

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