Spin & Go Max - Poker or Lottery

The launch of Spin & Go tournaments back in 2014 was arguably one of the first signs of the major policy changes at PokerStars. With the removal of SuperNova Elite status shortly after, followed by a few VIP programme redesigns, introduction of the casino games and marketing campaigns featuring celebrities like Neymar or Usain Bolt, managers of the biggest poker room in the world decided to ignore the expectations of their core audience favoring casual fans and their new deposits.

While many professional players saw Spin & Go's as a pure gamble and urged the community to sign the petition for the removal of these tournaments from PokerStars client, ultimately, this fast and exciting poker format proved to be attractive for both recreational and regular players alike. After almost three years, PokerStars decided to double down on their revolutionary idea as they recently introduced a new poker variant called Spin & Go Max.

What is Spin & Go Max?

Spin & Go Max tournaments take a somewhat random nature of their predecessor and turn that randomness up to eleven. Your average Spin & Go Max will start with a spin determining the number of players at the table (from 3 to 8), followed by another spin revealing three different prize options that the eventual winner will draw from at the end of the game.  

Each Spin & Go Max tournament will have a fixed number of hands - based on the number of participants and the value of prizes - after which players will be forced to go all-in in every single hand. Once the winner is determined he or she will select one of the previously revealed prize options at random, though in some cases (such as big enough prize pool) the winner will have the option of 'cashing out' choosing a fixed payout instead of an uncertain one. 

Poker of Lottery? 

Many heads up and hyper-turbo tournament specialists initially pegged the original Spin & Go's as an unbeatable crapshoot that should be removed from the face of the earth. When the dust settled and the nerves calmed, regular players were quickly able to figure out that the soft player pool more than made up for the high-variance structure of the tournaments and the random payouts.

However, Spin & Go Max might reignite the old fears of poker community as they are even more random and much harder to evaluate. Besides, the hand cap after which players are forced to go all in every hand is something that pros certainly won't care for. And it's not just about the pros either.

Spin & Go's are comparatively much more transparent, given how players know the odds of each possible payout before they even register to a tournament, and they know exactly how much they will be playing for as soon as the tournament starts. Spin & Go Max tournaments are severely lacking in the transparency department. Recreational players are in for a lot of frustration and disappointment, due to that one in three chance of picking the highest prize option at the end of each tournament. The phrase "Is PokerStars Rigged?" is probably going to show up a lot more often in Google trends following the introduction of Spin & Go Max.

Are Spin & Go Max tournaments profitable? Only time will tell. However, poker is a game of really tiny edges and the attempt of bridging the gap between poker and casino games that PokerStars seems to take with every new poker format that they introduce, can really backfire in the long run.