How to Maximize Your Spin & Go Hourly Rate

Someone who takes poker seriously is always looking for +EV. Adding more tables while keeping up the quality of your game is one of the biggest +EV.

Number of tables

If your game is already decent, you should start to increase the number of tables in order to increase your hourly rate. You should increase the initial ‘get-to-know-the-game’ 1-2 tables to 3-4 as soon as possible. This alone will double or triple the amount played in a month. Of course, the sky’s the limit from here, some people can play quite an extreme number of tables continuously and make a decent profit.

It’s important to consider how you can maximize your income. If your ROI doesn’t decrease as much as you can increase the amount played and, therefore the rakeback, then it’s worth opening more and more tables. After all, if you open 5 tables instead of 4 during your sessions, you will increase the amount played by roughly 25%.

It’s worth constantly experimenting to see how many tables you can play comfortably and profitably. And occasionally, try to open one more table to keep pushing your limits.

How ROI Affects your Spin & Go Hourly Rate

Table count tells you how much volume you’re putting in, but ROI tells you how much each euro of that volume is worth. Your hourly rate is really just the two multiplied together, so improving either one moves the number.

ROI in Spin & Go measures your profit as a percentage of total buy-ins played, not per-hand or per-decision like cEV. If you play €1,000 in buy-ins over a session and come away with €50 profit, that’s a 5% ROI. It reflects everything at once: strategy quality, table selection, and rakeback combined.

This is where table count and ROI start pulling in different directions. Adding tables usually pushes ROI down a bit, since you have less time per decision. But if the drop in ROI is small relative to the extra volume you’re playing, your hourly rate still goes up.

A simple way to check this: multiply your ROI by your volume at different table counts and compare the results.

• 4 tables, 4% ROI → hourly rate X
• 6 tables, 3.2% ROI → hourly rate 1.2X

Even with lower ROI, the extra volume wins here. This is the same math behind the earlier point about 5 tables producing 25% more volume than 4. ROI is the piece that tells you whether that extra volume is still worth playing.

The same logic applies to limit selection, and it’s often the deciding factor. A lower ROI at a tougher limit can easily lose to a higher ROI at an easier one, even before accounting for the fact that easier limits usually let you run more tables too.

If you’re not sure where your ROI stands at your current table count, that’s the first thing to check before adding more tables. Chasing volume on a shrinking ROI eventually works against you, not for you.

Choosing a limit

The right choice of limit is as important to boosting your hourly earnings and profits as the number of tables you play. Even though you may have a limit as a goal, ‘when I reach it, then…’, it may not always be worth playing the higher stakes.

For example, if you get a 1% ROI on 100 and 2.5% on 50, it’s better to go for the smaller limit. Especially since, in most cases, it is true that on the smaller limit, more tables will start in a given amount of time.

Another important aspect of choosing the right limit is that a higher ROI also means less variance. On the one hand, this is important from a mental point of view, as even with a decent bankroll, a major downswing is extremely frustrating. Also, your game can be affected sooner or later by such an event. So it might be worthwhile to choose a lower stake and smaller variance to keep your motivation and your sanity. This is especially true if you’re not playing in an EV pool or don’t have EV insurance.

On smaller sites, where the bigger limits fill up slower, it’s a good idea to keep adding tables at lower limits to keep in rhythm and increase your hourly rate.

Maximizing your rakeback

Playing a lot of tables, most or all of your profit will come from rakeback. In this case, it is very important to maximize your rakeback. This is especially true for a site like GG Poker for example. There, rake races or double VIP point events account for a large part of the overall rakeback, so you need to pay attention to when and how much you play. On GG, you need to find out which challenges you choose, as it’s important to be able to complete them.

Before you start a longer challenge, say 8 hours, it’s also worth testing the field with a few shorter ones. You should also keep an eye on the leaderboards, as sometimes it only takes a few games to make the difference between scoring a higher prize.

Just grind?

If your game is not good enough and you play on multiple tables, you will only produce losses faster. Learning, especially as a beginner, is very important alongside the grind. But you should also not make the mistake of playing on only 1 or 2 tables all the time because your game is not perfect yet, as this will not be of much practical use.

For limits of 10 euros and above, it is also worth considering the reg/fish ratio at a given time of day and planning your sessions accordingly. Weekends and nights are often much more pleasant and profitable to play.

Choosing the right site for you is also important to ensure that your limit has enough action – see our full breakdown of how to pick a site. If necessary, you may even consider playing in more than one site at a time to get enough action and a better hourly rate. In this case, you need to make sure that playing several games in different rooms does not affect your rakeback as some sites reward mid-long term loyalty more than others.

If you want to try Spins and would like to get some help, our 30-day commitment-free trial period is just for you!