Poker Super Satellite Strategy

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In the last article we introduced you to what the Sunday Million is, and how to locate inexpensive satellites to play where you can win your way in for a discounted price. Now that you know where to look to find the satellites, how do you determine which is right for you?

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Andy’s Satellite MiniGuide. I was browsing through FTR’s archives and, to my surprise, found no real discussion of the strategy involved in satellite play. This obviously concerns me, because satellite play can be extremely profitable and is one of poker’s “hidden treasures” that we can all enjoy.

• Americas CardRoom have come up with a new innovative tournament satellite format. Played in the style of ‘fast fold’ poker, players must grind from around 1,000 starting chips up to 5,000 to reach the next step. There are seven steps in total, with the final step paying out a ticket for the $6 Million Venom tournament.
• Poker Satellites - Satellite Tournaments. By Shirley Rosario ♠ Poker Vibe. Poker Strategy ♥ Online Poker. Super satellites can also generate substantial revenue for the house. Basic Loose Aggressive LAG Poker Strategy Basic Tight Aggressive TAG Poker Strategy Sit N Go Strategy - Part 1: Early Stages.
• And hey, it might not always feel good to use a strategy like this, but poker is a zero-sum game – there must be losers to support the winners. If you want to be a winner, picking on the weaker and less experienced players is part and parcel of satellite poker strategy.
• In Poker Satellite Strategy professional poker player Dara O’Kearney gives you a framework for how to approach every stage of a satellite tournament, from the early levels right up to the bubble. This book takes the stress and uncertainty out of satellites.

As you scan the lobby for different satellite formats, it makes sense to lean towards any formats that play to your strengths. If you play a lot of small field or one table sit and goes, then a similar style satellite with a ticket to the winner may be a good fit. If you’re experienced and comfortable with hyper-turbos, pick some of the hyper-turbo satellites to try. If ‘winner takes all’ formats are your strong suit, really small buy-ins with 1 seat and are a nice fit. And if you like large fields with a large number of seats being awarded, then the mega-satellites will be right up your alley. There will be slower speeds, turbos, and hypers of all sorts. If you find yourself unsure of what format might suit you best, then go with the one that is the most comfortable to you in terms of blind escalation and speed, be it slow or fast, so you’re as much in your comfort zone as possible.

Once you’ve picked your satellites of choice, here are some general tips for how to proceed to maximize your chances of winning a seat:

Early in the satellite

At this stage it plays just like a regular pay structure MTT. We will try to accumulate chips by getting reads on our table, and working out strategies to exploit them. Try and pay attention to what people are entering the pot with when hands get shown down. What did they limp with? Raise with? Call a raise? Reads do not need to be statistically based.

When you see a player limp in from early position, call a raise from a late position player, check/call down on a board of KT673 and show 65o, it only requires this sample size of this one hand to know they are a very loose/passive calling station. Checkmark, now we know how to exploit them… we will value bet them more often and larger when we have the goods, and not try to bluff them when we don’t. Pay close attention during these early stages when the stacks are deeper and you’ll do a better job of finding spots to accumulate chips (or not lose them in spots where others might).

Middle stages

Now we should have some reads, have hopefully chipped up a bit, and can really work on exploiting opponents. People that open loose, 3-bet them more liberally. Players are notoriously bad at defending against 3-bets, especially out of position. If you’ve seen someone open 97s from UTG, they are way too wide to defend vs. your 3-bets adequately. Now is really the time to chip up for the end game. The loose players will mostly be shorter stacked or gone, and the tight players will be blinding down waiting for their premiums. The selectively aggressive player exploiting reads will have a big edge at this stage.

Late stages

This will vary depending on what kind of format you’re in and how many seats are being awarded. If it’s one ticket on top, this will be at the final table and the player who is aggressive without fear will tend to have the bigger edge as players are scared to bust without premium hands. Picking up the blinds and antes roughly 3 times every couple of orbits will help you to chip up nicely. If there are lots of seats, like a mega satellite with 50 tickets, there will often be a few players who just don’t understand the bubble play and will make significant mistakes. At this point, based on your own stack size:

• If we’re short, people will be trying to wait us out to be blinded all in. Don’t be afraid to be aggressive while you still have some fold equity. How much fold equity you have will be largely dependent on stack sizes. For example, if it folds to you on the button and you have a 7 big blind stack, a shove will get through the blinds at a high frequency if they are sitting on 13 and 12 bigs respectively because they have stacks that can afford to wait out shorter stacks at the bubble. And if they call you and lose, THEY become the short stack. If we are shoving our 7bb into a 58bb stack, they can obviously call more liberally to try and bust us because the damage to their stack doesn’t jeopardize their position should they lose.
• If we’re deep, the satellite bubble is our oyster. We can min-raise preflop into medium stacks with any 2 cards and collect the blinds and antes relentlessly, just folding on the rare occasion they shove. ICM and the bubble situation dictate they should fold incredibly tight. We can call off short stacks to try and bust them without risk to our chip position. The one critical thing to avoid at this stage is a big confrontation with another big stack. Right now, our big stack assures us of a ticket to the target event… the only thing that truly threatens that ticket is losing most or all of our chips to another big stack. While the big stacks should steal small pots from medium stacks, they should avoid confrontations with each other like the plague.
• If we are medium stacked, this is where we have to walk the wire. Are there enough super short stacks that we can wait for them to blind all in? Then patience is prudent. If this may be unlikely, then we have 2 moves to look for to try and chip: 1) a premium hand, or 2) other medium stacks who feel they can wait out the short stacks but would be critically damaged by calling us and losing. They simply have no choice but to fold without a monster hand.

Satellites offer a great value and opportunity to make your way into the Sunday Million for a modest price. Find the offerings that suit your style and bankroll, and play them carefully, and we’ll see you in the main event.

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by Jennifer Shahade

As the first winds of winter begin to chill much of US and Europe, PokerStars heats up the season with satellites into the Ladies Weekend at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA), set for January 13-16, 2011. The $215 finals will take place on Sundays at 17:30 ET on the PokerStars clock, starting with the very first final on October 31. The $3480 package consists of four nights hotel accommodations at the fabulous Atlantis Resort as well as entry into the $1000+100 ladies event. Also included is an entry into Vanessa Rousso's Ladies Poker Bootcamp and $700 to buy out all the Halloween candy fire sale leftovers. Perhaps more practically, you can use the money to book your tickets to the Bahamas.

Halloween Sunday will also feature The Ladies International Poker Tour (LIPS) final qualifiers into the Los Angeles NAPT Ladies Event on November 14. At 16:00 on October 31, a $99 satellite will award $335 buy-in and $565 for expenses, while a $36 satellite at 19:00 will allow local players to compete for just the seat.

Just in time for the PokerStars Women satellite frenzy, let's discuss some satellite strategy and game selection tips.

1. Choose Your super satellite: PokerStars offers a feast of super satellites into the weekly $215 PCA weekend satellite. There are $2.20 and $11 Rebuys and $33 Freezeouts. For those of you who have been saving up your frequent player points (FPPs) there will also be 500 FPP Rebuys. How do you decide which one to play, or which to play more often? Rebuy tournaments are often very lengthy--both because players who get knocked out in the first hour can jump back in and also because all the rebuys and add-ons create very deep stacks. Aggressive players often enjoy rebuys because you can take lots of risks without losing your tournament life. If you excel in turbos and prefer a controlled event in which you know your stake from the get-go, choose the $33 freezeouts. The $11 rebuy satellites at 20:41 are perfectly scheduled for Women's Poker League aficionados. If you like to multi-table, pop into the $11 rebuy and a half an hour later, jump into the daily US $5.50 Women's Poker League tournaments, which start at 21:10 on the PokerStars clock.

2. Adjust to the Finals: Once you do qualify to the $215 satellite, you should adjust your play compared to the super sats. You will start with 3000 chips rather than 1500 chips, so the stacks will be deeper (compared to the $33 freezeout satellites). The level of play will be higher, as some professional players will buy in directly. Participants in the European Poker Tour Monte Carlo Ladies Event online satellites included Team PokerStars Pro Veronica 'princesa' Dabul of Argentina and Team PokerStars Online player Martha 'marene' Herrera of Mexico.
3. Pay Attention to the Prizes: In satellites, be very aware of the payout structure. The Ladies PCA weekend satellite guarantees one $3480 prize package. Every additional $3480 in the pool allows another ticket. For any remaining money, $215 rebates (or if necessary a single prize less than $215) are awarded. After the PCA satellite registration period is over, be sure to note the exact number of prizes up for grabs. Let's take a look at two potential scenarios.

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a. If 18 players participate, there will be $3600 in the prize pool. That means there will be one grand prize package up for grabs plus a $120 consolation prize for 2nd place.

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b. If 40 players participate there is $8000 in the prize pool. That affords two grand prize packages, four $215 rebates, and one $180 rebate.

In scenario (a.) it's best for you not to worry about the bubble at all, since first place is about 30 times more valuable than second place. In scenario (b.) the consolation prizes are somewhat more significant (they allow you to try again the following week!), but still just about 6% of the grand prize. You should try to ignore the consolation prizes as much as possible. Play for the Bahamas, not a rebate!

4. Ask Yourself How Many Chips You'll Need to Win: If there's only one grand prize, there's only one way to get to PCA: you must take every chip in the tournament. If there are two or more seats for up for grabs, you can theoretically get your ticket to the Bahamas with just a single poker chip! (Unlikely of course.) At the early stages of satellites, I try to figure out how many times I'll need to double-up to have a realistic chance of qualifying. For instance, if 36 players participate, allowing for a prize pool of two seats, that means the average finishing stack of the two winners will be 54,000 chips (36 players x 3000 divided by two). It's possible that one of the winners could have the lioness' share of those chips but I've still found it useful to estimate how the winning stacks will size up.

5. Be Aware of Musical Poker Chairs: When there is just one player to be eliminated until two or more players win seats, you enter poker's version of musical chairs. No one wants to be the lady without a seat at the table, but the music will stop eventually. In these cases, you will see professional players folding hands that are usually considered 'monsters' three-handed. The general principle that it's better to be the raiser rather than the player who calls someone else's all in raise becomes exponentially more valid. Professional player Vanessa Peng satellited into the Monte Carlo EPT Ladies Event and the US Ladies Poker Championship via PokerStars. She told Women's Poker Hour that in satellite bubbles, 'You see a lot of open shoving . . . (but when someone goes all in against you) it's correct to make folds (with hands like queens), even if it doesn't feel good.'

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A concrete example of Vanessa's point came up for me about a month ago, when I was deep in a World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) satellite. About 20 players had to bust before I'd earn a $215 ticket. I was dealt pocket queens in the big blind and it was folded to the small blind, who went all in. My first instinct was to call, but if the small blind had a king or an ace, even with a terrible kicker, I'd have about a 28% chance of busting. My opponent may not have an ace or a king, so I made a rough estimate that my overall chances of busting if I called were 20%. The question was, if I folded and just waited to see if other people were eliminated, would I have an 80% + chance of qualifying? It was clear that I wasn't going to be able to solve this complex math problem in 60 seconds, especially since there were unknown factors, like the strength of the field. The stronger the other players were, the more they'd also be using a super tight strategy, making it hard to fold into the money. I clicked on my time bank and finally folded. A few orbits later, I was down to just a blind and a half (hardly the shortest stack in the tournament), and the tournament was over. I had a WCOOP ticket in my account.
Good luck at the first Ladies PCA Weekend qualifier this coming Halloween Sunday. I will be there, possibly wearing a mask, so no one can catch any tells off of me. Or perhaps, I'll wear my bathing suit, flip-flops, and a floppy hat, in the hopes of a very hot January.

For more details on the PCA Ladies Event tournament click HERE.