How to profit from satellite play

Seeing as the WSOP satellites are starting at Full Tilt and Poker Stars in a matter of days, I figured I'd repost this little article I wrote for Gamble On some time ago on satellite play.

One way players can earn profits from poker is via satellite play. Satellites, for those unfamiliar to the term, are smaller tournaments where the prize is usually a seat to a bigger tournament. Depending on the buy-in of the satellite and the seat being played for, you can have from 1 winner to over 200 winners, as was the case with the recent Poker Stars WSOP ME Qualifier tournament. For a good MTT player, these tournaments can be quite lucrative.

The first thing you have to decide is whether or not it’s profitable to play in a satellite. Personally, I feel comfortable in satellites where about 10% of the field gets to the next round. Satellites are good, because players with limited bankrolls or limited abilities can get into higher stake tourneys, with risking only a slice of the real buy-in. For instance, if you try to get in a $100 buy-in tourney, and it takes you 4 10$ satellites before you earn your ticket, you still made a profit of $60 by satelliting into the tournament, as opposed to buying into the tournament directly.

At the start the tournament, the first thing you should do is see how many chips are in play, and figure out how many do you need to reach your goal. This is usually not the total chips divided by number of places paying, but usually less. That’s because there will be at least one player with a big chip stack compared to the others, with a couple of shorter stacks near the end.

In the first period it’s pretty like in any other MTT. There are weak players, and you want to get their chips. But a REALLY important note: you can’t bluff out a weak player. You have to be patient and wait for good cards. The donkeys would go all-in with K-10 and beat your pocket queens, so pick your spots.

After a few blind stages the number of crazy all-inners drops, so now you can more comfortably play whatever style of play you prefer. After an hour you should be a little above the chip average. If your chip stack is less than 10BB, you have to try to double up pretty soon. If you double up, obviously that’s great. But if you don’t, at least you saved time and didn’t wait until the blinds ate you up. You can’t just sit back in the middle of the tournament, even if you have more than average chips. This is an important stage for chip accumulation, and the bigger your stack gets, the more you can run over the table as the bubble approaches. You have to take some risks here, but you don’t have to be reckless, either.

If you are near the end, you don’t need to take crazy risks. Be aware of how many players are left, how many need to be eliminated for the tourney to be over, average stack sizes, etc. Look for any short stacks that don’t defend their chips, since you can raise them and get a few more chips in every round. You don’t need to risk half of your chips or more, because the goal in to be in the top X, not to take first place. Raising all-in when you are not a short-stacked is a main mistake here. Even if you have KK, just raise 2.5 to 4BB, and if there’s an ace in the flop, the proper play most times is to fold and save your chips.

If you are out of the paying places, then you have to double up or try to steal those blinds that are not willing to play. Even the chip leader can fold to your raise, because he may feel that since he’s pretty safe, and might just decide to fold if players push back at him.

Now, if you find yourself in the enviable position of being the chip leader, a pre-flop raise almost every hand will do a couple of things here:

- Get you even more chips – you don’t really need them, per se, but that’s less chips that the other players can fight each other for.
- Put pressure on those hoping to sneak their way into the victor’s circle – since more than likely a call of your raise will pot-commit them, no matter what cards come on the flop. The mantra here is NO CHEAP FLOPS!

One of my more memorable satellite tournaments was a $2 rebuy satellite on Stars last year, and while most of the time everyone but the chip leaders are sweating it out as far as winning a ticket to the next round, this time I had twice as many chips as 2nd place, and had nearly 10x more than anyone else at the table.

Because this was a Turbo tournament, the blinds escalate much faster than normal tournaments – and near the end of these things the blinds often increase every other hand (sometimes after every hand!) because of all the stalling that goes on by players just trying to hang on and win. Every hand, no matter whether I was holding 3-9 offsuit or a pair of Queens, I was raising. The couple of time when I got pushed back at by a player, I had more than enough chips and pot odds to call, and most of the time I was delivering the knockout blow to these players, even after being an underdog going into nearly every hand. When asked by one guy at the end of this why I was playing and pushing every hand, even with a monster chip lead, I told him in all seriousness, “I just want more chips”.

Back to endgame play here - At the end of these tournaments, being patient is something I can’t stress enough. Someone WILL lose his head. You have to think before acting. The position, the players, is it worth it to take this risk? You will reach your goal if you have a cool head.

For me, this strategy works great – hopefully it will work well for you, as well.