How To Play Satellite Poker

4/12/2022

New players and highly skilled poker pros who enjoy variants of Texas Hold’em poker love this site for Satellite Tournaments! Freeroll and low-stake Satellite Poker Tournaments run throughout each day and feature No Limit Texas Hold’em competitions. Guaranteed Prize Pools include tickets that can be used to buy-in to low-stake 2.5K and 5K, medium-stake 15K and high-stake 50K multi-table.

Despite what some may think, satellites are a surprisingly complex form of poker. So much so that I have recently cowritten a book on the topic called Poker Satellite Strategy where we take a deep dive on everything from the early stages right up to the bubble.

How to play poker satellites correctly? Poker satellite strategy. In this article, you will find all nuances of the general poker satellite strategy as well as tips on how to play satellites at different stages to win an entry to a more expensive event. Definition of Satellite In competitive sporting, a satellite is a minor tournament that feeds into a larger event, a tour or a series. In poker environments, satellites serve several different purposes, and a single satellite can serve several functions. The most common usage of a satellite tournament is as a qualifier. Play very tight, pay attention to position and avoid multi-way pots, even if you have a monster (see sidebar). Be smart with your funds, too. Don't waste a lot of your bankroll playing satellites. Satellites give recreational poker players a great opportunity to win their way into events with higher buy-ins that they usually can't afford to play in. Nonetheless, it's important to play satellite poker.

Today I am going to look at the example of $15 buy-in, 100-seat Mega Satellites into the Sunday Million.

The target tournament has a $215 buy-in, which means for $15, assuming you do not re-enter, then one in 14 players will win seat, assuming there is no overlay (more on that in a second). You start with 3,000 chips in this satellite and the average stack size would be 14 times that on the bubble, so 42,000 chips. This means that if you have a stack of 42,000 or more and you are close to the bubble, you can for the most part lock up and fold your way to the money. You definitely should avoid any needless confrontations with stacks similar to yours in size, because you can only lose at this point. That includes potentially folding Pocket Aces preflop (we cover when you should and should not do that in detail in the book).

In reality, you can start to tighten up before 42,000 chips, because when you get to the bubble the stacks sizes will be spread out. There will be monster stacks and micro stacks, few players will have an average stack. In our book we advocate aiming to get to 70% of the average cash stack then tightening up, so 30,000 in this case, but in mega satellites where 100+ seats are on offer, you might get away with even smaller than that.

If there is an overlay, wait till the late registration period ends, look at the total number of chips and divide that by 100 (because there are 100 seats guaranteed), and that is your average cash stack. So if there are 3 million chips in play, the average stack would be 30,000 and you can probably start to tighten up at 24,000.

How To Play Satellite Poker Tournaments

Speaking of late registration, you can register late until 1 hour and 45 minutes. This is important to note in satellites. That would get you to the 200/400 level, or 7.5 big blinds. While that is a massive chip disadvantage, it is instantly profitable from an ICM perspective to late register a satellite. You don’t even need to do a complex calculation to see the sense in this. Let’s say 1,400 players enter the satellite you are playing, 800 of them might have been eliminated by the end of late registration. Now instead of outlasting 1,300 players to win one of those 100 seats, you only have to outlast 700.

We suggest you late register satellites if you understand your short stack shoving ranges well. However, 7.5 big blinds is VERY short and you really need to understand those ranges. So in this particular satellite if you don’t mind the variance of late registering, look at the blind level you think you are comfortable coming in at (for example 20 big blinds) and late reg for that one. This satellite actually has quite a slow structure (10 minutes) so if you prefer deep play, by all means reg early because the field should be quite soft.

One final note and that is the closer these mega satellites are to the day of the tournament, the softer they will be. You can safely assume that the last chance satellites to a tournament will be way softer than the earlier ones. Not only do the last chance satellites attract more ‘weekend warriors’ but the better players in these $15 satellites will have already qualified so won’t be in the field when you play the last chance.

The advent of satellites has been a huge boon to tournament poker. Through them, recreational players have a shot at playing bigger buy-in tournaments and grinders have even more events to play than ever before. Moreover, those recreational players get some experience playing with strong players, so they’ll have a better shot at making some money if they do win a seat into the big show. I love satellites myself, mostly because players make so many expensive mistakes in them.

There are two really big mistakes that I see from recreational players in satellites. In fact, I see these from working pros too!

Free To Play Poker

Survival Is the Name of the Game

Most recreational players are used to doing things a certain way. Whether it is correct or not, they have a preferred way of playing in a poker tournament, and they often carry that style into a satellite, which can be a huge mistake. The key in satellites is to preserve chips, stay alive, and chip up as safely as possible. In the very early stages of a satellite, it can be correct to splash around a tiny bit to try to chip up, but in later stages that attitude becomes terribly expensive.

Have you ever considered folding aces preflop? Not only have I considered it, I have done it on more than one occasion in a satellite and I am sure that it was the correct play. Let me explain why.

No matter the hustle .. remember survival is the name of the game???

— T-Roc??? (@T_General10) February 13, 2018

Let’s say that you started with 100 people in a satellite that pays 1 in 10. The buy-in was $100 and the top 10 finishers win a seat to a $1,000 WSOP event. There are 11 players left and you have the second biggest stack with 80,000 chips. The player on your right has the biggest stack with 82,000 chips. There are two players below 5,000 chips and the blinds are 2,000/4,000 with a 500 ante.

The first thing we notice here is that one of the two short stacks is almost certain to get eliminated within the next 10 hands. If you get up from your seat and walk away, you are guaranteed a seat. You have already won the maximum prize… unless you screw it up.

Now you are on the big blind, and everyone folds to the small blind, the stack that is slightly larger than yours. Everyone is scared to play a hand, so this would not be uncommon. But what happens next certainly seems odd. He shoves all-in for 82,000 chips.

It gets even weirder when you look down at two aces. What are you going to do now? Can you fold two aces in this spot? This is the best hand in poker! If you call and he also has two aces, you are only going to lose when he makes a four flush, which will be very rare. If he has the best possible hand against you, 67 suited, you are still a three to one favorite. And he will usually be in worse shape than that. Think of all the chips you could have!

But we don’t play tournament poker for chips do we? We play it for money. And chips don’t always equal money. In fact they never do, and in this specific case the difference between chips and money is huge. If you could buy an extra two million chips for $20, should you do it? How much more likely would it be that you are going to get a seat (again, a seat being the top prize in this tournament)? Save your $20; your seat is already locked up… unless you call with those two aces.

If you fold, we know that you are going to get a seat every time, so your equity is $1,000. But what if you call? If we assume that you are a four to one favorite, then the math looks something like this:

80% of the time you will win the hand, your opponent will be crippled, and you will definitely win a seat. So your equity will be 80% of $1,000, or $800.
20% of the time you will lose and go broke, leaving you with zero equity and a happy table celebrating their chance to play the big event while you walk out the door with nothing.

Your total equity is now $800+0, so you would lose $200 in equity by getting all-in preflop with the best hand in poker. Now we can compare that to your chip equity where you double up 80% of the time and go broke only 20%. Your stack increases by an average of 80% or 64,000 chips. So you make a play that on average increases your stack by 64,000, but also decreases your equity by $200. Welcome to the world of tournament poker.

This is a situation that we often see in regular (i.e., non-satellite) tournaments, too, but there is not usually such a drastic difference. If the above was news to you, some education on tournament theory will be a big help. I can recommend RedChipPoker.com, LearnWPT.com, or David Sklansky’s book Tournament Poker for Advanced Players. There are many articles online about it as well; simply Google “poker tournament theory.”

Being able to roughly calculate the equity of a play in real money instead of tournament chips is important to the success of a tournament player. This is even more important in a satellite. Rather than cruising along in your standard tournament mode, you must change your thinking. Try getting used to asking yourself the following question:

“How often will I get a seat with each of my options here?”

You should be asking yourself this question quite often as you reach the later stages of the satellite. There is money to be made playing satellites, and answering this question correctly will help you claim more of it.

Taking a Shot

The second huge mistake I see doesn’t happen at the table; it happens at the cashier window. Many players have the idea that if they can afford the buy-in to the satellite, they should play it. But when we talk about variance in tournaments, and what size bankroll is necessary, we assume that you will cash around 15% of the time. If you first must play a satellite, win it, and then cash in the tournament itself, that percentage goes way down.

Let’s assume that you are playing tournaments with a reasonably small field, and you don’t have to protect your bankroll too much because you also have a job. If you have a good enough job, or just don’t need to worry about maintaining a bankroll just for poker, then play whatever you can afford. But if you are trying to build a poker bankroll and don’t want to rebuild it from your paychecks, then you should be following reasonable bankroll management practices. With small fields, a good player can probably get away with playing anything where he has 50 buy-ins for that event. I don’t have a job, and really don’t want to get one, so I stick with 100 buy-ins.

This means that if you are going to play a $1,000 buy-in tournament, you should have $50,000 in your poker bankroll if you are going to be serious about bankroll management. But this does not apply to satellites because the variance of the satellite and the tournament together is much higher than just playing a tournament.

If we assume that you are a very good satellite player, playing a 1 in 10 satellite, you should get a seat about 15% of the time. This is a nice profit for you. But if you are playing the tournament as well, and assuming you are a very good player, you will cash about 20% of the time. Now, instead of putting money back into your bankroll 20% of the time, you are going to walk away with something .15 * .20 = .03 or about 3% of the time. This drastically increases your variance.

You should generally only play satellites into tournaments that you would play even if you didn’t win your way in. The satellite is a way to save or make money, not a way to “take a shot” at a bigger event that you wouldn’t normally play. I know, it takes the fun out of it doesn’t it? If you are just playing for fun, then don’t worry about a bankroll and just have fun. But if your bankroll matters to you, don’t decimate it by playing satellites into events that you can’t afford to play otherwise.

There Are Other Ways

You can still play satellites into events you can’t afford, but you must do something to cut down that variance. You can do this by:

Selling the seats you win. This is a very low-variance approach and you could play satellites higher than your usual buy-in if you are doing this. Just make sure to get very close to full value for the seats when you sell them. This may mean showing up on the day of the tournament to sell the seat to players waiting in line so that you can get 95% of the value of the seat.
Selling action in the event before you play it. Learn about selling action so that you don’t screw this up, but sell enough action that your own piece of the tournament is a buy-in that you can afford with your bankroll.
Play the satellite with non-bankroll funds. Just pull money out of your entertainment budget. If taking a shot is that much fun, then enjoy yourself, but don’t punish your poker bankroll for your entertainment.

My favorite thing about satellites is probably your favorite thing, too. They give recreational players a chance to play big events that they usually wouldn’t be able to afford. This spares me the pain of being at a table full of silent grinders with headphones and book bags. All hail the satellite, Saver of the Day, Bringer of Recreational Players, Low Variance Cash Cow, and The Great Creator of the Moneymaker Effect!

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