Satellite Strategy

In the online poker world Sunday is not a day of rest. In fact, it’s the busiest day of the week, with the greatest number of players logging on and the biggest tournaments being contested. All the major sites schedule their flagship tourneys on Sundays, including PokerStars’ Sunday Million, the Full Tilt $750k Sunday Guarantee and the $300k Gtd on PartyPoker. The Sunday Majors, as they are called, usually command a substantial buy-in of anywhere between $215 and $530, but there is a cheaper way in – satellites.

What is a satellite?

For the uninitiated, a satellite is a tournament that awards one or more seats to a larger tournament. They can come in many forms – turbo rebuys, all-in-every-hand crapshoots and everything in between – but the most common is the multi-table satellite tournament. The payout is always different; some pay a seat for every three entrants, some pay a seat for every 20 entrants and so
on.

Personally, when I’m selecting satellites for Sunday Majors I like to enter those which award one seat for every five to seven entrants, as I believe this offers the best balance of luck, skill, ROI and time invested. I find that when you stray outside of those boundaries you’re either paying too much (and might as well have bought in directly) or the chance of winning a seat is too slim. Although ostensibly multi-table tournaments, there are some obvious differences between a multi-table satellite and a standard MTT. These differences, along with the ratio of entrants to seats, will affect your strategy for various parts of the tournament.

The most glaring difference, and the one that will affect all your decisions, is the flat payout structure. In a satellite you win the same amount – a tournament seat – regardless of whether you are the chip leader or have a solitary chip left when the bubble bursts. So, how does this influence your satellite strategy?

The early stages

If the poker phrase ‘tight is right’ wasn’t invented to describe the early stages of a multi-table satellite then it should have been. Preservation of chips is far more important at this stage than gambling it up and looking for an early double-up with speculative hands. In the early stages you only want to get your chips in as a huge favourite, in a scenario like an overpair against an underpair or A-K vs A-Q.

Hands such as 8-8 through J-J and Broadway hands like A-Q should be played cautiously. As ever, position is key. You shouldn’t look to set-mine with pairs too much, as by the time blinds get to just 25/50 it’s likely that the effective stacks won’t offer you the right implied odds (you need 15-to-1 or better). In early position, weak as it seems, open-folding all pairs from deuces through eights and even nines is the safest bet, as you can’t profitably call a three-bet and it’s unlikely you’ll ever be better than a flip if you decide to get it in.

There’s no need to take fliers early on. A double-up certainly doesn’t double your equity so getting it in as a flip – or close to – only really benefits the other players in the satellite. That’s not to say the early stages of a satellite are totally irrelevant though. Getting your stack moving in the right direction is always nice, but the watchword at this stage is preservation, not accumulation.

The middle stage

By this stage of the satellite the field has been reduced and it’s time to try to get yourself in a position where you aren’t hugging the bubble come the endgame. I define the middle stage of a satellite as the period in which no one yet has a seat locked up, but that point is not far off. To pluck a random example out the air, if there was a 100-runner satellite awarding 20 seats then the mid-game would probably take place when there were 40-60 players left.

During the middle stage of a satellite, your actual cards matter far less than factors like your stack size, your opponent’s stack size, your position, blind increases and the approaching bubble. Stack size in particular is key. As a big stack you can afford to relax a bit, but not simply fold everything as no one is in ‘fold to advance’ mode just yet – there’s still a lot of poker to go and a lot of blinds to pay.

As a big stack at this stage you should be looking to pick up chips by winning pots uncontested preflop or through simple continuation bets postflop. The easiest way to do this is to play good hands only, but you can’t always wait for a premium. You don’t want to go after short stacks who know they need to double through to have any shot (as they will be happy to get it in with a wide range). Instead go after the larger stacks who should be less willing to tangle with you.

As a medium stack you are in no imminent danger of being swallowed up by the blinds, but you are also far from comfortable. In this case the best stacks to go after are other medium stacks, as well as big stacks that you can do serious damage to should you double-up through them. Put it this way, if you open-shove 15 big blinds it’s a lot harder for a 25BB stack to call you than it is for someone with 10BB.

As a short stack your ideal targets to shove on should be the medium stacks who don’t want to call you and end up with a bowl of rice. Avoid shoving (as a bluff) on fellow short stacks – they might just be desperate enough to look you up. In tandem with stack size, position is crucial.

Playing from early position with any stack size is a minefield in the middle stages, as the varied make-up of stacks at the table increases the likelihood that you’ll get three-bet or shoved on. It’s advisable to play very tight from early and early-mid position during this stage and instead look to pick up more pots from middle and late position. I’d much rather shove any two cards blind-on-blind than open a hand like A-J or 8-8 in early position. Your main focus during this period should be accumulating chips without going to showdown and avoiding risky spots as much as possible.

Sometimes, however, you will have to sigh and call an all-in. Knowing opponent tendencies is paramount here. Some players might shove 100% of hands in certain spots while others may shove as little as 10%. Your assessment of each opponent will dictate what you should call with. Against a wide range middle pairs play better than two high cards and against a tight range the opposite is true, as pairs are often crushed.

During this stage it is also crucial to keep an eye on the impending blind jumps and try to steal enough to stay ahead of them. You have much more fold equity with a <10BB stack (and even a <5BB stack) in a satellite than you do in a regular tournament, so don’t fret too much.

The bubble stage

At some point in the bubble stage almost every player will slip into the short-stack, or at least semi short-stack, zone. It’s inevitable because the big stacks have a seat locked up and don’t want to take the risk of losing it, the mid stacks are waiting for the short stacks to bust, and the short stacks are waiting for a hand and hoping other short stacks bust or that mid and big stacks collide. Meanwhile the blinds and antes are constantly increasing.

You must use this to your advantage when you are a big or medium stack. In turbo satellites, which often have five-minute levels, stalling so that the blinds increase before they hit an opponent’s stack can mean the difference between your foe being forced all-in in the blinds and him being able to fold to a seat as the blinds come crashing into you. It’s not unethical – it’s smart satellite poker. At this stage you should keep an eye on the lobby and have the remaining tables open if screen real estate is not at a premium.

Working out if you’ve got a seat locked up is a delicate balancing act and my simple (but not foolproof) way of working it out is this: if you’re inside the cutoff point by more places than there are people who need to be knocked out, you can safely fold everything. For instance if there are 25 seats awarded with 30 people left and you’re in 12th place then you can muck, muck, muck. Yes, even Aces. The exception might be if a stack shoved for say 2.5 blinds or less and you were in the big blind with Aces.

If you are not quite safe but not totally desperate, the best course of action (without a good hand) is to shove from late position into similar-sized stacks who really shouldn’t call without a premium. As a short stack keep an eye on the lobby, the other tables and the other short stacks, use clock/blind management to your advantage and shove mainly into the medium stacks as they’ll be the ones hit hardest if they call and lose. If you’re lucky enough to be a big stack don’t simply open-shove every hand, no matter how tempting it can be. Just bide your time and get the prize.