The ultimate guide to satellites

Bencb is back and sharing some advice on how to qualify for big events for a fraction of the price.

Who hasn’t dreamed of winning a major tournament with large prize pools and bragging rights? Unfortunately, many of those buy-ins are out of reach for a lot of players. Fortunately, satellite tournaments give everyone a chance for the glory! However, BE PREPARED! These tournament types have their own strategy.

When we are dealing with satellites the main difference to MTT’s is how are we affected by ICM. Since every prize has the same value, playing a hand just to get more chips can actually have a bad risk / reward ratio. If we have a big enough stack then we could win the prize just by folding. In this scenario, we have many players having to take a greater risk (as they are short stacks) while we just float in our position by mostly folding and picking some spots to put huge pressure on other players.

When we are dealing with satellites the main difference to MTT’s is how are we affected by ICM. Since every prize has the same value, playing a hand just to get more chips can actually have a bad risk / reward ratio.

How to play satellites

Lets walk through the different stages of satellites, and how to approach each situation.

Early Game

It’s best to look for low variance lines to build a stack. In most structures we don’t have to worry about ICM decisions at this stage since there are plenty of players left and more to join before the late registration.

After Late Registration

The number of entrants is now fixed. We can use the number of players to estimate what the average chip count needs to be in order to get the prize. For example: If 10 players joined with a 10k stack and 5 are paid then 20k chips is a good number to have in mind. This number is theoretical and should be used only as a guide.

Late Game

When we are closer to the prizes, then our decisions are going to have a bigger weight in our $EV; we are going to have more variables affecting our range. If we are amongst the shorter stacks then we can still push vs bigger stacks.

Picking spots where calling light against our stack size can be detrimental for their $EV ( in low stakes avoid shoving any two vs a bunch of players just because they can have a theoretical narrow range, go for the blinds, BTN, CO or maybe HJ)

Fold To the Win

It’s the lowest variance strategy and the most profitable at this point. It’s applied when we have enough chips to make as many folds as needed to wait for the shortest stacks to bust. Depending on table stack distribution we may fall a few places down the ladder, but still get a win while other shorter stacks have the risk and pressure.

Our stack can drain more if we have too many shorter stacks shoving into our BB while possibly having a big stack to our right. If we think the bleeding is going to be too fast then we can re-steal from those players with more to lose ( similar / bigger stack sizes in this case ).

Middle Ground

This occurs when we are close or within the prize placements, but still under a stack size that would give us clear chance of winning. We can put tons of pressure on players who are above us, many times by just denying their equity and shoving preflop ( mixing some more limp / all in in Sb if effective stack sizes are 25bb or more).

While early in the game on a 20bb stack or more we just open call a piece of our range ( something like 8’s on Btn), now we are more inclined to make these hands a shove. We don’t want to be playing against their 3bet / all in range and we do fairly good the few times we are called.

Short Stack Play

Being outside of the prize pool means we are mostly playing the EV of our hand. Having a good idea of shoving ranges by position and stack sizes is key. We can actually win by being a short stack; “floating” in the prize pool, picking up the right spots to put ICM pressure on players we know are aware and will only call a tight range (or in many cases even fold when a premium hand).

Stealing, restealing and equity denying are going to be our main tools when playing satellites. Adjusting our range to have more all ins and fewer calls; at times expanding or contracting our frequencies using every piece of information we can collect to get an edge.

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