How to play top heavy satellites l Strategy with Barry

How should you play satellites where one person gets a massive prize and everybody else gets the same prize?

I was recently shown a hand from a PowerPath final table. PowerPath is an unusual format because it is both an ICM Extreme Satellite but also a top-heavy payout structure. This means that it's not always clear-cut what one should do facing all-ins. 

In the hand in question, the overall winner got a $10,000 Gold Pass, and the next five players got a $2,500 Silver Pass. There were seven players in total, and they had already locked up a $530 Bronze Pass. 

This creates an unusual ICM dynamic where we both really want to avoid bubbling for the $2,500 Silver Pass, but we also have to accumulate all the chips to lock up that $10,000 Gold Pass. 

I ran the hand by a number of people, all of whom got the hand wrong in one direction. I, however, got the hand wrong in the other direction. 

The push and pull of ICM

This was the table setup, and it was UTG who shoved under the gun for 10.5bbs. The Hero in the hand had 12 bbs, which was exactly average. 

Everyone I ran this hand by felt that this was AA and nothing else for the calling range. The player in question folded KK. I, however, felt the range should be much wider and opted for 99+ and AQ+. 

This is the actual calling range in GTO World:

Here we see ICM create an interesting push and pull. We have to be incredibly tight because it's a bubble, but we also want to win the top prize. The really interesting thing for me is that on extreme bubbles, unpaired hands tend to go out of the window. AK is often a trivial fold in spots like this. 

However, in this particular spot, AK performs particularly well against the shoving range, which, in GTO world, is predominantly just all the Ace-x. 

I thought it was a very interesting hand, most notably because it feels like this is a spot where good players over-fold. It's one of the reasons why I am am intrigued by the PowerPath format in general, because it creates some unique dynamics people are not used to in satellites.