Shove or min raise in satellites? l Barry's Strategy Corner
After some recent satellite success, Barry Carter shares some thoughts, and backs them up with data, on how much to bet on satellite bubbles.
I have recently had a lot of success in satellites. Actually to be fair I have always done well in them, but recently I have started posting about it on Instagram (pictures below).
One of the reasons recently has been because a lot of calling stations play them during the January to April period, ahead of big events like the WSOP and Irish Open. Another reason is that once you get to the business end, the players are not aggressive enough.
It is GTO correct to shove most of your range when you are very near the bubble in satellites. It maximises fold equity and we don't need to build a stack, we just need to maintain it. The other reason to do it is because if you make a standard open, and get reshoved on, you will have to fold strong hands because of the ICM pressure.
However, when the opponents are not firing back at you, you can get away with min raising your range.
Playing against passive satellite grinders
To demonstrate what I mean, here is the GTO range for the HJ on a satellite bubble, where everyone has 20bbs. Don't scrunch up your eyes trying to make out every hand, pay attention to the frequencies.
What you are looking at is the HJ makes a 20bb shove with 65.8% of their range (a very wide range because in theory everyone should fold most of their range) and the only opens are AA and Q2o as a bluff. So practically we shove our whole range.
What happens when we open instead? I locked the range so that the HJ opened 88+, A9s+ ATo+ and KQs - a pretty solid range, and what you can see afterwards are the reshove ranges for each player after that.
Even the CO shoves 33.4% of the time and the BB shoves two thirds of the time. They are all exploiting the ICM pressure of the situation. In GTO World, the only hand the HJ should be calling to the reshove is Aces, which begs the question, why open at all? That's why we shove instead.
However, I locked the ranges again, so that each player after the HJ only reshoved with 99+ and ATo+. Mirroring players who don't bluff in the final stages. When I did that, our min raising range became this:
So to shove or not to shove in satellites? The simple answer is, are your opponents competent enough to realise they can exert massive ICM pressure on you by reshoving, or are they only ever doing it with value hands?
Against the passive players, you can get away with min raising, against good regulars, just stick to shoves and give them the tough decision.
