There are two people in a wood, and they run into a bear. The first person gets down on his knees to pray; the second person starts lacing up his boots. The first person asks the second person, “My dear friend, what are you doing? You can’t outrun a bear.” To which the second person responds, “I don’t have to. I only have to outrun you.”
There’s a hard truth that all poker players must reckon with when playing multi-table tournaments: buy-ins aren’t cheap. There are ways to mitigate the expense of entry, however. One of the most effective ways to do that is by qualifying for the event you want to play via a satellite tournament. Satellites are smaller, more affordable tournaments that award seats to a larger event instead of cash prizes. The number of seats awarded in each satellite typically depends on the event’s expected field size.
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Satellite strategy simplified
There are a number of books that cover satellite tournament strategy in depth, but if you want to play them seriously, we'd recommend Dara O’Kearney’s book Poker Satellite Strategy with Barry Carter.
We've come up with some solid basic satellite strategy below to help you get started.
Satellite tournaments differ from standard MTT tournaments in many ways, but the most important is that everyone is playing for the exact same prize: a seat into the larger event. There are no pay jumps, and no difference between finishing with the most chips or the least. Essentially, it’s the joke about outrunning the bear – in a satellite you don’t have to win, you just need others to lose before you do.
With this in mind, a tight but aggressive strategywill benefit the majority of players in a satellite format. In the early stages of the tournament, accumulating chips is a priority, but as the blinds increase, certain hands lose their value and become essentially unplayable – no more playing suited connectors and small pairs, no more defending the blinds with subpar holdings because you have favorable odds. At a certain point – as the bubble looms – it becomes prudent to tighten your range even more considerably.
When stack sizes become shallow and the blinds are steep, optimal strategy will see some players open-shove their best hands. By moving all-in rather than raising by 2x or 2.5x, you can avoid having to raise and then fold to a re-shove from a player behind. Having a sizable stack at this point in the tournament becomes key as it increases your fold equity considerably. Other players will have to fold strong hands purely because risking the loss of a sizable pot isn’t worth it in the long run.
Avoid the call button
This brings us to another key aspect of satellite play: avoiding the call button. This error represents the biggest mistake players will make in satellites. If you call all-ins too wide, your chances of winning a seat drop drastically. The risk premium that applies to other players calling your shoves also applies to you calling theirs. By tightening the range of hands that you call an all-in with, you avoid unnecessary confrontations that would otherwise cripple your stack.
While it’s important to play a tight range and reduce variance in the later stages of the satellite, it’s equally important to build a stack in the early goings that will enable you to reach the later stages of the tournament. Identifying how many chips you will need to be in a comfortable position as the bubble approaches will help you to dictate how to formulate your strategy throughout.
Finding the 'lock up' zone
From there, you can also determine the stack size that, once reached, puts you in the ‘lock up’ zone. That number will vary per event, but mostly depends on how many seats are on offer. If there are only a handful of seats up for grabs, five or less, the stack size you need to achieve to put yourself in a ‘lock up’ position increases. In a satellite with fifty seats available, the chips are spread amongst more players and the ‘lock up’ marker drops. As the bubble nears, there’s a simple way to determine whether you are close to a guaranteed seat with the stack size you have:
If there are fewer people outside the bubble than there are positions between you and the bubble, you are usually guaranteed a seat.
When you reach this point, the correct and optimal strategy is to fold every single hand you are dealt. The risk of slipping out of the comfort zone by playing hands unnecessarily simply isn’t worth the potential upside. You don’t need any more chips, you only need to wait out the stacks shorter than yours.
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Images Courtesy of World Poker Tour
