Satellites: how to win a ticket, and why first place does not matter

Say a satellite costs $1.10 and pays one $11 ticket for every ten entries. With 50 players there are five tickets, and the player who finishes first gets the same ticket as the player who finishes fifth. Chips above the amount you need to finish fifth are worth nothing. That is the whole idea, and everything below follows from it.

Work out the target before the first hand. The chips in play divided by the number of tickets is the average stack at the end. With 50 players, 10,000 chips each and five tickets, that is 100,000 chips per ticket. You rarely need the full average, because a few players will hold far more than they need, so about 60 to 70% of it is usually enough to be safe. Keep an eye on the lobby as the field thins and recompute.

Early in a satellite you play tight and avoid coin flips, because winning a flip adds chips you may not need and losing one ends the tournament. A hand that is a clear call for stacks in a normal tournament, such as a pair of queens against a shove, is often a fold in a satellite when you already have a healthy stack. Chips you might lose are worth far more than chips you might win, more so than in any other tournament, because the prize does not grow with the stack.

Take the cheap chips: steal the blinds from late position when the players behind you are tight, which in a satellite they usually are, and let the loose players knock each other out. Every bust-out that is not yours moves you closer to the line.

From the middle of a satellite on, the question is not what you hold but where you stand. Count the players left, the tickets, and your stack against the target. If you are above the target, your job is to lose as few chips as possible: fold almost everything, including hands you would never fold elsewhere, and let the clock and the short stacks do the work. If you are below, you need chips, and the time to get them is now, while a shove still gets folds from the players who are above the line and will not risk their seat.

A medium stack that is a little short should pick on the big stacks that have locked up a seat, because they fold to anything, and avoid the other short stacks, who have to call.

With one player to go before the tickets, the right play for a stack above the target is to fold every hand, aces included. A pair of aces wins about 85% of the time against a random all-in. The other 15% costs you a seat worth ten buy-ins, and the wins give you chips that are worth nothing. There is no hand strong enough to risk a locked seat for, which is the one place in poker where folding aces before the flop is right.

If you are the short stack on the bubble, the reverse is true. The blinds will eat you, so shove before they do, into the players who have the most to lose: the ones just above the line, who will fold anything. Do not shove into another short stack, who has to call with any two cards.

A big stack on the bubble has a third job: to put pressure on. Shoving into medium stacks that cannot afford to call wins pot after pot without a showdown, and every pot you take makes the next short stack's bust-out more likely. The tournament calculator shows how little a chip is worth to a player who is already safe.

Once the number of players left equals the number of tickets, the satellite is over and everyone left has the same prize. In a cash-prize tournament the fight for first would start here; in a satellite there is nothing to fight for. Some rooms end the satellite at that point; where play continues for a small cash difference, the stakes are tiny next to the ticket.

Then decide what to do with the ticket. Playing the target tournament is the point, but check the terms: some tickets can be unregistered for tournament money and some cannot, and a ticket for a tournament you cannot attend is wasted. The formats guide explains how satellites fit with the other games in the lobby, and the tournament or cash game page is the rest of tournament thinking.

• Playing for first. There is no first. Chips above the target are worth nothing.
• Calling a shove with a good hand while above the line. A locked seat is worth more than any hand.
• Waiting too long when short. Shove while a shove still gets folds; the blinds do not wait.
• Shoving into other short stacks. They have to call. Shove into the stacks that have a seat to protect.
• Not counting. Know the players left, the tickets and the target at every break.