blonde poker forum

Hi all you maths genii (ok, and the rest of you),

I've never really played many sats, and haven't played much on Stars, but just thought I'd give it a go. Stuck in a few dollars and played a $10 rebuy to a $320 buy-in WCOOP thing. Qualified, which was nice, and unregistered.

Am thinking I might try and play a few more of these, build up a W$/T$ bankroll and then actually use it to try and qualify for some stuff.

So my question really is - when you get close to the bubble, where is the stage where it's best to just shut up shop? Or how do you work it out? I guess some sort of ICM calculator would do it, but I can't find one that's any use if more than 5 places are being paid.

In the sat I played today, the top 13 got a seat. Those top 13 had an average of 35k chips when play stopped. Blinds 1.5/3k, ante of 150 (I think). (6-max tables, if it makes any sort of difference).

When down to 15, I was about 7th with about 33k. So basically safe, and I didn't play a hand. Bottom two had 7k and 10k. Then it went something like 14k, 19k, and maybe 3 players from 20-22k.

Obviously 7k needs to find a hand and play it heads-up if he can. 10k too, as he can't really afford to take the blinds again.

But what's your range here with 14k? And what's the chance that those with 19-22k are safe and can just sit back? Obviously they can try and shove at stacks they can badly hurt to pick up blinds - but do they need to?

Is there any way of working out what kind of percentage chance they have of qualifying if they just fold everything but AA?

Any help or tips on this or any ideas where to look would be much appreciated - many thanks.


Maybe this should go in PHA, not really sure...

in bubble of satellite tournament, no need to play a hand if your in the top half stack unless u pick up AA KK QQ etc as u have a seat GTD if u just fold your way there.... let the short stacks battle for the last couple of seats and let other stacks pick them off, or bully them down.... if u pick up a genuine hand, try make i heds up, or just steal the large blinds - which will give u more time to just fold fold fold... i mean whats the point in trying to steal blinds when BB SB could have u outchipped, reraise u and take u out when u got a seat gtd....? no need for it. sit back, play PREMIUM only unless ur chip daddy vs shortest stack...try take him out?

All your info is perfectly correct Adam, but its not answering Mos's questions...

i don't think they have to much maths in them but aristons articles on betfair cover sat strategy very well. Someone will have a link....

In a sattelite like the one you played you can be sure that they will donk eachother out fairly quickly but playing for actual big buy in seats you may find it a little tougher.

my personal rule is i won't start to worry as long as my stack size poses a threat to the largest stack at the table, between a 1/3 and a half of his stack.

People always talk about shutting up shop in these situations, but I think that you should still be looking to pick up a set of blinds once per round, simply to maintain your position. Sometimes these bubble situations can go on much longer than you may think, and if you literally don't play a hand, what was safe, becomes 'if those two double up I'm in trouble'.

Obviously if you get any resistance from your blind steals (which should be based predominantly on position/player/chip stacks - cards are irrelevant because you're not playing them to showdown) you don't get cute (unless you have a good hand and it's a shortstack you're up against). You should be targetting the mediumish stacks as their blinds are up for anyone to take.

So there is virtually no place it is correct to shut up shop, IMO. You don't want to take any hand to showdown (even AA) so you never want to get to a situation where you may have to play a hand to the end to stay in.

Some ramblings from me.

As far as equity is concerned, I think that the important factor is that any chips held greater than the “winning average” (i.e. total chips divided by seats) are worthless and that this means that a big stack’s worthless chips lower the effective winning average. 

Tactically, the situation is very dependent on what the larger stacks decide to do with their worthless chips (do they use them to get blinded or to take on smaller stacks), the M of the under average stacks (are they so short that they are likely to call any raise) and your table position relative to the stack sizes (are big/medium stacks acting after you). 

So the situation is quite dynamic, but certainly if you have an average stack, you still should attack the blinds of the medium and short stacks if the larger stacks aren’t doing so and your table position allows it i.e they are in acting after you in your half of the table.  So obviously there are going to be times when table position completely restricts you.  However, don’t necessarily be put off by big stacks if a small stack is in the big blind.  If you raise 2.5x, the big stack reraises and the small stack folds, you have still achieved the objective of keeping the small stack under pressure and the chips that the big stack took off both of you are worthless to him.

Sorry :) i tried musta mis understood his Qs

Thanks for these, interesting.