Playing Online Poker Satellite Tournaments

by Randall Anderson

Many people around the world today are playing online poker tournaments at a fantastic rate. In addition to playing in the big tournaments with the huge prizes, many people are also playing in the smaller (satellite) tournaments that get you into the bigger tournaments. What exactly is a poker satellite tournament? Is it a good investment for you?

Online poker satellite tournaments are actually mini-tournaments that get you into a bigger one. The buy-in is much smaller than the big tournament and that is the main reason that people want to play these events. Many of the satellite tournaments offer great bang for your buck and give the average player a chance to get into the big tournament.

So should you take a chance and play in one of these satellite events? There are a few questions you need to ask yourself before deciding to play. The first question you need to ask yourself is do you have the time? I don’t just mean a few minutes either, many of these tournaments take anywhere from 4 to 6 hours to complete. The other big thing to consider is your real chances of getting into the big event. Even if you were a good player I would rate your chances of getting into the bigger event at no more than 40 or 50-1. For the average player the odds are probably greater than 100-1.

Let’s say we do decide to play in the event. How do we improve our chances? To have any shot at winning one of these events you have to be aggressive. You just can’t sit back and wait. I am not saying that you have to take chances right away, but somewhere you are going to have to take some chances. In fact, it will be more than once. The reason you have to take a shot is that to win one of these events you have to get a stack big enough to survive. Once you get to that point you can take fewer chances.

If we can get to the middle part of a tournament with a decent amount o chips we can start deciding how to attack other players. Some people are going to play very carefully trying to survive, while others will be taking huge chances. Identifying these types of players is very important to us. You also want to remember that the bigger your stack, the more power you have over the table. I can’t tell you how many times the big stack runs over the rest of the table in these tournaments.

When it gets close to the money, your play might change a bit. If you are a bigger stack you want to take less risks. You want the shorter stacks to take all the risks so you might want to be careful.

Another thing you might see in these satellites involves the Re-buy tourneys. I don’t like them because your strategy until the Re-buy period has ended is different. So many players go all-in trying for the big stacks that your play also has to be different. If you are in one of these tourneys remember that you have to take more chances because the stacks at the end are going to be larger because of all the Re-buys.

Hopefully you will take some of these tips into account the next time you play in an online poker tournament. I wish you luck and hope that the next online poker satellite tournament you play in is a successful one.