Free Poker Satellite Tournaments
What Kinds of Tournaments Can You Satellite Into? With the explosion of online poker has come an accompanying explosion in satellite tournaments. You can now play a satellite for just about every tournament imaginable, from online poker tournaments with $50 buy ins to the much-ballyhooed $1 million buy in Big One for One Drop at the 2012 WSOP. The World Series of Poker (WSOP) Social Poker site is the best free-to-play poker sites in the world. This poker site and mobile poker app comes from the kitchens of Playtika, the same social. Satellite tournaments are used to transfer large amounts of poor poker players into larger poker tournaments that would normally be far outside of their bankroll limits. Now that we have that confusion cleared up, we can begin to explore the phenomenon known as satellite tournaments. You must use this satellite poker tournaments to build your game. These freeroll tournaments help you to experiment on various strategies. To play these satellite poker tournaments, try to sharpen your bluffing skills and even your ability to bluff, like practicing the art of reading a table and the game of your opponents.
With all the high buy in poker tournaments in the WSOP, WPT and big online poker rooms, many players enter satellite tournaments with the hopes to win their way into these big events.
What is a Satellite Poker Tournament?
A satellite poker tournament offers seats to a larger tournament as prizes instead of cash pay outs. For example, if the buy in for the larger tournament is $10,000 the number of seats given as prizes will be the total tournament entry fees divided by $10,000. If there is $100,000 in entry fees the tournament will award 10 seats to the $10,000 tournament. The final 10 players will win the same prize.
You can find a few different types of satellite tournaments. The two most common are single table satellites and multi table satellites.
Single table tournaments usually only award one seat in the larger tournament, but they can award two or more. A single table satellite tournament for a $1,000 buy in larger tournament would have an entry fee of $100 plus whatever the vig is the poker room is charging. You might see the fee listed as $100 + $10 or $100 + $15.
Multiple table satellite tournaments divide the prizes like the $100,000 tournament example above. If they have money left over that doesn’t equal another entry the last player eliminated generally wins it as a cash prize.
Understand the Pay Outs
If you want to have the best chance to win a seat in a satellite poker tournament you need to make sure you know exactly where you need to finish. When there are 10 seats being awarded and you are the chip leader with 12 players left you probably shouldn’t play another hand. There’s absolutely no reason to risk any of your chips, even with pocket aces, unless you can’t fold long enough for two more players to be eliminated.
In satellite tournaments you aren’t playing to win. You are only playing to finish high enough to win a seat in the next tournament. It doesn’t matter if you have millions of chips or one chip left, as long as you win a seat.
Basic Satellite Poker Strategy
Knowing how many places win seats to the next level, the first things I do is determine roughly how many chips an average stack will have at that point in the tournament.
You can quickly do this by multiplying the starting chip stack size by the total number of entrants and dividing by the number of places that win a seat. Here is an example.
In a tournament with a starting chip stack size of 1,500 with 103 entrants where 10 players win seats the average chip stack when the play gets to 10 players will be 15,450.
The reason this is important is because it helps you visualize how unimportant small wins are early in the tournament and to see how many times you would need to double up in order to compete.
Of course blinds and smaller pots cause your stack to go up and down but you generally need to double up three to four times in order to reach a comfortable chip level and have a good chance to win a seat.
But when you only have an average chip stack you are also constantly in danger of being eliminated.
Advanced Satellite Poker Strategy
Playing winning satellite poker strategy is a fine line between being too patient and being too reckless. Early in the tournament it’s generally a good idea to be patient and look for opportunities to use your strongest hands to double up when possible.
As the tournament progresses you can usually loosen up a little and take advantage of the players who are playing too tight. Stealing blinds and small pots in the middle and late stages of a tournament can start adding to your stack quickly.
You need to be aware of your opponent’s stack sizes so you can avoid confrontations with players who are pot committed when you are trying to steal. For example, if a player only has 500 behind and already has 300 or more in the pot it may be difficult to get them to fold. You don’t want to force them to play unless you’re fairly sure you have the best hand.
Of course this can work to your advantage when there are only a few players left before the seats are awarded. The lowest stacks are trying to hang on until someone else busts out so you can pressure them.
Should You Play Satellite Tournaments or Buy In Directly?
Free Poker Satellite Tournaments List
If you can afford to buy into a tournament directly should you consider trying to win a seat in a satellite tournament? When you can win a seat in only a few tries it will often cost less than a direct buy in, but you could also hit a run of bad luck that can hurt your bankroll.
Only you can decide the best answer to this question, but here are the general guidelines I use when deciding to try to win a satellite or buy in directly. When I have the time to play multiple satellite tournaments if I need to I’ll generally try to win my seat in a satellite.
My reasoning is if I can’t win a seat in six or seven tries then I probably shouldn’t be playing in the bigger tournament anyway. Of course I’ve also played a few satellites and then bought in directly a few times.
Most satellite tournament structures work at around a 10 to 1 ratio. In other words one out of every 10 entrants wins a seat in the bigger tournament. You can find satellite tournaments with much larger ratios, but I usually avoid them. For example, you might find one that has a $10 entry fee that is awarding seats at a $500 tournament so only one out of every 50 entrants will win a seat. There’s nothing wrong with these types of satellite tournaments but I don’t care for them.
Conclusion
Satellite poker tournaments can be a great way to gain entry into bigger tournaments. Make sure you understand the payout structure and follow the basic and advanced advice listed above and you may find yourself playing in a big tournament before you know it.
Free Satellite Poker Tournaments
A satellite can be a fairly useful thing but for poker fans, it provides a gateway to a new world. And this is not through the ability to watch more poker events on foreign TV channels; it is to do with the ability to play your way into one of the major poker events of the world. When it comes to work poker events, the World Poker Tour obviously stands out and it is possible to play your way into contention at a World Poker Tour event by qualifying through the satellite route.
As you know, there are many online poker sites to choose from but some players will base their decision on what site to use depending on what satellites they offer. There are some sites which have an affiliation or link to certain events and they will regularly host satellite tournaments which allow players to play for the opportunity of gaining a seat at a major event. This is where your World Poker Tour bonus code can have a great impact as this is a site where you can gain access to some of the hottest events on the World Poker Tour circuit.
What a way to get to a major event
Each event and site can have their own rules on how they run satellite tournaments but they all provide a great way to get to an event. Some of the satellite tournaments can be entered for free but there will be a requirement to play a lot of poker before you get to the final stage to book your chance at a big event.
Even if the satellite event requires a buy-in fee, it will be for a much smaller price than the buy-in for the actual event. For instance, a $100 buy-in for a satellite event may sound like a lot of money but if the actual buy-in for the WPT event is $1,000, it is easy to see the scope for making a great saving. Add in the fact that many satellite winners are rewarded with travel, accommodation and even spending money for their trip and it becomes obvious that playing your way to poker success with satellite tournaments is a great way to get involved at a major event.
Can you be the next rags to riches story?
There are some rags to riches stories of satellite players making their way all through a tournament with the most famous story of all being Chris Moneymaker who turned his initial $40 buy-in into the $2.5m first prize. That is not the sort of story that happens every day but it does allow people to dream of what could happen and given that the buy-in price for these satellite events is reasonable, many players are willing to take a chance. After all, successful poker can rely on making the most of your bankroll and taking this chance is not something that seems too stretching for many poker players.
When it comes to WPT events, there are a number of great satellites that players can take a chance on winning. The WPT has added a more European flavour to its calendar in recent seasons and even the tail end of the 9th season features some big European dates. Vienna and Bratislava are two stunning cities to visit but for poker fans, the only attraction they will want to see will be the final table at these two events. The WPT Vienna and WPT Bratislava events are eagerly anticipated and players that have won through to these events by playing through a satellite event have had even more reason to celebrate. Not only have they triumphed over a number of other poker players, they have the chance to face off against some of the biggest names in world poker. It is not always about the money and having the chance to pit poker skills against the best in the business is something that most people dream of.
Being given the buy-in opportunity, accommodation, travel and spending money to make the most of your time in these wonderful cities means that there is so much to gain from entering satellite tournaments that it is a surprise that more people do not enter them. Yes, they are hotly contested but with the right conditions and attitude, every player could say they are in the frame to win the prize. There is also the added bonus that these satellite events will often send more than one lucky winner to the tournament, providing a greater incentive to play the satellite events.