Poker Articles

Satellites

Turn on your television at any given time of the day (or night), and I’d be willing to bet you’ll find at least one (or more) poker shows dominating the airwaves. Poker has arrived and it’s now more mainstream than ever. Most of the poker shows you see on TV are edited versions of big buy-in tournaments, such as the World Series of Poker, the World Poker Tour and Poker After Dark. The players we love to watch on these shows are required to put up their own buy-ins, which is part of what makes them so compelling to viewers. How they come up with that money, however, is a whole other story.

Sure, a lot of them have been so successful in tournaments and cash games that they can afford to draw the money from their enormous poker bankrolls, but these players are the overwhelming minority. Most tournament players today take advantage of a thing called satellites, a smaller buy-in tournament that awards a buy-in to a larger tournament to its winner(s). Satellites are held at all of the major poker tournaments and afford players with tighter bankrolls the opportunity to play in big buy-in events for a fraction of the cost.

You might remember a fellow by the name of Chris Moneymaker, who won the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event and $2.5 million dollars in prize money. Chris won his buy-in to the main event via a $39 satellite on an Internet poker site called Poker Stars, an event that sparked a major boom in the poker industry. Today, Internet poker sites host thousands upon thousands of satellites each year for live tournaments around the world, some which you can enter for free using frequent player points, or points you earn for your play on a specific site.

The two most popular forms of satellites are single table and super satellites. Single table satellites typically have between 9-10 players and in most cases reward only the top one or two finishers. The structure of these types of satellites is very similar to sit’n’go tournaments, in that the blinds increase rather quickly in relation to your starting stack size. These tournaments rarely take more than an hour to complete and require knowledge of situational play and strategy. Often times, casinos will host single table satellites in which the prize is entry into a larger satellite, quite similar to the kind Chris Moneymaker won in 2003.

Super satellites are structured much like the tournaments their entrants are trying to win a buy-in to. These multi-table tournaments will often host anywhere between 27 players to 500 players, and the number gets even higher when you consider the online game. Super satellites award as many entries into the larger event as they are able and pay smaller cash prizes with any excess money left in the pool. Because of the fact that all of the big winners of super satellites earn the same prize, the strategy towards the end of these tournaments is a bit different than in a normal multi-table tournament. Your goal is simply to cash, making it less profitable for you to get involved with too many hands late in the tournament if you’ve built yourself a large chip stack. Super satellites can last many hours, but the rewards are great.

The opportunities are endless. Find yourself an affordable satellite and try your luck. You never know – you could be the next Chris Moneymaker! Good luck!

By Garry Gates
Poker Expert