The Poker Bus

Satellite Tournament Report

I played a few satellite tournaments to get into the PokerStars $1,050 this weekend. I played 4 or 5 on Saturday without any luck. I got really close though, but that doesn’t mean much in a satellite tournament. Then on Sunday I played one more and won a $1050 seat!

The one I almost won was $30 64 player turbo double shoot out. I made it through the first round pretty smoothly. Everyone was playing really tight so I got a bunch of chips by raising every other hand. Then in the second round it was the complete opposite. Whenever someone would raise a hand, at least half the table would call and try to hit something.

We got down to 3 handed with even stacks, so it was still anybodies game. One player was playing way over aggressive, not letting anybody have his chips and the other was pretty good. Three handed the aggressive guy pushed every hand all in whenever I raised. I had to call him with something and figured I was ahead with pocket 3’s. He had A8o, hit an 8 and I went out in 3rd. I don’t think it was a bad call shorthanded with large blinds.

2st through 5th got $80, but who really cares when you were two players away from 14x that much?

On Sunday I really didn’t want to play poker. I was up all night, my connection was having problems, and I didn’t want to have another satellite upset. I Logged on anyway to see the satellites that were running. The last one left was a $33 turbo rebuy and I ended up clicking register while telling myself not to.

It’s a good thing I did register because I ended up winning the seat. My strategy going into it was to not rebuy or add on, play a good satellite strategy, and get lucky. I don’t think rebuying is going to double your odds at winning or rebuying and adding on isn’t going to give you 3x the odds to win. 50 minutes into these turbo rebuy tournaments the only strategy is calling with marginal hands, stealing to pick up blinds and antes to last another round, stalling, and getting lucky. Bad strategy would be gambling to much or not being able to fold good hands when you’re almost locked into winning a seat.

So I didn’t rebuy, my hands held up and I got lucky by skipping a few blinds. An hour and 45 minutes later I won the seat and I was even the chip leader by almost 2x right before it ended (top 69 out of 755 win). What a relief! I didn’t sleep for more then 30 hours, so I just unregistered and fell asleep till 3am. $250,000 woulda been nice, but i’m also happy with $1000 for more tournaments.

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