If you thought that playing satellite games with progressive jackpot just wasn’t worth your time in the world of poker, it’s time for you to rethink that mentality. You see, satellite games can really be profitable if you know what you’re dong. The real secret? “Knowing what you’re doing” in satellite play is a lot different than what you might be used to in regular poker. It’s one thing to assume that you will be able to crush the competition in a regular heads up game, but satellite play is a little different.
For one, the stakes are different. You’re not trying to get into first place. You’re just trying to beat a certain percentage, and the numbers need to work in your favor. For example, you might need to be in the top ten percent, which is different from saying the top 10. Knowing this difference will actually get you a lot farther than you might expect.
From here, you will need to really think about whether or not you’re going to adjust your play. There are a lot of weak players that tend to flock to satellite tournaments, but that doesn’t mean that you throw strategy out the window and play based on your gut. You think about how to overcome the weaker players and shake them off as fast as possible.
So, in the early game this means that you will need to take as many of the flops as you can, but you don’t want to get too risky. If this means limping into pots, then you might want to do that. Again, go back to poker statistics and poker pot odds — it’s highly unlikely to steer you wrong! You will need to watch the table and look for patterns. Since satellites do tend to attract weak players, you can usually spot patterns and plug them up fast so that you don’t get caught with your pants down, so to speak. 🙂
As the game progresses, you will want to slowly accumulate chips until you have a big stack. This will let you take bigger risks, and risks are really where the rewards are. Again, if you’re not someone that can take calculated risk, then satellite play probably won’t interest you as much as it would another player that can understand the difference between managed risk and unmanaged risk.
Overall, you’ll find that satellite play does take some getting used to. If you make sure that you’re switching up your playing style as you go deeper into the game, there’s really no reason why you can’t do well in any satellite you play in — good luck!