Satelite Tournament Strategy
The strategy for satellites is slightly different than other types of
Online Poker Tournaments, the biggest difference being your aim is purely to qualify and not to win it. In a standard tournament, your aim is to win every single chip in order to be crowned the winner, in a satellite winning means nothing more than qualifying, so qualifying in 40th place is every bit as meaningful. The key question in a satellite is how many chips do you need in order to comfortably qualify for the next tournament, once you know this number your goal is to accumulate that amount of chips and then protect them.
For example, in a 100 player satellite where the top 10 players progress through and everybody started with 1500 chips, the average stack size when it gets down to 10 players would be 15,000 chips, so winning slightly more than 15,000 chips is a sensible goal.
The other major difference is the play when nearing the bubble, many players will become ultra tight in the hopes of hanging on for a place, while the big stacks sit on their chips also playing an ultra cautious game in the knowledge that all they need to do is keep hold of their chips, the mid sized stacks should put pressure on the shortstacks in order that they maintain their mid sized stacks aswell as helping to knock out the shortstacks.
