Satellite strategy question

If we for the sake of simplicity say that the prize pool is three 10$ tickets and your opponent stacks are 7BB, 6BB and 6BB, while yours is 9.2BB and you are in a jam against the 7BB, then:

* Your current equity in ICM dollars is $8.42
* If you lose to a shove, you will be left with a 2.2BB and ~$4 in ICM dollars
* If you win you cash and your result is $10 in ICM dollars

So basically on this shove if you lose you lose $4.5 and if you win you win $1.5 and you need 75% equity against your opponent to just break even, which is HUGE. If your opponents are tight enough (and they probably will be against a shove of an opponent that is going to cover them) you can fold queens or even kings (satellites shoving/calling ranges can get ridiculously tight sometimes) at this point.

Up against 6BB it is slightly better, as your are left with $5 in ICM dollars, so it is $3.5 ICM dollars of loss against $1.5 for victory, which is slightly better as now you only need 70% equity which is not much better.

So yeah, probably jamming jacks there wasn't a good idea, but maybe some good satellite grinders would correct my calculations here. And it kinda ignores the fold equity, so the numbers are probably better, but satellite bubble ranges due to their extreme payout structure usually tend to go very tight anyways.

The jam with jacks seems fine, assuming your opponents are playing correctly (which means they should be calling extremely tight). You're not far enough ahead to confidently fold your way into the money. It's just unlucky that you ran into aces. Now if one of your opponents had jammed then I would fold the jacks.

In the second scenario you should be playing tight but not just folding everything. Generally you want to look for places that you can shove and steal, for example, but you want to be extremely tight if considering calling off. Oftentimes you'll only call with something like kings and aces. Obviously though the exact number remaining, stack sizes and other stats make a difference. Avoid bleeding off chips by doing stuff like minraising when you will likely face a shove and have to fold.

Thank you both for the replies.

To give some numbers, it was a 5$ satellite with 50$ prizes. Some of the prizes were already won by a few players reaching a target stack. So this jam with JJ was just after we were 6 with 4 prizes left, and one player knocked someone out, reached the target stack and took a prize. I think he knocked out one of the other bigger stacks, either ahead of me or just below.

Before this, a few players were crazy, shoving A8 or calling a jam with KJ. So i thought a part of their calling range would be massive punts against JJ.

The jam with jacks was correct. Ideally, you don't want to push UTG. However, the stacks are all close. You need to steal badly so short and it is hard for anyone to call. Would be shoving a wide range in the first case. Would open shove ATC from SB with these stacks.

Second case, hard to say without information, but you also need to steal some at some point, probably can't completely fold your way in.

That is correct 🙂 it was as above the type of satellite where if you reach a target stack you win a spot. So maybe by the time I busted it was 42 left with 40 prizes and me sitting last or second last.

It was already a while ago, but i think i folded absolutely everything.

Hi,

Just had another similar case. 5 people left with 4 prizes. Ticket 15x times the satellite buy in.

Sitting second last with 4.4bb. Been kind of card dead and all the previous 2-3 orbits someone shoved and stole the blinds, so no jam call, just jam and folds.

In the BB with AJo. Folds to button who is the last in chips (3.6bb). He jams, SB folds and I call.

Before revealing, was this an ok call?

I would have been last if I folded and down to 3bb in the SB next hand.

Places 1 to 3 had significantly more chips, ca. 8bb to 10bb. So folding would have put me in a tough spot.

Interestingly enough I almost made a comeback after losing the hand in question, but bubbled anyway.

It seems like a good call. It's significant that you cover the other short stack so if you win the hand the tournament is over and you win a ticket. If you lose you're not immediately eliminated and still have a chance.

Okay, I retract my first reply above, as GTO open-shoving ranges are relatively wide in satellites (even wider that ChipEV, as your jams are called very rarely), so it was a relatively normal jam unless you were against people who disregarded ICM heavily. Statement in that post mostly applies to calling, where you need extreme equity for calls

In this case though, I think that it was not a good call. Calling ranges on satellite bubbles are extremely tight, sometimes even folding AKo against late-position raises. But this is an extremely short-stack scenario which can easily be an important factor, so can't say surely here. I wonder if satellite bubble preflop range charts exist somewhere out there.