Some thoughts on turbo satellites

I like tourneys. I like high-buyin (online) ones, but I don’t have the bankroll to be buying into them (at least not on a regular basis). Because of that, I play lots of satellites to get into events like the Sunday tourneys or any tourney with a buyin of $200 or more. However, because I have a decent earn rate at SNGs or cash games, when I play satellites, I like to play the turbos.

The turbo satellites are so fascinating to me, especially when there are multiple seats awarded. On Monday I played the party poker $11 “speed” satellite for their Sunday million guaranteed. Their structure is quite different from the turbo satellites at either paradise or stars. At paradise, you have a 1 hour rebuy period, but the blinds go up (relatively slowly), resulting in blinds of 600/1200 right after the rebuy period. At stars, the blinds also go up slow, but the rebuy period is only a half hour. At party, the rebuy period is one hour, but the blinds are just silly-large at the end of an hour. I made it through the rebuy period with a decent stack. There were 18 left at the end of the rebuy period, and 8 seats were being awarded, along with $80 for 9th and $50 for 10th.

After a couple steals, we got to the final table. I had a couple interesting hands.

The blinds were 15K/30K here.


#Game No : 4802250209
***** Hand History for Game 4802250209 *****
NL Texas Hold'em Trny:26461697 Level:16 Blinds-Antes(15000/30000-700) - Monday, July 24, 22:53:22 ET 2006
Table Sunday Million Satellite Speed Rebuy(774480) Table #1 (Real Money)
Seat 8 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 1: WHOWHODAT ( $14308 )
Seat 2: sidse111 ( $90883 )
Seat 3: Hunter_321 ( $18704 )
Seat 4: HERO ( $48050 )
Seat 5: Amsterdam52 ( $85196 )
Seat 6: LWolf45 ( $56186 )
Seat 7: dcpremer ( $48522 )
Seat 8: AZSlick57 ( $68812 )
Seat 9: caarrr111 ( $18556 )
Seat 10: AABADBOYKK ( $141783 )
Trny:26461697 Level:16
Blinds-Antes(15000/30000-700)
WHOWHODAT posts ante [700].
sidse111 posts ante [700].
Hunter_321 posts ante [700].
HERO posts ante [700].
Amsterdam52 posts ante [700].
LWolf45 posts ante [700].
dcpremer posts ante [700].
AZSlick57 posts ante [700].
caarrr111 posts ante [700].
AABADBOYKK posts ante [700].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to HERO [ Ks Ah ]
WHOWHODAT will be using his time bank for this hand.
WHOWHODAT folds.
sidse111 folds.
Hunter_321 will be using his time bank for this hand.
Hunter_321 folds.
AABADBOYKK: 20k/40k in 2 mins
Amsterdam52: Smart your out two hands good delay
Your time bank will be activated in 5 secs. If you do not want it to be used, please act now.
HERO folds.
Amsterdam52 folds.
LWolf45 folds.
dcpremer folds.
AZSlick57 is all-In [68112]
lol
caarrr111 will be using his time bank for this hand.
now whos stalling lol
lol
caarrr111 did not respond in time.
caarrr111 folds.
AABADBOYKK folds.
AZSlick57 does not show cards.
AZSlick57 wins 120112 chips
Game #4802272331 starts.


I thought this was a no-brainer. Sb is all in, and utg will be all in on the next hand (or close enough). I won’t be all in when sb is all in, so should survive if he makes a move.

But, no one busted here. So …. This hand came up

#Game No : 4802290725
***** Hand History for Game 4802290725
*****NL Texas Hold'em Trny:26461697
Level:16 Blinds-Antes(15000/30000-700) - Monday, July 24, 22:58:38 ET 2006
Table Sunday Million Satellite Speed Rebuy(774480)
Table #1 (Real Money)
Seat 10 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 1: WHOWHODAT ( $32816 )
Seat 2: sidse111 ( $89483 )
Seat 3: Hunter_321 ( $17304 )
Seat 4: HERO ( $46650 )
Seat 5: Amsterdam52 ( $83796 )
Seat 6: LWolf45 ( $54786 )
Seat 7: dcpremer ( $47122 )
Seat 8: AZSlick57 ( $119412 )
Seat 9: caarrr111 ( $2156 )
Seat 10: AABADBOYKK ( $97475 )
Trny:26461697
Level:16Blinds-Antes(15000/30000-700)
Everyone posts ante [700].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to HERO[ Jd Js ]
folded to HERO.
HERO is all-In [45950]
Everyone folds
HERO does not show cards.
HERO wins 97950 chips
Game #4802302977 starts.

Here, I figured that I would be blinded out without a steal. There are 2 players who would both have a chance of busting before me, but they easily might not bust. So I pushed. I hoped I would not be called, but if called I hoped it was by a short stack with Ax. I picked up the blinds and then simply stalled, stalled stalled, and easily won (5 hands before the bb got back to me).

Several players were really angry about the stalling. I don’t think they realized they were at a disadvantage, they just thought it “wasn’t poker”. Well, they are right, but having a big blind equal to 2/3 of the average stack is not poker either. It is not poker at this point, it is a tournament. Players who are more skilled at tourneys tend to do well in these turbos, as they understand how to play the end game of tourneys. Thankfully many players do not.

I am moving Friday, so won’t post again for a few days. Next time I will post “the house that poker built”.

Up then down in a 4-day run.

I will continue with my history soon, but figured I would post about the weekend. I am working on my SH limit game after ITHer Jmega (a proven winner at SH limit) let me watch him and I learned a ton – mainly about where my leaks were. I also played quite a few SNGs and a bit of PL Omaha. Thursday and Friday I was really hot, crushing my limit game and rolling through SNG cashes at a sick rate. Over the weekend I lost some back but I am still a nice winner of the past 4 days. What astounds me about SH limit is the number of fish – far, far more than you see at full ring. The big downside is the downward swings are much nastier when the donkeys are hitting since you are constantly playing hands. The upswings are nice, however.

I am moving soon so won’t be playing much this next week – hopefully that small break energizes my game!

A brief history of gambling and poker with Poker Elmo – part 2.

After the sportsbetting fiasco, I decided that sportsbetting was not for me. But blackjack, yes blackjack, now that is where I would make money. I bought books and starting learning how to count cards. In MN, you could legally gamble at 18 and there were several casinos around. I turned 18 shortly after I graduated from high school and I was ready. Armed with a very loose knowledge of how to count cards and the willingness to risk up to $30 meant that I was destined for success. Quite surprisingly, however, things did not work out quite the way I had hoped. Perhaps it was because counting through 8 decks was not necessarily exciting, or that I spent more time hitting on the female gambling degenerates at the table with me, but my losses came as often as wins. It surely could not have been my lack of card-counting talent, so it must have been something else.

As I went off to college, I could not gamble often anymore (you must be 21 years old to gamble in most states), so my gambling adventures were limited to when I came home from school. What better thing for a broke college student to do than go to the casino? More time passed, and as I was entering my senior year of college, I realized that I should give sports betting a shot again. I was pretty smart, and surely could pick enough winners to make a profit. Well … the only positive thing I could say this time is I did not convince my friends it would be a good idea. Only I lost money here, but this spanking from the sportsbooks convinced me again that I should not gamble on sports.

I graduated from college and decided that the whole “get a job” movement was overrated, so I decided to stay in school. While I admired the tenacity of my friends who were going to take 8 years to get a bachelor’s degree, after 4 years in college I found myself in graduate school. I was quite busy with schoolwork there, and even though I lived 25 minutes from a casino, I did not go gambling too often. A few times a year I might go play blackjack, but that was it. My wife and I would host get togethers for my grad school friends and we would play micro-stakes poker. But I was pretty focused on grad school and was not thinking about gambling as any sort of serious activity …

A brief history of gambling and poker with Poker Elmo – part 1.

For almost as long as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gambler. I guess it probably started on the day the school year ended in 3rd grade. It was one of those half-days that end the year, so we were out at noon. My parents took my brother and I to the Canterbury downs (now Canterbury park) race track. I mean, they did not want to make the mistake of having kids who did not know what it mean to hit a trifecta or the daily double. They gave us $20 – enough to bet $2 on every race. But there was a catch. We only got to keep the $20 if we bet on each race. The thrill of watching the horses run down the track was amazing. I ended up with a 15% ROI and a profit of $3 – which was a pretty big deal to me back then. I was hooked.

Through my grade school and early high school years, I gambled sporadically. There were occasional poker games, although those were mostly at large family gatherings so it was not too often. For a short period of time in 6th grade our class was heavy into “flipping quarters”. In this game, you and a friend each flip a quarter in the air. One calls “even” if they think they both will end up on the same side or “odd” if they think they will not. I picked up tells on most people as they had a certain rhythm, so I could figure out whether they would get heads or tails based on whether it was heads up or tails up in their hand. After I kept winning (up over $10 - big stakes for us) the other kids stopped playing. Then my gambling ended for a while – really, for several years.

In the summer before my senior year of high school, as an avid football fan, I decided it would be a great idea to start wagering on football games. I even convinced about a half-dozen of my friends to start as well. We decided it would be a great idea to enlist in a service that predicts games (we were not very smart). The cost was not too high, but the picks were lousy. That being said, it is not like I could pick winners much better. I took a relatively major loss for a high school student and pushed thoughts of professionally gambling out of my mind, at least for moment. In the back of my head, however, I knew I would be back. In did not take long before I jumped back in …..

Welcome to Elmo's World!

I could not resist the temptation to join the blog world. Here I plan to discuss my ups and downs of poker playing. Which currently involves me trying to figure out on exactly what form of poker I should focus (NL SNGs, NL MTTs, SH limit, PL omaha).

Later
E