Satellite Introducion: Strategies for Null Limit Hold'em Poker

Null Limit Hold'em Satellites Introduction

Satellite introducion Null Limit Hold'em Satellites. Welcome to this bundle for BBC Poker where we're going to talk about satellites and everything pertaining to them under the Null Limit Hold'em format. So about your instructor here, I won a pile at low to high stakes and I'm experienced in several Null Limit Hold'em formats.

Instructor Background and Experience

I should properly introduce myself, my name's Ryan. Some of you guys know me as NewGuy89 on Starz. We've probably battled at the tables at some point, given how much volume I've played over the years, but recent times I've also been playing on GG Poker or WSOP, whatever they call it these days.

And so my background is Null Limit Hold'em, pretty much every format that exists. I started playing poker with cash games, so micro stakes cash to low stakes, and from there I branched out with different stack sizes. I experimented with short stacking before we really had calculators.

I remember doing Excel before any of this GTO wizard type stuff came out. So, been in the trenches, deep cash, six max hyper sit and gos, I picked those up a little later, and then from there I branched to different sit and go formats. I was playing nine mans, 18 mans, 50-50s, double or nothings, pretty much every single format of Null Limit Hold'em that exists.

I've played it, I've studied it, I've looked at it in different calculators and run sims, and have battled thousands of hands in everything you can name. So, been around the block, and then of course MTTs, I've played a lot of those over the years. I started really picking up the volume in 2017, but before that I was mostly playing cash and sit and gos, or even just cash.

Sit and gos didn't really come until mid-2016, I think, or 15. But yeah, so I've played a lot of different games, and I've done a lot of work and a lot of grind at the sit and go satellite games on STARS. So, that's what kind of led me into the MTT world, was originally I was more interested in the satellite sit and gos, and then MTTs were just a byproduct of being interested in those games.

Satellite Tournament Results and Analysis

And so here I am, I'm going to talk to you guys about satellite tournaments. Just propping up the results here. Yeah, this is from 2015-ish or whatever, like when I started dabbling into sit and gos and MTTs.

And I have filtered only from 1 to 2200 here for the buy-in, because one, my average buy-in is not that high, uh, as you can see, 45. Given that I played a ton of sit and gos, but MTTs is probably more like 100-ish, low hundreds. And I haven't really put any volume in beyond 2200. I've definitely flicked a few, you know, big stakes stuff here and there if I've sat it in. But most of those tournaments, if not all, no, not all of them. I've de-gen flicked a couple, not gonna lie.But most of the tournaments I sell most of the action for the bigger stuff. So I didn't feel like it was totally necessary to throw on the graph. And full disclosure, I'm down in those games.

So not like infinite, because I haven't played that many, but you know, shave a couple off this and call it a day, I suppose. But that's roughly what the rake back is. I averaged, so to tell you how I came up with this result, I averaged the rake back to be 35%.

Oh, you can see the top left. At one point, of course, it was more. At one point, it was even a little less.

And then in recent times, it's quite a bit more with some of the sites. WSOP being very on the high end with that. But yeah, so that's overall the results here, including all your tournaments, satellite, and sit and go games wrapped up.

Lessons from the Flatline Period

Now, you can see, I think this is worth commenting on from a kind of like an experience and like an instructional takeaway and some lessons I learned. During this period, you see like, forgive me, I'm new. Okay, my mouse is not Oh, there it is.

Okay. Yeah. So you see this period right here where it looks like I'm not really making a whole lot.

I'd slow grind up and not really too much going on there. And what was happening during this time was I started getting into trading stocks trading crypto, wasn't really paying a whole lot of attention to poker, although I was grinding out Cinco sats a lot, and some cincos as well as I think I was doing some spins in there. And during that time, I wasn't really studying much for Nolan Holden tournaments, I was just firing every Sunday as if, oh, I I've been winning for you know, the past decade.

So I you could say maybe I just didn't run so good in the tournaments, because what was happening was I was skipping all the weeknight, you know, soft nightly tournaments that kind of like prop up your results. Going into Sunday, I wasn't playing as many Fridays. And so I'm playing a lot of high variance games with a high average buy in.

And I went sideways for a bit. What ended up happening during this flatline was I realized I'm not really putting as much effort or time into studying this game as in depth as I used to. And my results just don't seem to be what they were before.

Now it could be variance, but I suspect that it could not be variance because here I am acknowledging that I'm not putting in as much effort. And so I started really hammering down near that tail end. And it wasn't long after where I ended up banking some Sunday tournament for whatever on GG and call it luck, call it random.

But I remember being very focused on that day and in the zone. And I think if you really want to do poker as a profession and really hit it hard, or just even just get really good results from it, you're going to have to put in the work and stay on top of things. And it's quite clear.In hindsight, I just knew that I wasn't putting effort in. But during those moments where I was grinding, it just felt like there was maybe a bit of entitlement. So that kind of entitlement tilt is something to watch out for.

It can creep up at any moment. And it can get you when things are running, running really hot. Because if you see this spike here on the graph, right there.

I remember distinctly after I won this tournament, it's like a 500 on stars. I remember thinking like, okay, I'm pretty set now. I'm just gonna actually flick Sundays and go explore like crypto and all that.

And sure enough, from that point, I didn't really win a whole lot of money. So there's a big lesson in there. And I don't mean like stay on this graph for so long.

But I felt like it's really worth. It's really worth identifying those times because we don't want to forget any mistakes that we've made in the past. Otherwise, we're destined to repeat them.

And I think if anyone learns from this, by me, showing and telling, then and not having to undergo that phase for too long, at least themselves, then that's great. Save somebody from potential destruction. Moving on.

Satellites vs. MTTs: Key Differences

So satellites versus entities, we're going to talk a little bit about what the differences are. Compare them. Yeah, not sure there's a difference here.

So take a look at these structures. Okay. On the left, you've got your traditional entity payout, your usual run of the mill.

Yeah, I actually just copy and pasted this from some tournament structure that I had in my in my library. But small field, of course, you can see 10 and 11 or 1011. And yeah, 1011 are the same, same pair.

But the general premise here is if we look at the right, we can see that every payout is the exact same right satellite, you're winning a seat, all the seats are equal value. Simple enough. But there is a distinct difference between these two games.

And understanding these differences is going to be the or making the correct strategic adjustments to a satellite formatted game. If you play satellites, like you play amputees, you're going to be torching equity. And so we need to look a little bit closer at this payout structure, this format, this satellite game, in order to get the most out of it.

Because I know historically, you know, people always say, Oh, satellites are really soft, you know, that's what all the fish play. They get in there, they stack off too light, and they just give you your money, give you their money. But it's not quite that simple, especially with all the training tools we have nowadays.

And people play pretty good poker, even recreational players. Preflop ranges don't seem to bethat far off these days in a lot of spots. But there are they are more in satellites than any other format.

And I think you might be pleasantly surprised at just how, how far off people are in their opening ranges, and the strategies that they choose when playing satellites, specifically when they're nearing the bubble and on the bubble. So going into the differences between the satellite bubble versus an MTT bubble, got those equal payouts, okay. Now the implication of the equal payouts is it's going to reduce the incentive to win chips.

Ultimately, we're just trying to get a seat. And so if we're just trying to get a seat, what often happens is we're just more or less trying to preserve our stack. And as that bubble factor is very strong.

This is generally speaking, of course, because there are situations where you'll be calling very wide ranges, even on the bubble, depending on how many seats are paid and what the stack layouts are. This brings to another point, you cannot raise call three bet jams as wide as we can in an MTT structure. This goes for on the bubble leading into the bubble, but especially on the bubble.

And why can you not raise call three by jams is wide because we have a flatter payout structure. And this results in extremely wide open shoving ranges, but very narrow, small raise ranges, which is a bit contrary to how most people play. And it's different than MTTs, traditional ICM MTT.

So in a spot where you might in raise split, you know, after ranges in open shove half ranges in raise in a traditional payout structure for a traditional moment holding tournament in a satellite, that same split might be like in raise aces and a couple blockers and then shove the rest of your range. That's a very common way. That's a very common range construction that you'll see where you're just open shipping a lot.

And you're not really trying to induce anything other than aces. In fact, there are even spots in satellites where you're supposed to fold aces pre flop. Yes, bold aces pre flop.

And it happens a lot more often than you think. And sometimes it happens just when facing an open and even if you cover the guy, okay. But when that ICM is super extreme, it leads us to what's our incentive? It's not to win chips.

It's to win a seat. And if holding means we win a seat 99.9% of the time, or even 98% of the time, then we have no reason to get involved with a hand that has 87% equity. Of course, we're going to go into a variety of hand examples throughout this bundle.

And later on, you will see some spots where folding aces make sense. And you will even see a spot where folding aces makes sense, which is pretty wild, but it ends up happening in one of the later videos. So stay tuned for that.