Shameless Brag & Question :)

[Thunder]

Woo Hoo!

I entered a 600 man event to win a seat at the Virgin Festival in a few months time. The top 10 all qualified. I was in 4th.

It's not the WSOP - just a £100+£5 buy in but a nice result anyway. Last year just 200 battled it out for a £7000 ($14,000) prize and they all seemed to be amateurs so it's looking good!

Now for the question. Even in 2nd place, I was short stacked when down to 15 left and I found it hard to decide what to do. Unlike a normal tourney, there was nothing to be gained in placing beyond 10th and was torn between "playing to win" which is essential to steal blinds & antes and being tactical. There were 13 players below me who could bust if I fold but I never had more than 12bbs. What is the optimum tactic here in this type of event? Is it still the standard pre flop push and just hope no one calls?

Thx

[cobere]

No its not. The dynamics of late game satellite are more survival than accumulation. It can be kind of tricky, you have to be able to assess when you can fold to the seat vs when you need to make a move. In my experience, there's a lot of very short stack dynamics that come into play. You also need to be aware of the other short stacks and where they are relative to the blinds and when they are going to blind out.

[Thunder]

Thx, at least I got it right!

It is really tricky as I had approx 71,000 (sometimes as low as 57,000) with blinds of 3000/6000 and antes of 1000 so little room to manouevre in terms of either folding or pushing.

Pushing to cash (and failing) to give you a fighting chance at decent money is one thing but this was, as you said, all about survival. I did okay this time but do you know of any guides on the matter?

Thx

[chardrian]

I'd check the SNG forum.

[bjsaust]

I think there are some links on sattellite play both in the stickies here and in the SnG forum, have a look and see what you can find.

[cobere]

There is Andy's guide in the stickies but its ancient and I didn't bother to read it (just verified it was there).

Chard, sat bubbles definitely play different than SNG bubbles tho, there are situations where as the big stack you want to punish SNG bubbles but in a sat bubble you are content to FTC as the big stack. (unless of course you were talking about SNG sats)