Satellite Man

I played some single table satellites to try to earn some money for the $1500 Event. Here's what happened:

#1 $125. 1000 chips. 15 min levels. Blinds start at 25/25. I played very tight at the start. Picked up AA in the SB, and 3-Bet from 125 to 325. Original raiser called. I shoved the Flop, and he folded. I won another small pot or two, which got me to 1600 when this hand happened.

I limped for 25 in Mid with 66. Five players saw a Flop of A 6 3. The player before me bet 100. I just call. This is a great board to slowplay because there are no obvious draws. Two other player called the 100. Turn [A 6 3] J. Same player bet 200. I call. Next player calls. Last player goes All-In for 700. First guy thinks for a bit, and folds. The moment his cards hit the muck, I say "All-In". The third play thinks for a bit, and goes All-In. One player had AJ for Two Pair, and the other one had 54 for the Open-Ender. River [A 6 3 J] 4, and I had everyone covered. I now had 4600 chips, which is almost half the chips in play.

With such a monster stack, I went into lockdown mode. I did ended up knocking out a few more players, including another double elimination when I woke up with AKh in the BB. By the time I got to heads-up, the last remaining stack was about even with me. So we chopped up the money for $60 and a $500 tournament chip each.

#2 $125. I got a lot more limping hands in the first level, and I played most of them. I also won most of them, including this one:

I limped in Mid with 66. Cutoff raised to 150. Three players called, and so did I. Flop T 9 4. It checked around to the Cutoff, and he bet 225. The SB called, and it folded back to me. The 225 bet seemed weak to me, and the call wasn't strong either. I decided to follow my gut, and shove All In for 650 more. This is definitely a bluff as I do not want a call. The Cutoff thought for a while before finally folding. The SB also folded, and I didn't show my hand.

With that hand, I had 2600 chips at the end of Level 1. However, unlike the first satellite, I ran into some hands, and my stack went up and down, but never below the starting 1000. Another difference from the first one was players were not getting eliminated. When we hit the 150/300 level, there was still six players left. That meant it was time for Push-N-Pray. In the Hyjack, I looked at the first card and saw a King. I shoved All-In for 1350. The BB quickly called with ATo. My other card turned out to be a 5, and I missed everything. I finished in 5th place.

#3 $125. I was rather card dead for this one. I did hit a Straight against someone to knock them out. Fortunately, the table was rather passive, so I was able to do some stealing. But I never got the big double up that you need in these quickies.

The knockouts happened at a good pace, and we had three players left at the 100/200 level. The other two players were talking about doing an equity chop. I was the shortstack with 2200. I said No because at the 100/200 level, we can still play a little poker. Also, I like my skill advantage against these two, and I'm not afraid to bubble. Well, I did bubble when my A4d ran into A7o, and I missed everything. They did some sort of chop as I was walking away from the table

#4 $345 8-Game. I didn't want to play a satellite this big, but there were trying to sell the last seat, and there were no seats for a $125 or $175 NL.

The game started with 2000 chips. The levels were 20 minutes, and each game round was only four hands. We had eight players.

I'll skip all the stuff in the middle, and get to the important stuff. I got to Heads-Up, but the other guy had a monster chip lead. He started talking about some kind of deal. There was 5 $500 chips, and some cash (maybe $120). He offered to give me a $500 Chip. At first, I wanted 2 Chips, but even I knew that was silly. I then made the offer of $100 and a Chip. He said No, so we played. We started in the O8 round, and got to the Razz round. We both got dealt good starting hands, and got it All-In. He got an 86 Low by 5th Street. I hit a K on 4th, but was drawing to a 6-Low in 5th. However, 6th and 7th Street were a 9 K, and I walked away in 2nd with nothing.

In hindsight, I really screwed up this one by not taking his offer, and I'm not being results-oriented because I lost. Being that I didn't want to play a satellite this big, taking any profit would have a good thing, especially since the profit would have covered satellite #3 that I played just before this one. Also, I'm not an expert at some of the eight games. I'm decent at O8 and Razz, but Stud and Stud8 are my weakest games.