Satellite Poker Tournaments Near Me
For 2020, the World Series of Poker will be made up of 85 bracelet events, 31 on WSOP.com and 54 on GG Poker. The events are in tournament format, and every player in a given tournament starts. Find the best tournament in town with our real-time list of all upcoming poker tournaments in the San Diego area, including East County, Oceanside & North County, and San Diego. To customize your search, you can filter this list by game type, buy-in, day, starting time and location.
It's not just the stuff of fantasy. Online satellite poker tournaments can take you all the way from playing at home to the big leagues, and more than once we've seen that story play out to spectacular effect on the biggest stage of all.
In 2003, American poker player Chris Moneymaker qualified for the World Series of Poker main event by entering a $39 online satellite tournament. That in of itself was an achievement, but when Moneymaker went on to win the whole thing, taking home a cool $2.5 million, he became the hottest thing in poker.
Moneymaker's remarkable story sent the popularity of online real money into the stratosphere and had players all over the world rushing to enter satellite tournaments, in an attempt to replicate his amazing victory. The following year Greg Raymer followed Moneymaker's lead. Raymer was already an established pro, but he managed to qualify for the main event via a satellite event and went on to win the whole thing also. By that time the prize money on offer was $5 million.
Sunday Funday on Grosvenor
Sunday didn’t start very well for me. I woke up early to play a live tournament and eventually busted after losing a flip for all the marbles. I rushed home feeling somewhat tilted and managed to get online 5 minutes before late registration ended for Grosvenor’s Vegas satellite. The satellite has a £110 buy in with the option for a single rebuy, plus an add-on. There were three Vegas packages to be won, each worth £3,000.
After firing in both the rebuy and the add-on I found myself with a healthy stack despite my late entry. Satellite tournaments play near identically to regular tournaments in the early levels so I simply focussed on trying to chip up like I would in any other tournament. Although we don’t need to win all of the chips in play in satellite tournaments, we do want to win quite a lot of chips. If we shift into a nitty ‘lockdown’ mode with 10 players still remaining then we will just stagnate and get blinded out. With this in mind I played an aggressive and high variance tournament game with the intention of running it up.
Final Table Strategy
This strategy worked fairly well and I reached the final table with an above average stack. So far so good. Unfortunately I lost a huge pot with QQ against AK early on at the final table which left me nursing a short stack. An orbit later I doubled up with AK vs QQ which got me back in the game. I coasted along for a while until we were down to 4 players, with the stacks fairly even at around 15 blinds each. This is quite a sick situation, as three of the four of us were going to win a Vegas package and one of us would bubble and win nothing. I also had to contend with Jamie Nixon (aka jamnix90), a professional poker player and streamer who was livestreaming the game. You can check out Jamie’s stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/jamnix90.
Now I will be the first to admit that I am not an expert on satellite strategy. However, I know that there is a very basic principle that applies on the bubble. Quite simply, we can move all in with a very wide range of hands but we can only call a shove with an extremely strong hand. With this in mind, I started to play incredibly aggressively and was shoving almost every hand preflop. This sounds kind of wild, but the other players were extremely reluctant to call a shove and put themselves at risk of bubbling. The other three players were clearly hoping to just wait until I knocked someone else out, allowing them to coast into the money without having to do any of the hard work. This stretch was probably the most tense I have ever been playing online poker. Any hand could potentially end the tournament if someone busted, and I knew when I was shoving hands like Q2s that I would be in awful shape should someone call.
Fortunately, for many orbits nobody elected to call and as the blinds rose I found myself with 30 blinds of roughly 40 in play. I pick up 83 of diamonds in the CO. This is not a premium hand, but it is at least suited. More importantly, there are two players with about 4 blinds each and Jamie Nixon is sitting on just 2 blinds (or 1.5 after he posts the small blind). The players on 4 blinds are going to be loathe to call it off when Jamie is so short, and even if Jamie calls it off he only has 2 blinds so he can’t do me much damage. I ship it and Jamie calls with A7o. The board runs out K2326. I scoop the pot, poor Jamie is the bubble boy and I win a trip to Vegas (Click here to see the clip from Jamie’s stream).
Satellite Poker Tournaments Near Me Open
So what have we won? Grosvenor’s Vegas package is worth £3,000 and includes includes flights to Vegas, seven nights at the LINQ hotel, entry into the $500 ‘Big 50’ WSOP event, spending money and a party with the other Vegas qualifiers. I’m pretty excited, I have never been to America before and it should be a blast. A trip report will undoubtedly follow.
Full details of the Vegas satellite schedule and the package can be found here Step satellites start from £0.25 and the final £110 satellites take place on Sunday evenings, this weekend sees the last 3 package satellite, so don’t miss out on this opportunity!
Satellite Poker Tournaments Near Me Today
Best of luck at the tables, I hope to see you in Vegas!
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