Online poker games offer you a large amount of choices when choosing how to play. Every site offers a wide array of poker games including no limit, pot limit, and fixed limit games. It seems that no matter what game you want to be in, a site will have it. You will have to decide which game you want to play and then decide how much to buy in to that game. When playing at a live table, you don’t have this luxury. You have to buy in at the exact amount and the only way you can increase how much you have in your account is to add more chips. This can be bothersome if you have a lot of friends and family coming over and you don’t want to spend your money on something without them being able to play.
If you decide to play online, you can get a satellite for the same cost as a regular sit and go tournament. For example, a 2/4 cash game will cost you $10. For this, you will get 20 chips (2 4s) and six blinds. You will play no limit and have the ability to buy in for any amount of chips you want. This means if you’re low on chips, you can play for free or for very little money.
What is nice about satellites is that you can wait them out. You don’t have to worry about having to wait for a tournament to fill up or being forced to play a high buy-in game when you’re near the money. Let’s say that you’re heads up and you only have 30 chips left. If you wait long enough, someone else will go in ahead of you and you can play the tournament for free or for a very small amount of money.
Satellites are basically a low buy-in tournament where the only real way to increase your stack is to win chips. You can win a satellite for as little as a dollar or for all the chips you can afford. The downside online is that because you can’t see who’s going to pay to play in the tournament, you have to make sure you’re dealt plenty of good cards to increase your stack. The whole idea behind satellites is to build a big stack in a short period of time. You need to take advantage of AA, AK, and especially JJ. If you have AA, you can either win a big hand (all in) or you can double up by forcing a big raise from your opponent. If you have AK, you can possibly win the tournament in two or three hands if you’re heads up.
Take advantage of AA, AK, and JJ. I would Refer to my previous article on poker calculators to gain a better understanding of these hands. I would play very cautiously in the early stages and call many hands, unless there are only a few players left to act. Call hands to the river when you have the right position in order to maximize your chips. When you’re out of position, you should be looking to steal the blinds when you’re in late position. Understand your position and you’ll be on your way in building your MPO500 chip stack.