So I played in a River's satellite to try to get into the 225 Saturday deepstack a few weekends ago. The Rivers has been having three $225 deepstack tournaments a month with a Month end $550 deepstack tournament. I've previously played in 1 Rivers satellite of this type to get into a $550 deepstack back in July/August - talked about it my ALMOST MAKING IT post.
First of all, I usually play poker with 2 card protectors. First one I use strictly for my cards. It's the first chip I've ever received. a Venetian $1 chip, I strictly use this as my card protector. My other one has changed throughout the years, but the most recent ones have either been a Boston souvenir chip my wife got me when she went to, ugh Boston(duh) and the one I've been using is a Pittsburgh Penguin's chip I have no idea where I got it... This day I think my daughter must have been playing with them and I couldn't find them(took 3 weeks to finally find them) So I went to this tournament stag...or it felt stag...
There seems to be a pattern developing that every tournament that I've played lately at Rivers seems to have a massive(relative) turnout. There were 56 buy-ins for this particular satellite that one of the dealers mentioned there's usually 30-ish. I played 2 buy-ins. First buy-in I was really card dead and the 1 hand I tried to bluff my opponent had basically what I was trying to rep. The other 2 hands that were decent starting hands ended up being second best. I raised with A-Q and got 2 callers, c-bet the 10 high flop and got raised by caller1, caller2 called so I mucked. The other hand was my last I raised with pocket 7s with about 15 bets left, got re-raised by a pretty active player. I called and shoved a 4-6-8 flop, my opponent called with Ks...nothing helped and I was out pretty early. (I actually didn't shove the flop, I put all my chips in except for the 100 denomination chip I was using as my card protector...ugh... the turn was a brick so I checked cause I thought it would be funny and then shoved the Q river...not that it mattered)
I rebought and was put on arguably the most action packed table in the place. Blinds and antes were high enough that we should lose players fairly quickly until the dust settles a little bit, but we were literally going through players ever 3-4 hands. I admit I got lucky, with the A-Q,7s from the prior buy-in not panning out, my first hand I played, possibly 2nd hand dealt I looked down at pocket Ks in late position. A raise and reraise prior to my turn was enough for me to shove. I got called and Ks won over 10s. 5 or 6 hands later I look down at pocket Aces. I played them a little tricky. Based on the dynamic of the table being pretty aggressive I called an early position raiser, flop was pretty dry so I check-raised him all-in and he called me(it felt like this particular player would respond better to aggression than to continually give him rope) He flipped over A-Q and was pretty much dead and rebought(I almost had another shot to KO this same guy later when he shoved and I had 5s, but based on the situation at that time I didn't want to risk 1/4 of my stack for a possible flip/possible dom situation) I pretty much played 3 big hands and was able to just about coast to the final table. This satellite paid out 6 players, 5 got a buy-in of 225, 6th got 209. We lost 2 players pretty quickly and I was able to battle my stack from having 5 bets to 15 bets with blind/ante shoves. However, the blinds were going up at an insane pace. We went from 3k-6k to 5k-10k, with 10k-20k coming next... I had just gotten my stack to about 48K, probably 3rd or 4th at the table. Blinds went to 5k-10k across the table from me, meaning in 4 hands I'd be the BB for 10k. I went from having 9 bets to 4. So I look down at A-8. My immediate thought was to fold, everyone was playing really tight at this point, folding all the way around, so while I know only bigger hands are calling a shove from me, I should be able to pick up the blinds and antes just about all of the time. That's what I thought when I shoved all-in. Probably the Shortest stack in the room shoved for 17K, all else folded. He held 9s and I hit an 8 on the flop, though nothing improved and I was down to 30K and I doubled up the shorty... Next hand I look down at AKsuited...thinking if I made a mistake with the A-8 I felt like I had to make up for it here, so I shoved...the new short-stack called with pocket Aces and I lost another 20K...Next hand I was UTG and had 9500 left, looked down at 5c4c and folded, hoping to win the all-in in the blinds hand... I ended up having Q-6 and lost to A-Q when we both hit Qs and an Ace on the river. I went from thinking I was getting the buy-in to holy crap being out and not really knowing what happened within 4 hands... Usually I'd say that's poker but I think I made a few monumental mistakes. I think that even though I had only 4 bets, there were other stacks that were lower than mine and I should probably figure that I'm favored to make the top 6 if I just fold and hope 2 shorter stacks don't win their all-in moments. I read an article waaaaaaay back in 06 with a follow up in 09 written by Bernard Lee on ESPN about folding Aces in satellites when you're pretty much guaranteed the spot. I felt like I was less guaranteed the spot than the situation he explains in his article, however, I was probably in better shape than I realized...
A few hands after I was KOd the 1st short stack I doubled up shoved and was KOd. What happened next was really interesting. There were now 6 players left, 5 get a buy-in 6th gets 209. Not much of a difference, but still a difference. Well, the uber-chip leader comes back to the table(he'd sat out the last 20 minutes or so since he was probably a lock at a spot) and the super short stack guy at this point put out there the option of playing 1 hand and the worst of the 6 would get 6th place. The hilarious part of this was that he ended up getting the table to agree to this right as he would've been the BB, and almost all-in anyway. Everyone agreed, including the 2 super-stacks who had about 12 blinds(over 100K at 5-10K) for some reason... The dealer puts out the last hand and the chip leader, again, he'd previously been sitting out for the last 20 minutes because he was pretty much guaranteed a spot so long ago ended up being the loser of the hand. I think he ended up buying into the 225, however, he cost himself $16 when he didn't have to...blew my mind. I was in awe at the fact that the short stack was almost all-in and prior to the deal got everyone to agree to give him the same shot they all had to get the buy-in ...awesome job guy!
To sum up my satellites so far, I've played in 2, one in July where I made it to the 550(top 2) and this past one for the 225 where I was KOd in 8th because I was probably dumb... I would've liked to have a 100% satellite payout for just a little while...
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