Satellite Bubble Strategy Question

[radii]

I'm in a 500 FPP satellite into Sunday's $200+$15 tournament on Pokerstars. 225 entered, and the final 9 earn an entry into Sunday's tournament.

10 people remain. Two 5-man tables.

Table 1 has 5 people of ~equal stack size. About 35K each with 1000/2000 blinds + antes(50 at that point I think?). None of them are taking any risks at all. All 5 know that they are in.

Table 2 has 5 people as well. Chipleader has about 60K. to his left is a guy with 30K. I have 13K. To my left is a 15K stack, followed by a 17K stack.

As the short stack here, with two other small stacks just ahead of me, should i be trying to push ahead of those two in chips somehow, or should I be going into a shell, waiting for AA-QQ and waiting for one of the other two short stacks to make a stand?

There hadn't been a flop in a number of hands, steals left and right. Blinds are 1000/2000 w/ antes, and we are less than a minute from 1500/3000 w/ antes(75 antes now I think). I get K [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] T [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] on the button. folded to me, the other two short stacks behind me. Do you push or fold? How clear cut is the decision?

Thanks,
radii

[z32fanatic]

I would definitely push this. The short stacks will have a very, very hard time calling this. I think I would push this with any two cards, much less a really good hand like K10s. Hope you did and it worked out.

[radii]

I pushed and ran into AK. At the time I was sure my push was right, after discussing it elsewhere I have absolutely no idea what the best play is, since all I have to do is survive to 9th and there are two other stacks just barely larger than mine.

Anyone else have any comments?

[helpmeout]

K10s is nothing special I'd wait for a pocket pair or maybe AJ KQ or better.

Try wait for one of the other low stacks to crack first.

[napawino]

At first I thought this was NOT a good move, but the more I think about it, it's not as automatic as I thought. I don't think much of KTs & if it was a full table you would play it differently, obviously. Since it's a 5-person table, though, you only have two hands until the blinds hit you again & when they pass you'll have only 10k left - only having seen 4 hands. If that takes one minute to happen, then you'll be at ~3BB & in serious trouble. Even if the blinds haven't gone up by then, 5BB isn't a lot - the big stacks will be looking to jump on a raise by one of the three small stacks. I'm not sure that you can wait too much longer.

The problem with the move, of course, is that the only hands likely to call are all bad for you. (AA,KK,AK,KQ,QQ,JJ,TT,AQ,AJ,& AT) I can't think of a hand that would call here that you have beat, so you're either going to go in as an underdog or you're going to win the blinds. Winning the blinds is nice, but it won't really save you.

Again, this isn't as automatic as I first thought, but I still come down on the side of folding. A couple of reason's why:
Position of the players. The two other small stacks are to your left, which gives them several hard decisions (like yours here). If the small blind has A5 he might be tempted to steal & the bb might call with KQ, etc. They will face a similar situation on the next hand when one is on the button & the other is in the sb. I'm amazed how often small stacks will scrap in this situation, so I'd hope that they go at it.
Bubble issues: As discussed above, your either busted (or get lucky) or winning the blinds. I don't the the risk is worth it. Also, doubling up here, while nice, isn't your goal. At this point your goal is to survive.

These are just a few of my thoughts.

-Napawino

[SossMan]

I think this is pretty mathmatical.

You can assume that they will only be calling with a narrow range of hands.
AA-QQ, AK, maybe JJ/TT and AQ.

For the sake of argument, let's say one of them will call w/ JJ,TT and AQ, and the other will fold eveythink but AA-QQ, AK.

How often will one of them pick up a hand to call you?

Let's say the SB is the tighter player (makes some sense, since he still has a player behind him left to act)

AA - 1/220 = .0046
KK - 1/440 = .0023
QQ - 1/220 = .0046
AK - 1/110 = .0092

So, chances that he gets one of these hands is just over 2% of the time.

Let's see about the BB:
All the above hands plus: JJ,TT, AQ

JJ - 1/220 = .0046
TT - 1/110 = .0023
AQ - 1/82 = .0123

so, 2% plus another 1.9% or so...call it 4%.

So, the odds that neither have a callable hand are about
98%*96% = 94% of the time...or, you are called roughly 6% of the time.

Out of those, you are probably an average of 2.5:1 against when called, so out of the 6%, you get lucky another 30%ish.
So, 94% of the time you win blinds+antes.
4% of the time, you bubble
2% of the time you double up and can coast.

I like the push.

P.S. These numbers are a rough estimate, I know I am leaving out nominal stuff like bunching, chances that the BB overcalls, etc... Also, they may be much looser than these assumptions, so you would have to adjust the data. Obviously, the looser they are, the worse the push is for you.