Chipleader-late stage-satellite tourneys

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gklcap

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I've been playing MTTs(mostly freerolls) on pokerstars for around a month. Today I was playing one of those micromillion satellite events where the top 10 get tickets. I have a habit of imploding during the later stages of tourneys and therefore, I played extra careful. What happens usually is that I'll get into a betting war with the chip leader and go busto on one hand. So this time, I made it a point to keep the pots small and feed off the short stacks rather than tangling with the chip leaders.

Anyway, with 30 players left, I won a major pot and was 2nd in chips with around 1,00,000 chips. Chip leader had around 1000 chips more than me and numbers 3-10 all had more than 60,000. I stuck to my plan of putting pressure on the short stacks but 3 short stacks ended up doubling up through me. All 3 times I had 2 pair and I'd put them all in and they'd hit their straights or flushes on the river.

This left me with around 64k. My final hand would come soon. It folded to me in the SB and I 3-bet with KcJc and BB, who had been re-raising every hand for a while, 5-bet and I called.

Flop came KhJs3c and I shoved because of my recent run of bad showdowns and I wanted to end it on the flop. He had only slightly more chips than me and losing this pot would've crippled him. Yet, he called with AhQh for some reason. And of course he hit his backdoor flush and I busted out in 23rd place. I went from 2nd to busto in the space of a few hands.

Now that I'm done ranting, there are 2 things I want to know :
1) Should I have folded those 2 pairs? I like to play marginal hands throughout the course of a tourney and folding after flopping 2 pair with those hands against people shoving with less than 10BB didn't seem to be a good play to me. I ask this in the context of satellite tourneys btw, where survival is more important than gathering more chips. Which leads me to my next question...

2)Is there some formula to know how many chips would be enough for a top 10 finish? Around 600 people took part in this tournament and the starting stack was 1,500 chips. Based on this, is there some way to know whether my 100k chips would've been enough to guarantee a top 10 finish? That is, in case I'm deep in a satellite tourney like this again, would I be better off simply stealing the blinds with playable hands and avoiding any sort of confrontation so as to maintain my stack at a particular level?

Thanks in advance
 
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subdylzep

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My only advice to this is that when you find yourself big stacked late in a satalite tournament like this you should limit your range of hands a bit more. Your main objective is for you to place ITM nothing else matters. So gathering chips through small stacks isnt quite the way i would go about it. Although, i would strongly urge you to stay away from large pots with large stacked players as well. You should have tightened your range of preflop hands thereas to not find yourself hitting 2 pair with just marginal hands. If you are going to play against the small stacks, remember this, they are trying to double up and they know that you have all the chips, so if they find a spot where they have an open ended straight draw or a flush draw they are going to go for it, even if you have a set or 2 pair you are still putting your chips at unnecessary risk this late in the tournament when you have worked so hard to get your chips up. Instead of wondering what players you should work you should just be looking for what pots you should work. Instead try to steal some blinds here and there and limit your pot sizes to anything that is not too risky, often i find it better to play against larger stacks deeper in the tournament as long as you are keeping the pots under control. If you notice a big stacked player that is going all in a lot, or that is overbetting just off of weakness stay away from them all together. Many players however are playing the same way, just trying to keep the pots under control and keep their stacks up late in satalite tournaments, I do the same thing when i play freerolls, I try to keep the stack up and pick just a small range of hands to play, High pocket pairs and high suited cards in isolation that will help increase your stack with minimal risk. I strongly just urge you to tighten up your range once you have achieved such a high chip stack late in a tournament, especially a satalite or freeroll. This will limit where you are making mistakes and limit the chances other players have to double up through you. True it could go either way with you hitting the 2 pairs but chances are that those 2 pairs you had werent smart plays either, neither is betting KJ preflop in the SB and calling a 5bet preflop. He probably only called because he was so deep in the hand and thought any chance he had to win the hand he had to call just because of all the chips already in the hand. If you tighten your range you will more than likely find more success late in the tournaments and late in satalites. Good luck.
 
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