Dara O'Kearney (Satellite Specialist) - Ask Me Anything about satellites/knockouts

[ObbleeXY]

A few questions...apologies if you get these a lot:
1) When a rebuy is immediately available (ie you don't need to bust out), is it foolish to not do so?
2) Similarly, is it foolish to pass up on the opportunity for an add-on?
3) I often play freeroll satellites, and quite often lead the tournament from early on until circa 20-30 players. (Assume 2000 started). I'm happy navigating my way through up until this point, but find it harder when I get to the point where most people have <10BB and everyone is simply shoving.
How do shove and call ranges change when one gets to this point in the match. I'm getting tired of missing out on those tickets.
4) I do manage to win a fair few of the freeroll satellites but find myself getting crushed when I play the next round. How does one adjust to how different the games later satellite rounds are, as it seems the strats that got me there don't work at the higher levels?
Thanks!
Regards.,
JT

 

[mafiaboyXXX]

Dara OKearney, I followed you on twitter and you didn't follow back 😂...

 

[Dara OKearney]

Dara OKearney, I followed you on twitter and you didn't follow back 😂...

What's your Twitter handle?

 

[mafiaboyXXX]

https://twitter.com/mafiaboyXXX

 

[W33dzLov3r]

Hello Dara, thank you for taking the time to answer my question as well, I`m curious how professional poker players deal with emotions. When you have a great hand, what`s Your best "trick" to hide the joy, or when you lose terribly, how do you accept it? I mean, I do focus on various things and end up making mistakes and calling KJo against KQo and the villain hits a Q in the river and I`m done....that marks me for a while, and you see...English is a second language for me, in it, you would call this Tilt. How do you fade it away? or accept it and move on faster? More than 1 question for you to choose as a favorite

 

[Dara OKearney]

Hello
I will like to know what is in your opinion the way to handle tournament like this one (Pokerstars Splash).

The late reg end after 1 hour (a single rebuy cost $2.20 and give you 2.5bb double rebuy give you 5bb)

The rebuy period last for another 30 min. What the strategy here ? sit-out and wait for the add-on (which is 10x the amounts of chips) or try to accumulate chip ?

At the end of the rebuy period you get 33000 chips (3.3b) but a LOT of players gived up. (see the screenshot, 9 players left, 4 players paid, 2 seats) I see Huge value in that but i'm not sure how to handle it. All the remaining plays were huge fish except me and preston300. We both had the same strategy of min buy in and wait the add-on.

These used to be my specialty when they were first introduced! They were called 3x's back then and almost everyone played them terribly.

Strategy is to get to add on as cheap as possible and then add on.

Thanks for your question!

 

[Dara OKearney]

A few questions...apologies if you get these a lot:
1) When a rebuy is immediately available (ie you don't need to bust out), is it foolish to not do so?
2) Similarly, is it foolish to pass up on the opportunity for an add-on?
3) I often play freeroll satellites, and quite often lead the tournament from early on until circa 20-30 players. (Assume 2000 started). I'm happy navigating my way through up until this point, but find it harder when I get to the point where most people have <10BB and everyone is simply shoving.
How do shove and call ranges change when one gets to this point in the match. I'm getting tired of missing out on those tickets.
4) I do manage to win a fair few of the freeroll satellites but find myself getting crushed when I play the next round. How does one adjust to how different the games later satellite rounds are, as it seems the strats that got me there don't work at the higher levels?
Thanks!
Regards.,
JT

Hi,

Interesting questions!

1. Generally you shouldn't take a rebuy unless you have to, particularly in tournaments where the addon is bigger. We talk about this in detail in "Endgame poker strategy" but for example, if starting stack and rebuys give you 10k chips and the addon 20k in a 100 buyin, if you take the immediate rebuy (and add on) you end up paying $300 for 40k chips. If you just take the addon, you get 30k for $200, 25% less chips for 33% less money, so a much better deal. Additionally, because of ICM the additional 10k chips are actually less valuable than the other 30k in your stack.
2. It's almost always incorrect to pass up on the add on. The only exception is if you have so many chips already that the add on adds less to the value of your stack than the cost of the add on.
3. When effective stacks are 10 bb or less, it's shove or fold. The best way to master these spots is to run lots of them in a preflop solver like HRC or ICMiser, or a tool like GTOWizard (which has a trainer)
4. As you move up levels and play higher calibre opponents, specific exploits will work less and less and you need to have good GTO fundamentals. I obviously recommend my book "GTO Poker Simplified" as a good place to start. After that, tools like GTOWizard are the best way to study and improve

Thanks for your questions!

 

[Poker Orifice]

I obviously recommend my book "GTO Poker Simplified" as a good place to start

I purchased your book and am about 1/2 way through. I'm really enjoying it! (I also have the Satellite book, the PKO book, and EndGame,).

 

[Dara OKearney]

Would you trade your poker career for the marathon career if you could

What a question! I think I enjoyed my marathon career more but poker is a lot more lucrative. I started poker at the point my marathon career was winding down anyway (due to age) so it started as a replacement and became something much bigger

 

[Vancouvervilla]

What cities are you hoping to visit to play poker? And when you do travel to places, do you often spend a lot of time there?

 

[Dara OKearney]

Hi Dara,

Do you think your work with satellite strategy is done now, or do you think there is more to be discovered? Do you think they are 'solved'?

What do you think about these tournaments which have a regularprizepool, but also offer 20 seats to a bigger buy in? Example is this $11 PKO on Stars which is also has 16x Sunday Milly seats aswell.

Cheers

What an interesting question!

I think it's largely done and the book and the course contain at least 95% of what's there to be known, but there's always some new strategy winkles, particularly when new formats (like the Target Stack satellites) pop up.

The tournaments you mention are closer to normal tournaments than satellites for most of them, but resemble a satellite more near the ticket bubble.

Thanks for your question.