POTD #55 Final Table Friday: A $10k Satelite into a $100k

Recovering from a satelite defeat

As this project expands and I include more hands played by people who are not me, I am going to try to pair hands played by others with hands played by me. How do I recognize the mistakes of others? Usually because it’s a type of mistake I’ve made myself. I do not want to repeat myself too much by writing about similar hands, so I will be looking to pair hands that have thematic similarities, but are different from each other. In yesterday’s post, POTD #54, I wrote about a postflop hand on a dynamic board two eliminations away from a $250k mincash. But if I had to boil the entire post down to one lesson, it would be “Copying ICM strategies only works if your opponent cooperates.”

In today’s hand, we look at an online satellite hand from 2020. Six people remain; 5th gets $72k, and the top 4 get $100k seats. Satellites are often derided for being a silly format of poker, and there are problems with them-- they’re the format where collusion will reap the most benefits-- but they are also in some ways the purest format of tournament poker. Earning chips matters, but the name of the game is correctly guessing what your opponents will do and using that knowledge to win a big prize. I will write about some technical things in this hand, but the lesson here is the same as the one in Jason’s hand: It's more important to correctly estimate your opponent’s strategy than to nail a perfect computer play.

The Hand

6 people left in the satelite, 6th gets $0, 5th gets $72,000, 4th-1st get $100,000

Blinds 20k/40k/5k (ante). It fold to me on the button and I jam 344k with Ts9s. Dan Shak with 353k in the BB calls with A5 suited and wins.