Poker Satelite

Best Poker Sites For Satellite Qualifiers for Live Events
Such As WPT, EPT and World Series Poker Tournaments.

While there have never been so many opportunities to qualify online for the prestigious live events such as the WPT, EPT and World Series Of Poker, there are major (and often unclear) differences in what is on offer at various online poker sites. In recent times the picture has got even more clouded, with many smaller local events (country-specific and one-off tournaments around Europe or the Caribbean for example) and some of the big tours getting bought out by the poker site operators.

Here I compare 3 of biggest sites poker satellites to help you choose the place that best matches your personal goals. These are 888.com (now the 2nd biggest site online, with by far the softest qualifiers), Titan Poker (always super-soft via the iPoker Network!) and separately the US sites, where things change so fast I have now created a separate page here at Sit N Go Planet just to keep track. I mention PokerStars.com at the end for completeness, though there are some good reasons not to choose this site.

2020 World Series of Poker Satellites Win a Seat for as little as $10 It’s never too early to start thinking about the 2020 World Series of Poker, that’s why we are continuing our satellites this month. Satellites run Tuesdays and weekends in May, check it out below. Match our satellites with some top of the line poker skills and you could be the one to take home millions and the most coveted piece of jewelry in all of poker, the WSOP Main Event Bracelet. Check out the full 2019 WSOP.com Summer Schedule here.

Poker satellites are small poker tournaments that filter into bigger poker tournaments. You play in poker satellites for a chance at reducing your risk to a bigger buy-in tournament. Some poker satellites are better than others. If you want the fast answer to “How to Win Poker Satellites” it’s Chip-Up & Chill. A satellite can be a fairly useful thing but for poker fans, it provides a gateway to a new world. And this is not through the ability to watch more poker events on foreign TV channels; it is to do with the ability to play your way into one of the major poker events of the world.

Picking the right qualifiers (especially taking time to search for those with soft fields) can make the difference between enterting the biggest tournaments around the world or not. Make sure that you take the time to choose the best online satellites, and don't just jump into the first game you find.

Best Poker Site For Satellites - Candidate #1 – 888Poker.com

While the other major poker sites have lost players or at best stagnated, 888 Poker has been growing rapidly over the last couple of years. Their secret is to focus on amateur and recreational players, and not the 'pro grinders' who kill off the games at places like PokerStars. I now play most of my poker at 888, and recommend that you see how different (as in easier) the games are for yourself.

Satellite qualifiers to live events (as well as bigger online tournaments) have benefited from this growth spurt. 888 were the main place to play for World Series of Poker qualifiers this year, and now have WSOPE (World Series Europe) seats available too. What I like best about 888 is the smaller to mid-range events which you can win tickets for. These include tournaments in the med (for example Malta), Tallin in Northern Europe and the UK / Ireland / Mainland Europe too. These are EUR1000 to 2500 buy-in events. Big enough to give huge prizes, yet easier to win seats to online than the bigger $10k events. You'll get prizes which include hotel, travel and spending money as well as the tournament entry. I have not listed specific tourneys, as these change throughout the year - keep an eye on the 888 website to make sure you do not miss out!

Satellites at 888 are tiered, and you can often buy-in to the lowest levels for just a few cents. Some of them have 4 or 5 levels, though most will get you to the $30 and $150 levels quickly. The buy-in for the tournaments (usually at the weekends) which award the tickets depends on the size of buy-in for the event itself. The bigger ones are $1050 buy-ins (typically $14k packages awarded) and the smaller ones $525.

888 are so confident that you'll like their site, that they offer up to $88 free for new players. This starts of with $8 in tournament tokens and cash game buy-ins, then gives you $8 more as you earn points in the games. No credit card info or deposit is needed for this, and if you like what you find you can still get the 100% matched welcome bonus further down the line - the amount of the freebie does vary between countries.

World Series Of Poker Satellites

I'm a huge fan of the qualifiers at 888 - see the latest live tournaments that you can win a seat in at www.888poker.com now!

Best Poker Site For Satellites - Candidate #2 – Titan Poker

Titan Poker make a great choice for players outside the US looking for the best online satellite poker qualifiers for one BIG reason. This site are part of the huge iPoker Network and pool players with some of Europe's biggest sports-betting brands (including Bet365 and William Hill). You got it, sports-betting... now at this point some readers will be wondering what this has to do with satellite qualifiers to live events?

What this means is that most of the opponents you find at the tables will be sports betting fans who discovered the poker room through these big brand names - and are, shall we say, not the most experienced players or particularly savvy on poker strategy!

This makes Titan Poker one of the easiest sites to beat anywhere - and when you see the games I am very sure you will agree!!

OK, back to the satellites. I like the way these are organized at Titan, who have a well established 3-stage system that allows big and small bankroll players both to have a shot. Stage 1 usually gives out the tickets to the events (the EPT and lots of smaller live events around Europe are covered). The stage 3 and stage 2 games feed players through to the qualifiers themselves. These games come in different formats, with Sit N Goes, freezeout and rebuy (including turbos) all available.

Titan have shown a real commitment to looking after their recreational / amateur players - and recenty introduced a new scheme attached to their loyalty club called 'Titan Treasures' for exactly this crowd. You collect gold coins for completing tasks, then swap them for bonuses. This is on top of the extra cash bonus SNG Planet readers can claim at this leading site - the deal is a 200% welcome match + $20 free cash, which I ensure goes into your account within 48 hours of depositing with bonus code SNGPLANET . Click here to check out just how soft those Titan Poker games can be!

Best Poker Site For Satellites - Options for US Players

Things move very quickly when it comes to the offshore sites which provide poker games to US based players. I have created a separate page which keeps track of the options for satellite qualifiers at some of the biggest and best of these sites including BetOnline, Intertops and America's Cardroom.

You'll find it here: Best US Online Poker Satellites

The qualifiers are often to live events out in the Caribbean or in places like Panama (in the case of ACR). You can also win seats in some of the bigger online tournaments - including the $640 buy-in $1,000,000 guaranteed events which ACR are running regularly. While there are no longer any official World Series Qualifiers, you can find games which award 'Vegas Vacation' packages... which just happen to be timed for the WSOP side events!

Honorable Mentions for Satellite Qualifiers

PokerStars offer the most satellites of any online poker site. They own the EPT brand, as well as many regional and national tours. While there is little doubt you will find many good opportunities to qualify for online events there, the opposition is decidedly tougher than those at the sites featured above. The nature of the rewards at PokerStars, and the way you can exchange online tournament entries for tournament dollars means that there are a huge number of pros compared to amateur players. Armies of grinders use software to work small mathematical edges, making the games noticeably tougher. I would not stop anyone enjoying the occasional Sunday Million or EPT qualifier - though you will maximize your chances of getting to a live event by switching to 888 instead!

Party Poker is the owner of the WPT brand. They push this strongly and have a lot of local, WPT500 and the big $10k major events on offer. There is also a live addition to their popular 'PokerFest' online event these days. The games are soft at this site, though many countries are excluded from the games. Without the range of tournaments it is hard to recommend them too strongly, though if your heart is set on a World Poker Tour tournament - then this is the place to head. Check out www.partypoker.com for more.

Summary / Conclusion

888 Stand out from the pack for live qualifiers these days by hitting the sweet spot between soft games and a wide range of target tournaments. They offer up to $88 free to try the games, meaning you can take a look at the real money games without any risk. I'm a big fan of 888, check them out for yourself at www.888poker.comnow!

More Detailed Satellite Qualifier Articles

You started playing online with a deposit of $500. Through study, hard work, and careful bankroll management, you've grown your poker bankroll to $5,000. When playing large-field multi-table poker tournaments (MTTs), you've decided on a bankroll management strategy that requires you to have at least 200 times the buy-in in your bankroll to enter a tournament. That means you're now playing $20 MTTs on a regular basis and occasionally taking shots with buy-ins as large as $50 if the field is small (you'll have lower variance in small-field tournaments) or the opportunity looks especially profitable.

Meanwhile, the regularly scheduled MTTs at your local brick-and-mortar casino are beyond your means, so you haven't paid them much attention. But you recently received an advertisement in the mail for a special $430+$50 tournament with a guaranteed prize pool of $10,000. It sounds exciting, but it's so far outside of your bankroll that you can't seriously consider playing it.

Then you notice that the casino will be running satellites in the weeks running up to the event. A satellite tournament is a qualifying event that serves to offer players a less expensive opportunity to enter a bigger buy-in event. Satellite winners usually win the buy-in to a larger tournament. The satellites at the local casino will include daily $40+$10 events where one out of every 12 players who enter will win a seat in the main event. You've taken shots in $50 MTTs before, and you know that these will have far smaller and softer fields than what you encounter online.

Time to start grinding the satellites, right? Not so fast.

What Makes Satellite Poker Tournaments Attractive?

Many players are drawn to satellites because they seem to put exciting, high buy-in events within the reach of smaller-stakes players. Like the promises of medieval alchemists to turn water into gold, this seems too good to be true because it is. Satellites enable poker players to deceive themselves about the true cost of entering a tournament, but if you're trying to be diligent about bankroll management, then you can't afford to fall for this trap.

When you enter a satellite, you aren't buying an entry into the target tournament. You are buying a chance at an entry into the target tournament. Here, you can either buy a seat in the main event for $480, or you can buy a 1-in-12 shot at a seat in the main event for $50. A little multiplication ($50 x 12) demonstrates that playing the satellites is functionally equivalent to paying $600 for a seat in the main event. Not only is that far beyond your bankroll, but it's quite a bit more than you'd pay if you bought in directly.

That difference is the 25-percent rake you're paying in the satellites. The rake is the commission fee taken by a card room when operating a poker game. The rake is the card room charging the poker players a fee for hosting the game. It is most commonly taken from each pot, and it usually ranges from 2-10 percent, with a predetermined cap on the maximum amount.

Poker Satellite Tournaments

Now, in actuality, your chances of winning a seat in the satellite are probably better than 1-in-12. Let's say that you're so much better than the local competition that you can expect to win a seat in one of every eight satellites you enter. In that case, entering via satellite means you're paying $400 for your seat — a nice discount compared to buying in directly, but still far more than your bankroll can justify.

Poker Satellite Strategy

The Problem with Satellite Poker Tournaments

The problem with satellites is that when you win, they don't pay you in cash, they pay you something that is worth much less than cash to you, which is entry in a different poker tournament. How do we know that entry in this tournament is worth less to you than its face value in cash? Because you have $480 in cash, yet you are (wisely) choosing not to exchange it for an entry in the tournament.

Winning $480 in a satellite doesn't magically make it a good idea for you to buy into a $480 tournament any more than winning $480 in any other tournament (or inheriting $480, for that matter) would. If you win the satellite, your bankroll is $430 bigger than it was before, but still not nearly large enough to justify entering this tournament. The problem is that, although some winning satellites tickets can be sold or transferred, most require you to play the bigger event.

If you're able to sell the seat at face value, as can be done online or at the World Series of Poker, then it's a different story. (Technically the tournament lammers used to pay satellite winners at the WSOP are not supposed to be exchanged for cash, but in practice it takes very little effort to sell them for face value.) Playing the satellites themselves could be a good idea, though you still wouldn't be advised to enter the target tournament. Instead, cash out your seat, rinse, and repeat.

Making Quality Use of Your Time

Finally, remember that satellites require time and money that could be invested elsewhere. If you are adequately bankrolled for the $480 tournament, you'd probably be better off buying in directly than playing the satellites, even though you'd have a positive expectation in the satellites. This is because, instead of wasting your time on a $50 MTT, you should be using that time to play larger buy-in tournaments where you'll have a higher hourly rate.

Satellites don't create money out of thin air. They are like any other poker tournament except that they structure their payouts in a unique way. If you're dead set on playing a tournament outside of your bankroll, then play it, but don't pretend that winning a satellite turns it into a responsible decision.

Be sure to check out Andrew and Nate Meyvis on the Thinking Poker podcast, and for strategy articles, reviews, and more from Andrew, check out the rest of The Thinking Poker website.

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Poker Satellite Tournaments

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