Saturday, 28 October 2006 - 12:10 AM BST

Why do you think that satellite tournaments are bad? They give players a chance (especially decent tournament players) to get into a big event if they haven’t got a big enough bankroll or do not want to spend/invest a particular amount of money to play in an event. There are people out there who have tremendous ability but not the money to enter these events. These satellites give the opportunity for someone to experience playing in a big event and maybe win it or cash. They have an opportunity to change their life.

Saturday, 28 October 2006 - 2:45 AM BST

All tournaments allow the player with the small bankroll to play in the bigger events. You don't have to play a £100 satellite to raise the money for a bigger competition. You could just as easily play a £100 tournament and use winnings from that to fund your entry to a large comp. Take the EPT for instance. I could look around for supersats to get the €5k entry (£3,500) or I could just as easily go to any Friday night at the Sportsman and play the regular £100 comp there and get it by finishing in a top two (or three) position. What's the difference? Money is money.

There are a couple of potential problems with sats too. Firstly, if you win a seat through a Grosvenor sat, as things stand, I don't believe you get your money back if you don't arrive in time for the first hand. Whereas if you won the entry at the Sportsman's comp and paid Grosvenor in cash for the entry, you'd at least get a refund.

Secondly, you're much more likely to get cheated in a sat. To see why, imagine that there are two people colluding and that one has a large stack while the other has a smal one. You have a problem in both the competition and the satellite. But there is a reason why the satellite is worse. It's that the difference between first and second prize is nothing. So if the big stack passes chips to the small stack, it doesn't hurt him. But in a comp, it could hurt him, because it reduces his chance of getting first prize. So he's going to think twice about doing it. While in the supersat, if he's got a large stack and the play is one the bubble, it basically costs him nothing to deliberately lose chips to a friend. He's guaranteed a seat whatever happens.

Take the hand I showed above. With my low stack, I was really playing against Bruce Li to see who could last longer. He was the next lowest stack out of the 24 remaining chasing 23 seats. What if robert 7777 had deliberately lost chips to him to keep him in action? I would have been dead in the water.

Something like that happened to a visiting American player in a satellite at the Vic. He was up against two players from the north who co-operated to make sure they got the seats instead of him. I've seen both of these guys in Gutshot by the way - though very rarely.

You don't have to worry about that as much in regular comps.

I have written about sats before here -

index.blog?entry_id=1563473">index.blog?entry_id=1563473 

and there's this article for Gutshot -

http://www.gutshot.com/e/article.php?full=461&limitb=13&limitt=13&show=s&ckbox=a&search=young 

DY

Saturday, 28 October 2006 - 4:04 AM BST

I like the way you mentioned about the Muslim guy in your Gutshot article. We both know why but we will put politics aside for the moment.

You make some good points about problems with satellites, especially people cheating. In reality people could (and I am sure do) cheat in cash games. This can cost you a lot of money. I know that you can get up and walk away from a cash game if you suspect cheating but I think the advantages of satellites outweighs the disadvantages.

The establishment running the satellite tournaments obviously does so for their own personal benefit. They want to get as many people as they can into the “big events” so there is a chance that someone who attended their establishment makes it into the money or even wins the big tournament. Then they can receive publicity and say things like “It could be you”. An example would be Tiffany Williamson from Gutshot (Just read what you posted on Gutshot and did not realise than she won her ticket in Vegas, but you get my point).

The reason why I think that satellites are worth entering is that you can save money long-term. An example would be if you entered a £100 freezout into a satellite where the main event ticket is worth £2500, you would have to qualify less than 1 in 25 times to save money. If you fancied your chances than why not?

PS Have you read "By Way of Deception" by Victor Ostrovsky?

Saturday, 28 October 2006 - 12:39 PM BST

The bit about the muslim guy is a true story. If you go to Speakers Corner on a Sunday you'll see plenty of Islamic speakers. I've not been for a few years, but I doubt it's changed. I wasn't mentioning it to slur any particular religion or to advance a political viewpoint. The point was that the reaction I got from the Gutshot forum readers reminded me of the reaction of his crowd - total shock that a core belief was being mocked.

Your point about saving money in the long term through sats is fine, but if you're a good player you'll also show a profit playing 25 Saturday night Gutshot £100 freezeouts - and you get to keep the money! I have a personal reason for my view, which is that I once won a satellite ticked for a 1000 guilder tournament in Holland many years ago. I won it on a Tuesday and the competiton was on a Thursday. I must have eaten something dodgy on the intervening Wednesday, because on the morning of the big comp, I had diahorrea and was vomiting wildly in my hotel room. Luckily for me, I was able to sell my ticket to Dominic and got my money back. Otherwise I would have been totally screwed. At present I fear that if it happened to someone who'd won a Grosvenor satellite, they would be disqualified with no refund. That's hard to bear when it's for £3,500. I don't know about you, but I reckon I get food poisoning about once a year and it can last for two days, so I figure it's going to happen to someone for a large sum of money eventually - if it hasn't happened already.

It's worth asking Gutshot what happens if you are ill on the day.

DY

Sunday, 29 October 2006 - 11:09 AM GMT

David- I don’t agree with your argument against playing satellites. Generally speaking, the probability of two specific players surviving through a field of say 50 to 100 players and ending on the same table is pretty small- once in a while this will happen.

Cheating is more likely in single table satellites.

Sunday, 29 October 2006 - 12:36 PM GMT

I can't agree with that. Single table sats usually only have ONE prize. So there is a difference between first and second prize - the difference between 1st prize and nothing! Therefore chip passing goes down in value.

It's different if there's more than one prize though.

DY