This is the third article in a series. To read the first article click here or second article click here.
Warning: sections of this article contain poker terminology. If it feels like reading another language to you, please ask a poker friend for a translation!
It has now been a week since I played my first satellite event at the Rio in Las Vegas – looking to win my way into the World Series of Poker Main Event – and it’s fair to say it has been a far from ideal start to my 2015 WSOP journey.
Eight satellites for eight misses and a total of US$8,480 in the hole – not what I was planning! But there are a number of reasons I like playing satellites to the WSOP Main Event.
The first, purely mathematical reason is that satellite winnings aren’t taxed. Being Australian, my winnings from any regular tournament are taxed at a whopping 30 percent because Australia doesn’t have a tax treaty with the United States, so it pays – literally – to play satellites instead.
Secondly, there are a whole lot of hometown heroes and local holidaymakers in Las Vegas around this time of year who don’t have any idea what they’re doing but decide to have a crack at a satellite while they’ve got the chance. That creates plenty of opportunities for players of any reasonable level of ability.
And finally, satellites provide great practice given I’m unable to play poker tournaments all year round due to time constraints. Unfortunately, the nature of satellites also means it is essential to run well if you are to win your way through with only a few levels of genuine play before you need to start flipping for your tournament life.
Needless to say I haven’t been able to win a flip this week … but I’m not going to turn this into a bad beat story. The most important thing from here is how you handle the “run bad”.
My collection of satellite tickets!
A lot of players in this spot would take the negative view that even if they min-cash the Main Event for US$15,000 they’ll still be behind, but you can’t afford to think like that. You’ve got to move on.
It’s also important to remember that the WSOP Main Event is very different from the satellites, with an extremely deep structure that rewards patience rather than overt aggression. Survival is just as important as building a stack during the first few days of play.
So here I go, off to play the Main Event. Wish me luck!
To read the next article click here.
