Bubble Play in Top Two Pay Satellites – A Comprehensive Guide (Part One)

Loose (40-70% of hands)
This range can be employed in a few scenarios. You should be shoving this range when you have a slightly shorter stack (5-8BBs) and are in a tighter race for second with an opponent. Why? Two reasons: One, unlike your 10BB stack, this stack has less fold vig. Two, being in a close third means you’re a little less desperate – the closer you are to your opponent in terms of chips, the more risks they’ll be compelled to take to protect their equity. Any time your opponents are likely to get into confrontations with one another three handed, you can afford to play a little tighter than you would otherwise. Don’t tighten up too much though – you can still be pushing all aces, pairs, anything with a broadway card in it, medium suited connectors, and so on.

You can also play this range when you have a decent chip lead (about 2x) and the SB and BB are in a close fight for second. It’s basically the same logic articulated above for shoving the button 100% with a huge chip lead, but tightening up a bit to account for the fact that your stack can’t take a hit quite as well with the smaller chip lead.

Some relevant scenarios from SNGW:

Raise 55% when you have 7BBs and trail the BB by 1-2BBs
Raise 70% when you have 10BBs and the SB/BB both have about 5BBs

Aggressive (20-40% of hands)
You’re generally looking to be playing this range from the button when you’re in a somewhat tenuous 1st or 2nd. If you’re in a solid 1st or 2nd, there’s really not much reason to get involved from the button – especially if you’re in a solid 1st, as you have every incentive to just let the blinds beat up on each other. If you’re in third, you’ll likely be playing one of the above ranges.

If you’re in a somewhat tenuous 1st or 2nd, however, you need to be somewhat active, especially if the 1st place player is directly to your left and is playing passively against the 3rd place player in the BB. You’ll often see this happen, as the big stack reasons (much like we did above) that there’s not much reason to get involved and decides that feeding the BB chips to attack you with is a fine strategy.

Another reason to be opening this range: if you’re in first but the stacks are all pretty low relative to the blinds and both blinds have a real motivation to play tight – especially so if the BB has good reason to nit it up. Samples from SNGW:

Raise 21% in 1st with 7BBs and even-stacked 2nd and 3rd in blinds
Raise 25% if you’re in 2nd and BB is short stacked (2.5BB or less)
Raise 25% if you’re in 1st and the SB is in solid 3rd
Raise 30% in 2nd with 5BBs and BB has 2BB or less

Tight (10%-20% of hands)
Tighten up your play to this range when you’re in a solid 1st place – the deeper you are, the more true this becomes. There are a few exceptions to this rule – mostly when you have a big chip lead, the SB and the BB have close to equal stacks and are playing tight and the blinds are somewhat substantial. Those exceptions aside, in a flat payout satellite, you’re just not getting paid to gamble when you have the chip lead as it’s simply too likely that the other two players will clash sooner than later.

You should also be playing a fairly tight button when you’re in a solid 2nd place over the SB, but be prepared to shift gears if the SB is steadily chipping up by shoving on a passive chipleader in the BB.

Very Tight (0-10% of hands)
The primary time to be very tight from the button is when the stacks are basically even or excessively deep, especially if you’re facing a loose player in either blind. Unlike your situation in third place, where you had a real concern about how you were going to pick up chips, this situation doesn’t call for as much concern simply because everyone is facing the same issue. Whenever there’s a solid potential for your opponents to be engaging in confrontations, there’s simply less of a need for you to be getting into pots. This is especially true when you have a slight lead on (or are even slightly behind) the SB, since you’ll have the advantage on them in future hands (unless they are willing to call very wide from the BB when you shove from the SB, which few players are).

You can also be very tight from the button when you have a massive chiplead and both blinds are very short. You just don’t need the chips, and the SB will likely do your dirty work for you if you fold.

Some samples from SNGW:
Raise 10% with 9-10BBs and slight 3rd to SB
Raise 10% with 5-10BBs and even stacks
Raise 8% with 10BBs and SB with 9BBs
Raise 8% with 6.5BBs with slight lead on small blind and reasonably tight blinds

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