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Making the Most of a WSOP Satty Win

With all of the WSOP satellites going on right now, players are once again contemplating grand illusions of satelliting into a huge event, taking first place, and raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars. Snapping back to reality, most people consider themselves lucky just to win a WSOP seat through a satellite, and don’t really care what happens when they get there. But if you take this mentality into the World Series of Poker, you won’t even make it off the first table.

The WSOP represents an excellent opportunity to not only make your mark in the poker world, but also to make a significant cash that could change your life. For this very reason, it’s important that you’re completely ready if you have plans to participate in the world’s largest poker event. Here are some tips on how to practice for a WSOP event.

Play in Lots of Deep Stack Tournaments

In an effort to quiet complaints and give people more value for their buy-in, the WSOP has been starting players off with bigger stacks in recent years. And since the stacks have gotten deeper, being a talented deep stacks tournament player is crucial to doing well in the WSOP.

The obvious way to be a good deep stack tournament player is by playing in as many of them as possible. Whether it’s an online or live deep stacks tourney, you just need to look for events that start you off with a large stack.

Both Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars offer plenty of double and deep stack tournaments. Check the lobby of each for details – FTP marks theirs off with an icon for deep stacks, while PokerStars notes it in the title of the tournament. Both rooms allow you to easily filter their lobbies to find specific tournaments quickly.

As for the strategies you should employ in these tournaments, play as conservative as possible during the early stages and wait for the nuts to come. With blind levels not being a factor early on, you don’t have to make risky moves to stay alive; you’ll have plenty of time to wait for good hands to come. As more players bust out and blinds grow larger, you should open up your play and get more aggressive.

For more in-depth tournament strategy, check out our MTT Strat page or view videos at our Poker Training page.

Play Sit and Go’s and Shorthanded Tables

There’s no point in practicing for the WSOP if you’re not going to be ready for the final table. And it’s hard to make final tables in multi-table tournaments on a consistent basis. So your best option for practicing final table play is by entering online sit and go’s.

Sure sit and go’s won’t provide the exact same effect as the final table of a MTT since starting stack sizes are the same, but you still get to practice playing against a single table of players. You can get some additional practice in by playing shorthanded SNG tables as well. In shorthanded situations, you’ll get the chance to play against a smaller table and simulate decisions that are made with fewer players.

Get Out in the Live Tournament Scene

While sitting in the comfort of your home and playing online poker is nice for practicing the fundamentals, you will need to play some live tournaments once too. After all, WSOP events aren’t played over the Internet so you need to get acclimated to live conditions.

Now you don’t have to travel on the WPT or EPT to practice (although this would be perfect), but you should be looking for some nearby tournaments to enter – preferably ones where there will be good competition.

Your play shouldn’t deviate much in live tournaments, and you should still stick to a conservative strategy in the early stages. But one thing that will be important is trying to look for physical tells from other players. In addition to this, you should also practice keeping a good poker face at the table yourself. And if you’re not used to live tournaments, playing these events will give you a chance to get used to how slow-paced live play can be.

Play Satellites Online

Some of the juiciest games at the WSOP are the satellites to the Main Event. Satellite play can be very different than regular play, and it can be difficult to adjust cold.

You don’t want to walk into these tournaments with no experience, but you don’t want to pass them up either, as they represent a superior value to almost every other game offered at the WSOP. The good news is that all rooms online are always running satellites to one tournament or another, and you can practice your satty strat in any of them.

For a primer on satellite strategy, check out our guide to play in top-two satellites (the common format for single-table satellites at the WSOP).

By the time you’ve done everything suggested in this article, you should be well-prepared for the WSOP. And with a little luck, you’ll be bringing home some major cash from Las Vegas!

Satellites for the 2010 WSOP are running now. View the complete list of 2010 WSOP satellites here.

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