[jonlutsey]

I guess if there is a question here, how does the milestone change strategy? And do you like milestone structure?

[binkley]

Interesting situation. I think I’d call here too. The benefit of calling and winning is large. You get a seat locked up. The downside of losing the hand is not catastrophic even though it hurts. You simply go to middle of the pack and you revert to the normal satellite survival strategy that you’re used to.

Disclaimer: I’ve only played online satellites (never a live one) and never played the new milestone format.

[rabman50]

Just a question. At Running Aces if you accumulate 90,000 chips do the extra 10,000 get put back into the pool or does a new target get calculated. I’ve never played milestone satellite so I am curious as this can change our strategy.

[monkiesystem]

The MSPT milestones remove all of your chips from play if you hit the milestone of 80k.

It should cause a small change to strategy, as the target stack will decrease each time those chips are removed. The original target stack is 75k in this hybrid format.

You have to recalculate the target stack every time milestone chips are removed from play. Do they update the chip totals on the leader board when chips are removed?

[jonlutsey]

They said they copied mspt, as it is run at running aces. All chips in the stack are removed and the target size does not change. They just verified at least 80k, and then removed all. Win if 80k or until survive to the end and it is the player’s responsibility to know when you got to 80. We had 51 entries, so 10 got 500 lammers and bubble got 100 lammers and there started with 765k chips in play. When someone reached milestone, then 9 seats remained. The first milestones were not much more than 80k was removed. Later, some of the removed stacks were maybe a little over 100k. I liked it, as there were never monster stacks and people not just folding to a win.

[dachiwaiian]

I played a milestone satellite in the Pokerstars Manila series. As each player reached the milestone amount, the target got removed and the player was allowed to continue with the balance of the chips for a chance to win another seat. It was a multi starting day tournament so you could win multiple seats. This made the calculation very simple, we knew what the milestone was ahead of time because it was a set percentage of players winning a seat. Once registration closed they had a formula for how many seats were available. Because the balance of chips were still in play once a player’s chips were removed, it never changed the milestone. Everyone had to reach the milestone to win a seat – there was no survivor feature like a traditional satellite. In our case, we had a 20K starting stack with a 80K milestone. I liked this format because it was super simple to understand. I just didn’t like that good/lucky players could win multiple seats leaving the rest of us dry. I didn’t know it was milestone before the satellite started and once we approached the “bubble” I was told about the format which completely changed up the strategy. You can no longer wait around for players to knock out and have to take control much earlier in the game to build up a big stack while play is loose and take advantage of weaker players. The play tightened up significantly as we got into the “bubble” range which made it more challenging to reach the milestone.

[monkiesystem]

The last time I won a seat in an MSPT milestone satellite, it got down to a final table four-handed. There were only two seats and the bubble payout left to be won. The stack depths were all single-digit. It was a lottery at that point. All the other seats that were on offer in this tournament were won by players who hit the 80k milestone.

That’s something to consider if you build a stack that’s close to the milestone in this format. It seems worth the small amount of extra risk to try to hit the milestone. A strategy of just surviving to the end could put you in the short handed short stack lottery, leaving you at the mercy of the deck.