A satellite in poker is a tournament that gets you into another tournament. This allows you to get into a high dollar entry for a low dollar amount if you are able to play correctly. What a lot of people don’t know though is if you play satellite tournaments online, you don’t actually have to play the tournament you get into. Instead, you can unregister for the tournament and get the buy in amount back to you in tournament dollars. You can use that money for other tournaments, or you can convert it for a small fee and get real money from it. With the right strategies in mind, you can actually make a lot of money playing online poker this way.

The key to the satellite system is to go into satellites that have good odds. You can calculate that by dividing the entry fee that you would win by the entry fee you have to pay. If you pay $5 to get into a tournament and win a $25 entry from it, there is a one in five chance that you will make money. Most of the time you can find satellites in the 1:3 or 1:4 range, which are pretty good to get into. There are those that are 1:7 in beyond, but they aren’t worth the efforts at times. Sure the payouts are higher, but you have to beat out more people to get to them. If you want minimal risks, go for good odds.

Once you get down to the “bubble boy” in the satellite, or the person right before the money, just try to wait it out as best you can. With these tournaments, getting first isn’t important. As long as you make it into the paid places, you’ve won. Just keep looking for tournaments at the best online poker sites with good odds and then play your best. The rest is money in the virtual bank.