Apparently The Wynn created or just starting to use this tournament format in late 2022/early 2023 for satellites in association with their WPT Series Events.

A casino in our area (Firekeepers, Battle Creek, MI) is also implementing them as their MSPT Poker Tour approaches in May.

Basically if you reach a 'Milestone' chip count you can call the Floor over and 'instantly' receive your entry certificate into the Main Event (and leave the tournament). In this case a Player will start the tournament with 15K in chips with a Milestone of 80K. The chips are taken out of play and one of the awards is removed from the 20% prize pool.


Points either way .. ??

1) Players who accumulate chips early don't have to 'painstakingly' wait around for the rest of the field to be eliminated.
2) Players who hit the Milestone can re-enter
3) Advantage aggressive Players?

4) Helps speed up the tournament with (perhaps) less tanking towards the end?
5) Are tighter Players 'harmed' by the field shrinking faster than normal?
6) How does the venue establish the Milestone amount?

7) Players who accumulate chips early aren't around to possibly dump those chips back to other Players
8) Would this create larger fields with Players knowing they can try to blast and not have to go through the whole average 4-5 hours of the Satty?
9) Shorter tournament time frame gets Players back into cash tables?

Anything else? GL

Interesting idea for a tournament, and I'm thinking this part is pretty straightforward for a true satellite. Just figure out how many chips are worth a ticket. Say it's a $1000 buy-in for the main tournament, and the satellite is $120 with $100 of that going towards the prize pool. Stack of 10,000 starting chips.

You've got 10,000 chips worth $100 and the target is $1000. That means 100,000 chips would be worth $1000 and a ticket.

There are definitely some other logistics to figure out regarding extra chips over the target amount and how that affects things down the line, but I'm definitely in favor of trying new ideas in poker.

It also depends on when the satellites are run.

In Prague they ran them as turbos the same day as their tournaments. The problem in both Rebuy Stars casino Luka and King's casino was that often the satellites didn't end in time for the start of the tournaments. This way most of the qualifying players get to play at the start of the actual tournament.

At King's casino they would actually wait for the satellite to end so a 6pm tourney once started at 7:15pm.

These milestone satellites are pretty common. I've encountered them at multiple venues.

Personally I'm not a fan. The main reason is that it removes the ability for a huge stack to commit ICM suicide and blow off their entire stack when they could just fold their way into the money. The same players that tend to accumulate huge stacks early are often the ones who take exorbitant risks, and fail to adjust as the bubble approaches.

I think it's just a way for casinos to save costs and get satellites finished quicker.

Edit: Same day satellite might be the exception where it actually makes sense.

The reason for them to exist is pretty obvious. They convert players who sit around the table and fold (or do something stupid with their chips) into players who do something else in the poker room or casino. Also speeds up the overall tournament time.

I like them because they encourage action. You have incentive to try and build a big stack instead of just coasting.

I have seen the milestones vary - some require more than a 10x stack in order to cash.

That's directly correlated to the number of players who advance. If 1 in 10 entrants advance the milestone should be 10x. If it's 1 in 5 it should be 5x and if it's 1 in 20 it should be 20x.

At the end of the tournament the average chip stack of everyone who advanced is the same no matter if 10 players reached a 100k milestone each or if the 10 remaining players have stack sizes varying between 1mil and 10k chips.

What I think casinos do differently is how to handle extra chips. I think the US standard is to leave them in front of the player to give them the chance to win another seat? When we discussed the format in NVG maybe two years ago someone mentioned in their game in Australia they put the extra chips in a bomb pot instead. Since then I've read that some places in Europe do it the same way.

At Wynn, you need more than the average chips per seat in order to advance. Looking at one of their structures from last month, there is one seat per 6.5 entrants. You need 7.5x starting stack in order to advance. In another one it was 8.9 to one, but you need 10x to advance.

I've always seen all chips removed from play when someone hits the milestone. It doesn't matter how far above the threshold you are.

Sorry, I missed an "at least" in there. If the chips stay in play, you can (and should) set the threshold to a higher number.

But if you remove all chips from play instead of only the average number, you're creating a scenario where no remaining player can reach the milestone which kinda defeats the purpose of the tournament because you're back to the usual collusion and stalling, especially with multiple tables left.

If one player advances for every 6.5 entries and you need a 7.5x stack to advance:
65 entries, 10 tickets. 10k starting stacks, so you need 75k to advance. Total number of chips in play 650k. Player A gets to 120k in a 60k vs. 60k all-in and advances. 530k chips left and 9 tickets. Same thing happens 4 more times and we're left with 50k in chips but 5 tickets.

If welost 600k of chips, we’re probably pretty close to 5 people left for the 5 seats.

This seems easy, just play until 5 left. Even if no can get the "at least" milestone

Of course that's what we do but that totally defeats the purpose of the format. As soon as nobody can reach the milestone anymore we have the exact same problems as a regular satellite: stalling, collusion, auto folding. (Ideally you combine those 3 by stalling to auto fold to help your guy on a short stack).

FWIW, the currently running Irish Open distribute remaining chips evenly among everyone who were dealt into the hand.

Sure, but there is a difference in your example between say having 12 people left hanging around for 10 seats (with two tables, etc.) with 600k on the tables, and getting down to 7 people left hanging around for 5 seats with 50k on the table; especially if the blinds are the same.