Satellite Bubble Calculator
Every satellite seat pays the same — which warps all-in math beyond recognition. Enter the stacks and seats paid to see each player's seat odds and the equity you'd need to call a shove. Spoiler: sometimes you fold aces.
Stacks on the bubble
Scenario: the player marked All-in shoves, everyone else folds, and You decide. Effective stack = the smaller of the two.
P(seat) — chance of winning a seat if all-ins stop now
Malmuth-Harville over the top 4 places · probabilities sum to 4.00 — the 4 seats have to go to somebody. Equal stacks come out at exactly seats ÷ players.
Call or fold?
Fold everything — even aces.
Pocket aces win about 85.1% against a random hand (this site's engine, 1M trials) — below the bar. No starting hand in poker clears this requirement.
Model assumptions
Heads-up call for the effective stack; blinds and antes ignored; a chop returns stacks unchanged (same as folding). Seat probabilities are exact Malmuth-Harville — the standard ICM recursion — truncated to N equal payouts, computed fresh for the fold, win, and lose stack configurations.
Guide
Satellite bubbles: the only spot in poker where you fold aces
Flat payouts break the link between chips and money. Here's the math that makes "fold everything" a real strategy, with every number computed by this page's engine.
What makes satellites different
A satellite awards N identical seats to a bigger tournament: finish 1st or finish Nth, you win exactly the same thing. Once your seat is reasonably safe, every additional chip you win is worth almost nothing — there is no first-place bonus to chase — while the chips you lose still carry their full catastrophic weight. Regular tournament ICM (graduated payouts) bends the chip-to-money curve; satellite ICM flattens the top of it completely. That single fact produces the strangest correct plays in poker, up to and including open-folding pocket aces.
Seat probabilities from stacks
This calculator converts stacks into P(seat)— each player's probability of finishing in the top N — using the Malmuth-Harville recursion (the standard ICM model, the same one in our ICM calculator) with a payout list of N equal seats. Two properties worth checking yourself in the tool, because they're exact, not approximate:
- → Equal stacks give exactly seats ÷ players. Five equal stacks with four seats: 80.0% each. Three equal stacks, two seats: 66.7% each.
- → The probabilities always sum to the number of seats. Someone has to win each one — if a play raises your P(seat), it lowered somebody else's by the same total.
Note what's missing: chip counts map to seat odds sub-linearly. In the "fold your aces" preset (four 10,000 stacks and one 500 stack, four seats), the big stacks each show 97.6% — twenty times the chips of the micro stack, but nowhere near twenty times the seat odds, because 100% is a hard ceiling. That ceiling is the whole story of satellite strategy.
The famous fold: aces on the bubble
Load the first preset: five players, four seats; you and three others have 10,000 chips, the fifth player has 500. Another big stack shoves. You look down at A♠A♥. The engine's numbers:
| Action | Your P(seat) |
|---|---|
| Fold | 97.6% |
| Call and win | 100.0% |
| Call and lose | 0.0% |
Calling risks 97.6 points of seat probability to gain 2.4. The required equity is 97.6% — and pocket aces win about 85.1% against a random hand (1,000,000-trial run of our evaluator; kings 82.4%, queens 79.9%). Aces fall twelve points short of the bar. Folding aces isn't a paradox here — calling is the mistake. The 500-chip stack is nearly dead already; your seat arrives by simply declining to gamble while they blind out.
The effect doesn't need a micro stack, either. With five perfectly equal stacks and four seats, folding leaves you at exactly 80.0% and the required equity is exactly 80.0% — so QQ, a 79.9% favorite over a random hand, is already a fold, kings are razor thin, and only aces clear the bar with anything to spare. On a satellite bubble, the default is folding; calling is the exception that has to prove itself.
When calling is right
The bar collapses as your stack shrinks, because a short stack's fold no longer protects much. In the short-stack preset — 2,000 chips against three 8,000 stacks, three seats — folding leaves you at just 34.4%, and the required equity drops to 59.6%: big pairs and the strongest aces become clear calls. In the mid-stack preset (six left, three seats, 5,000 facing the chip leader's shove) the requirement sits at 67.5% — roughly "QQ+, and nothing cute".
- → Safe stack: requirement near 100% — fold everything, aces included.
- → Medium stack: requirement 65-85% — premium pairs only, and check the benchmark table before flattering your hand.
- → Short stack: requirement drifts toward normal all-in math — and shoving first, rather than calling, is almost always the better lever. Our push/fold chart covers those ranges.
About "you need more than 100% equity"
You'll hear satellite regs say some calls "need more than 100% equity". In the pure stack model this page computes, the requirement caps at exactly 100%— winning chips can never lower your seat odds, so a hand that wins every single time always at least matches folding. But 100% already means the calling range is empty, and the real-table factors this model leaves out only push further in the same direction: while you fold, other players can bust each other and hand you the seat for free; a chop gains you nothing; and the caller, not the folder, faces the next bubble spot with a damaged stack. When this tool shows a requirement in the high 90s, read it as "more than any hand can deliver" — the verdict is the same either way. Fold, and let the clock do the work.
Frequently asked questions
Why would anyone fold pocket aces in a satellite?
Because in a satellite every seat pays the same, chips you win above what's needed to lock a seat are worth nothing — but the chips you lose can cost you everything. Concrete case from this calculator: five players, four seats, you and three others have 10,000 chips and the fifth has 500. Folding leaves you a 97.6% favorite for a seat; calling all-in against another big stack means risking that for a best case of 100%. You'd need to win 97.6% of the time to break even, and aces only win about 85% against a random hand. Folding aces isn't a trick question here — it's just arithmetic.
How are seat probabilities calculated?
With the Malmuth-Harville model, the same recursion behind standard ICM: the chance you finish first equals your share of the chips, and finishing places below that are computed by conditioning on each possible player ahead of you. For a satellite the payout list is just N equal seats, so your equity collapses to a single number: the probability you finish in the top N. Sanity check you can verify in the tool: with equal stacks, everyone's P(seat) is exactly seats ÷ players, and the probabilities always sum to the number of seats.
What is the 'required equity to call'?
The win probability your hand needs for calling to be at least as good as folding, computed as (P_fold − P_lose) ÷ (P_win − P_lose) using seat probabilities. In cash-game terms you'd call an all-in with 50%+; on a satellite bubble the bar is routinely 80-98%. When the requirement rises above ~85% — aces' equity against a random hand — no starting hand in poker clears it, and the correct range to call with is empty.
When SHOULD you call all-in on a satellite bubble?
Mostly when you're the short stack being forced in. With 2,000 chips against three 8,000 stacks and 3 seats paid, this calculator puts your fold-through P(seat) at 34.4% and the required equity to call at about 59.6% — high, but reachable for big pairs and strong aces. The general pattern: the shorter your stack relative to the field, the closer the requirement drops toward normal pot-odds numbers; the safer your stack, the closer it climbs toward 100%.
Do bigger stacks win anything extra in a satellite?
No — first place and the last seat pay identically, which is the whole distortion. Doubling your stack once you're already ~95% to win a seat buys you almost nothing, and that asymmetry is why big stacks should almost never play big pots against each other on the bubble, while a big stack shoving into medium stacks (who can't call without risking their seat) is printing money.
Does this math apply to regular tournaments too?
Directionally yes, but far less extremely. Regular MTTs and SnGs have graduated payouts, so extra chips always buy some extra prize money and the required equity rarely gets near 100%. Satellites are the limiting case where the payout curve goes completely flat. For graduated payouts, use our ICM calculator; for bounty formats, the PKO calculator handles the opposite distortion (bounties make calling wider, not tighter).
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Want the foundations first? Our free 15-minute Poker 101 course covers equity and expected value from zero.
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