Thursday, 28th March 2024 11:54
Home / PokerStars qualifiers: Turning small buy-ins into massive paydays

“I would never have come if I hadn’t qualified.”

Reporters on the European Poker Tour (EPT) have heard a variation of the sentence above from hundreds of poker players at dozens of events. Most recently, Tomas Patka (pictured above), a 27-year-old originally from Trencin, Slovakia, said something similar to the EPT Media Coordinator Jan Kores. They were standing in Monte Carlo.

This week, Patka, who now lives in Austria, became the latest player to graduate from the online tables to the live arena and take to the new environs like a duck to water. At the time of the conversation, Patka had bagged the chip lead in the France Poker Series (FPS) Main Event and was going to play for a €300K first prize. He’s only in after qualifying online.

The most remarkable thing was that Patka had qualified for the tournament online at PokerStars, for an outlay of €100. That got him his €1K buy-in, plus a hotel and expenses. As a lower-stakes online tournament player, it’s not normally the kind of event he would play.

“I would never have come if I hadn’t qualified.” It says it all. Patka will be going home with a six-figure score, plus a huge boost to his bankroll. He can maybe look at coming to this kind of event more regularly now.

IT COULD BE YOU

It always bears repeating. If you want to take a shot at a big live event, the best bet by far is to try qualifying online. There are numerous qualifiers available for all of PokerStars live events, and there’s always a very low-cost pathway to the big time.

Right now, there are qualifier events running on PokerStars to events in Namur (Belgium), Malta, Brasilia and Cambodia. All have buy-ins in the €1,000 mark, but all have qualifiers that start at around $5, and sometimes even less.

The European Poker Tour will visit Barcelona, Cyprus and Prague before the end of 2023, and there will be numerous satellites open to those tournaments in the immediate run up.

There’s always a way in for way less than the advertised buy-in.

HOW TO FIND THE ONLINE QUALIFIERS

The quickest way to find the qualifiers from the PokerStars lobby is to hit two buttons.

The first is the tab that says “Events”. The second is just below it, the tab that says “Live”.

That presents you with a map of the world and further tabs that say Europe, Americas, Asia and Aus/NZ. You can narrow your search by clicking on them.

On the map, you’ll notice small pins dropped in the relevant countries, and clicking on them presents a pop-up from which you can choose “Open Event Lobby”. You can then see all the qualifiers currently scheduled and when they’re running.

Find the qualifiers in the lobby

BUILD YOUR SKILL SET BY QUALIFYING ONLINE

Obviously there’s no guarantee you’ll qualify first time, much less that you’ll fly through the field if and when you make it to the target event.

But qualifiers offer an excellent chance of honing your skills and gaining valuable experience. The more you play, the better you get.

It’s always worthwhile visiting PokerStars Learn for some strategy help ahead of playing any online satellites. Dave Roemer’s “How to Approach Online Satellites to Live Events” seems like a good place to start.

Don’t forget, plenty of poker’s very biggest superstars began their careers as online qualifiers. The two standout examples are Jason Mercier and Mike McDonald, who were online satellite winners to EPT San Remo and EPT Dortmund back in the day. Their wins propelled them to greatness.

More recently, Razvan Belea was an online qualifier to EPT Paris before going all the way to the top spot. He very kindly shared some wisdom on how he did it, and you would do well to read his “Advice for online qualifiers from the EPT Paris champion“.

More about EPT Monte Carlo

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