Titan Tourneys Anything But Tight

Meek and I got a $100 reload bonus (It feels good: James Brown) from Party and he decided to play a bit of the $2/4 bad beat jackpot that creates buzz every once in a while. $2/4 is higher than we normally play, but we've got this $100 cushion to play around with, why not see what happens. After a few hours of that (down then part way back up) we finish down $20. Meek is ready to log off, but a Fragger With Attitude is on the Instant Messenger. SirF is registered for a $10/1 freeze-out (no rebuy) on Titan in 10 minutes. We check it out. It's going to go over the guarantee of $750, so no overlay. With SirF being in it, and it paying the top 10 places, it looks attractive enough. In we go, with 91 others. SirF gets off to an early start, moving up, but we languish around 600 chips for the first session. We make an all in bluff, and don't get called. Later, we double up just before t! he break to get back to comfortable, but below average. SirF is cruising, 25% over average, waiting for hands. Players have been dropping fast, even though the blinds are still low. Much overaggressive play.

We cruise along nicely through the next half hour, both staying afloat. It gets down to 20 players on 2 tables. SirF and I each have our own tables. We get AA, raise 5x after two limpers. Two callers to the raise. I believe the flop was J high, and a pot size bet takes it down. That adds about 30% to our stack. About 4 hands later, we are rebalanced to SirFs table. SirF is to my right, so we don't have to worry about him messing with me. We get AA again first hand. Keep em coming! One caller to our raise, and a Queen high flop with two diamonds. We raise about 2/3rds of the callers stack and he folds. Here, we didn't want to overbet the pot and make it look like a steal. I wanted to take it down there and not get called by the flush draw. We get down to 12, and SirF is getting to be one of the small stacks. It's been a push fest for a while now, but we'! ve been able to stay out of it. An interesting hand comes up. We get AK in middle/late position. I'll let Meek tell this part:

"The blinds are 300/600. SirF min raises to 1200. I've got a hand here. I'm not going to take it easy on him and fold this. However, we do lighten up and just call (ack, we just cold called! crap. At least PokerTracker didn't see it, as we are on Titan). It is folded around and it is just the two of us. The flop is 2 3 4 rainbow. SirF checks, and I min bet. My second mistake. If I am playing this out, I should push, or raise pot. Here, I give him a chance to come back over, to give me a dilemma. He calls. The turn is a 5, giving me a straight. He checks, I bet bigger to let him know it is mine. He folds. I ended up taking 3 BB from him. If I had re raised, maybe I only take 2 and he isn't as desperate. Anyway, I made the decision to play the hand and not take it easy on him, I should have not backed off at all on him when everyon! e dropped out. But I did, just a little."

SirF is definitely in push or fold mode now. He gets a K and goes in. It's folded around to a big stack who happens to have two face cards. Unluckily, one of them is a K, dominating SirF. SirF doesn't hit his card, and bubbles out at 11. I feel bad, but his bankroll is bigger than me, so not so much.

See this through SirFs viewpoint

We are at the final table. The payout structure starts at 10, then goes up by 10 for each spot to the top 5, then it goes up by 20 until 3rd. 2nd is $184, and 1st is $276. I'd like for Meek to get at least 5th ($73) so this pays off more than a ten person SnG. Here is where the over aggression becomes apparent. There are 5 big stacks, and 5 small/medium stacks. We are medium sized, so we are shooting for 5th, unless we get some cards. We don't get many cards, steal a the blinds a few times, and by the time the next break hits, there are three of us left: 1 giant stack of 75k, me at 12k and a third at 8k. We stayed about the same and all 5 of the big stacks went to total war, knocking each other off. We were able to wade through that. The monster takes out third place and we are in big money. Now, we are an 8 to 1 underdog, but that's great news considering we were aiming for 5th. 1st hand, I get TJ, and it goes raise, reraise, push. Up against TT and I'm out in 2nd.





To recap, these Titan players are just too aggressive. You can move up hugely through patience. They tend to play the whole tournament like they can rebuy, even though you couldn't even rebuy in the 1st hour in this one. I strongly recommend these. Just don't sit at my table, or one of us is getting hurt.