5 Crazy Observations About The Tournaments At Titan Poker

I had already decided to write this post when Planet Greg let me know there are some big changes coming to Titan’s tournaments next month in a software update – in the form of Re-Entry tournaments and late-entry changes. I’ll keep saying it until I am blue in the face… If you want to beat the poker games consistently, you need to choose sites which combine poker, casino and sports-betting. Hopefully, my odd experiences at the tables last Friday will demonstrate exactly why!

So, the scene was one of my occasional Friday poker sessions, where I crack open a beer or 3, put my feet up on the desk and start 8 or 10 tournaments to see how the evening goes.

My deepest run was in a smaller buy-in one, the ‘Big $11’ at PokerStars, I managed high double figures out of something daft like 9500 entrants. I certainly had my luck along the way, but eventually succumbed to the wrong side of an 80% / 20% beat to win $120ish… grrr.

Several games were at Titan (on the infamous iPoker Network), and since a lot of the players there are not poker specialists (who tend to move their play to PokerStars / FullTilt etc) the games were noticeably looser. I only cashed in one of 4 attempts, but did build a stack in a couple of them along the way.

Tournaments At Titan – My Observations

-          The ‘Limp-Reraise With Aces’ Is Alive And Well.

Just when you thought that this particular move was consigned to poker history, it pops up at Titan. Not just once, I am talking over and over again. I was kind of shocked the first couple of times, but there it was again. I got caught out by it once, squeezing with my short stack only to find the original limper had sandbagged his aces. Mostly I was not personally involved in the hands though. Remember, when you see someone doing this to make a note… If nothing else you will know that when they put in a raise, they do not have the bullets.

-          It Is Easier To Get Paid Off

In a tournament with more regulars, tight play does not pay off. You’ll finally get a hand, put in a raise and within 0.3 of a second everyone has folded and you are left staring blankly at the ‘Show / Muck’ buttons… At Titan this really is not the case. I had notes on a couple of nits, and when they woke up and raised they were damn well paid off… could this be a lack of HUD software in use, or just level-1 thinkers only looking at their own cards.

-          Expect To Get Called By Weak Aces

This can happen at other sites, though surely not as often as I saw last Friday. A raise, a re-raise and an all-in, no stack pressure, nothing especially loose about either the first re-raiser or the guy who shoved and *boom* the original raiser called with Ace-Four or something just as daft. What hands were you hoping to be shown good sir?

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-          Smaller Stacks

1500 starting chips does feel a little cramped, and the rebuys seem to have their share of people who are just taking a shot (or rather, think they are) with 1 buy-in. Maybe I was just unlucky with my tables?

-          No Nationalities

Unless someone chooses to let you know where they are from via their picture (flags), name or having their location visible, you will not be able to tell where your opponent is from. I must admit that I found myself missing this information. I had got used to using it as part of my hand-reading. Even if this was just generalizations (Scandinavians are likely to be more aggressive, Germans rarely fail to raise a button, Romanians more tricky / backward to real strength, Brits like me just bluffy and bad (haha) and so on). The thing is that these are probably detrimental to hand reading in the long term, too easy to use them to justify whatever you want to do in the first place… so maybe better not to have this information after all!

Changes Coming To The iPoker Software

Adding multi-entry tournaments should be a nice boost. Imagine these loose / bad players without the same level of concern over losing their stacks! This should see the prize pools increase nicely, particularly at the lower buy-ins.

The reported change I am really looking forward to seeing is late registration for Sit N Go tournaments… I just can’t see how this works at the moment – the whole idea is that they start when they are full, right?

We will have to wait until October to find out.

You can still enjoy those very loose and profitable tournaments at Titan Poker in the meantime – remember to watch out for the Limp-Reraisers!

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