The $5,200 buy-in Titans tournament with a $200k guarantee attracted 61 entries on January 5, with 9 people cashing. First place was valued at $82,322, and ninth place was valued at $9,508.
Final table composition and stacks:
Almaz «Alister307» Zhdanov (Belarus) – 133.1 bb
Daniel «starwins :)» Sternald Petersen (Denmark) – 58.2 bb
Ottomar «DingeBrinker» Ladva (Estonia) – 51.2 bb
Roman «RomeOpro» Romanovsky (Ukraine) – 32.9 bb
Luan «Zorkkiin» Coelho (Brazil) – 31.6 bb
|gammi|€120 (Belarus) – 29.9 bb
Alex «I Attack95» Kulev (Bulgaria) – 28.9 bb
Leonard «Grozzorg» Maué (Austria) – 19.6 bb
P0KERPR02.0 (Austria) – 18.6 bb
Seating arrangement:
The very first hand turned out to be quite interesting. When it was Romanovsky's turn, true to his street style, burst into the pot with a limp. The Baltic players in the blinds agreed to see the flop at the lowest possible price, and the dealer delivered . The blinds both checked, Roman bet 75% of the pot and was called by top pair. On the turn came , both checked. The river repeated the three , and the Danish player bet 7bb into a 10bb pot.
Roman thought for a long time with his ace-high, but eventually came to the conclusion that he had to call it.
Should you call the chip leader's raise with KTo? Ladva answers this question with a strong yes. The players in the blinds both fold.
On the flop Zhdanov, who caught second pair and a handful of backdoors, checks, Ladva with a gutshot and showdown value on K-high checks after him. Turn – same story.
River . Zhdanov decides to collect value on the second pair and bets 2.19 bb into a 6.63 bb pot. A simple fold? A tough call? Ladva responds more creatively – raising to 7.5 bb! A strong move! The opponent folded rather quickly.
An important hand for the dynamics of the table – Petersen avoided a catastrophe and got off with a light fright. On the preflop, he attacked the big blind of the short Romanovsky with A5o, being the biggest stack of those still holding cards – no choice.
The Brazilian Coelho, for some reason named Zorkin, called with a weak suited ace. The flop was check – check: the Dane slowplayed, the Brazilian pot-controlled. On the turn, there was a delayed continuation bet, and Coelho with the two highest pairs also played carefully – called. Well, and on the river, Petersen peacefully checked and paid off a large, but not excessively large bet from his opponent. And so, having hit two pairs higher with two pairs, the Dane kept his stack more than 50 bb.
Bad timing for a prank with Gambledoor's favorite hand. The Austrian regular wasn't afraid to push AJo, and Roman had to give up. There were only 11 blinds left.
It seems that the Estonian grandmaster is ready to enter the button against Zhdanov with anything that looks a little like a hand. Now it's QTo's turn.
The electronic dealer treated the chip leader rather cynically. First the flop came – and both checked. On the turn Having caught good value, Zhdanov put 5.37 bb into a 6.63 bb pot – Ladva called.
The river came – a , four cards to a straight. Zhdanov checks. Ladva doesn't hesitate to greedily add – 13 bb into the pot 17.4 bb. And the bet goes through – the opponent calls and discovers that he only had outs preflop.
After this hand, Zhdanov is still in the lead with 77.7 bb. Ladva moves into second place.
And here Roman guesses brilliantly. Of the three active options – to push, to make an "almost push" or to call – he chooses the third. And on the flop calmly folds when Zhdanov bets 1.5bb into a 7.63bb pot and Petersen calls.
The turn brings an . The remaining players in the hand skip betting. The river is a nine. As they say, the strongest one wins – after all, Zhdanov had two outs to strengthen, and Petersen only one.
Having caught a full house on nines, Zhdanov signals this by betting 9bb into a 10.6bb pot. The Danish player thinks for a long time and finds a fold.
Left with a meager five blinds, Romanovsky waits for a premium hand and is eliminated by the hand of the second Belarusian at this table.
A raise from Gummy, two calls, and the flop brought them a cooler of medium severity:
Zhdanov bets a third of the pot, gets called and folds.
Turn – . 75% of the pot, and again call.
River – . There are 29 bb in the pot. Zhdanov bets 20.6 bb. Ladva thinks until the end of the timebank and folds either during the timeout or a second before the end of the time. A strong fold!
A successful bluff from Kulev:
And just a brilliant fold from Zhdanov:
Unfortunately though, he is unlucky in the next hand:
Already on the turn the Belarusian will be left without outs.
A min-raise fold with an ace with a stack under 10bb!
PokerPro was probably upset about that hand when he couldn't win anything with an ace. Petersen didn't get away with that sneaky bluff either: in the next hand he got AQo and responded with a re-push to Zorkin's raise. The Brazilian called, showed aces and held, leaving his opponent with a stub of an 8-blind stack.
Ladva puts pressure on the shorties:
An interesting pot between two top PokerStars regs who have probably played hundreds of hands against each other, so it's definitely not worth evaluating their decisions in a vacuum.
On the flop, Ladva made a continuation bet, the turn was checked. On the tiny block bet on the river, the Estonian made a very small raise – 5.5 bb. But this bet was enough to squeeze Kulev out of the pot.
And another cool fold from Zhdanov in a situation when in the world of simple amateurs the hand itself presses to call against the short stack:
Zorkin caught two short stacks at once, but he didn't hold the weight completely: PokerPro caught an eight and more than tripled. Well, Gummy left the tournament in 8th place and received a little more than 10 thousand dollars. Unlike Romanovsky, who got into the money only with the third entry, the Belarusian limited himself to one and therefore even remained in the black.
Riding the wave of success, PokerPro even manages to bluff his formidable compatriot preflop:
Maue folded ATs pretty quickly. Apparently not a very good kicker for 20bb deep!
Zhdanov opens Q9s from the button, 3-bets and floats a third of the pot on a paired flop with a pair of overcards and backdoors. On the turn, one of the backdoors turns into a full-fledged draw, but...
The draw meant nothing in the end.
With a small pair, Ladva goes under the new chip leader's raise. Zorkin delivers to the BB.
Flop (6.75bb):
On two checks, Maué makes a continuation bet of 1.4 bb. With an extremely vulnerable hand and not closing the action, Ladva makes a call – the pot odds are very good. The Brazilian in the BB also calls.
On the turn comes out – all check. River – bingo – .
There are 11bb in the pot, you have a small full house, go! What's your bet size?
Ladva, who has no time bank at all, has no time to think, and he bets 8.21bb. Quite big, and two-handed. Then something strange happens.
What is this? An attempt to force a chop? Why?
When the floor passed to Ladva, he, of course, pushed (you can get it with trips!), and in a fashionable way – leaving one and a half blinds behind. Daniel Negreanu would have been displeased.
Of course, there was no call.
6th place goes to Pokerpro:
5th goes to Zorkin: the creative Brazilian missed a continuation bet in a blind-on-blind game, and responded to a test bet of a third of the pot with an all-in. Kulev with top pair did not have to be asked twice. The Brazilian outs did not come:
Kulev chooses A5o for 4-bet:
But Zhdanov has too good a hand to worry about. He goes all-in, and the pot comes to him without a fight.
Less than a minute later, the Belarusian is dealt jacks again, he 3-bets again and gets 4-bet...
And he is the leader again!
Ladva can't seem to win the pot at the card table, but he stubbornly keeps himself afloat with bluffs.
In this hand, Maue opened with a 2.5bb raise, and Ladwa with a 17-blind stack chose to play postflop. The Estonian called a quarter-pot continuation bet on the flop. The turn was checked, and on the river he had to bluff. Success!
The Austrian top reg shoves a plus all-in with a trash hand and hits the top of his neighbor's range. Ladwa and Maue's stacks are evened out after the river.
The chip-leader mocks the short-stack:
A less resilient player would have folded Q6s and given himself up to reflection in the next hand, but Kulev calmly raised and collected three streets of value from the last representative of Western Europe:
Well, Ladva continues to rake in money that he has no right to.
Here he defended preflop, paid a 2/3 continuation bet on the flop, and casually bluffed his opponent on the river.
At the same time, it cannot be said that the Estonian grandmaster’s bets inspired any increased confidence among other players.
Here Ottomar raised preflop, checked the flop, called a small bet on the turn, and checked big on the river. It didn't take long for the call on the 4th street board on the fifth match.
Blind on blind: big limp all-in 26bb deep with a pair of fives!
This time the jacks play against Almaz Zhdanov and help the Austrian professional double up.
The next hand between the same players sees the pendulum swing back. Note the 3-bet and the instant-fast-as-the-wind call of the all-in with K9s:
Once again, the strongest hand wins, and there are still four at the table.
After taking a short rest, Maue pulls off a successful limp-reraise with K5o:
A circle later, AKs come to the same position. It seems like a stronger hand, but the limp-reraise is much worse:
Leonard Maué is in 4th place, leaving only Eastern European players in the top three.
Having received a dominant stack, Ladva switches to open-pushing in every hand, when the word reaches him, he misses only T4o. Finally, his push at 97o gets called by Kulev with A5s. The Bulgarian by that time had less than 10 bb left, and Zhdanov with 23 bb clearly demonstrated a desire to outlast his opponent. Alas for Kulev, he was unable to double up – the seven that came on the flop decided the fate of the hand.
The heads-up lasted about 10 minutes.
After a few routine hands, Ladva limped Q7o and called the isolator. Having caught the second pair on the flop, he paid the continuation bet. On the turn, he checked after the overcard. And on the river, he got an overbet...
...which he confidently dealt with by making a quick call.
Then there was a preflop bet with A7o by Zhdanov against AKo, but two pairs were put on the table, and the players split the pot on an ace. However, there was no turning point – almost immediately Zhdanov went all-in 10 bb with K2o, Ladva made the call with and stood firm.
A well deserved victory!
