Well…we were all there…at the same table though – what’s wrong with that picture – I guess someone at FullTilt doesn’t know what the term “heads up” stands for…*sigh*…we played the match quickly…and what can I say…the deck was kind early on…but even kinder to pokersweethome who pockets the 40 bucks – after all it was winner takes it all…*sigh*

Hand of the day: slow-played trip Aces beat by a flush (Colin (pokersweethome) holding the lovely 3d4d)…

I guess we’ll have to reschedule our first round match…let’s see when it will go down…

…sometimes isn’t such a good idea after all. I played a NL HE Heads Up match at Absolute Poker in preparation for tomorrow’s HUC3 match and I didn’t do all that good. Note to self: try to take your time and don’t let yourself be bullied around tomorrow. Trust your gut.

After that disappointment I went back to common grounds – to the low limit NL HE ring games at Full Tilt. I grinded out some bucks and cleared another bit of the bonus, so what do you do with the free money? Yup, play a SnG! Shorthanded NL HE sounded right so I gave it a shot. Bouncing up and down like a rubber ball for 45 minutes before Mr. Luckbox outflops me…out in 4th. Damn! Ah well, time to get some rest…I hope to see you all around at the HUC3 – Round 1 tomorrow…

So, Round 1 has been announced and I gotta say, I’m excited! Despite some minor hiccup, namely PokerStars’ inability to provide us with private 4 person HeadsUp matches, everything seems to work out just fine. We changed sites and the matches will now take place at FullTiltPoker (two thumbs up yet again for their supreme customer service)!

I’m part of the first match, tomorrow 4pm ET:

Table: HUC#3-Maniacs
Time: 4 p.m.

Surflexus
Ingoal
Boobie Lover
PokerSweetHome

Should be interested, let’s see what the first matchup will be, a part of me wants to see Ingoal vs Boobie Lover in the first matchup (after all Wes was responsible for kicking me out in the first round of the DADI HU event), the other part is rooting for a matchup against one of the others…I guess we’ll have to see what happens…this should be good fun one way or another….

The winner of the our table (“Maniacs”) will face off against the winner of the “donkeys” table, which includes Juliette, PresidentDaveLee (who won yesterday’s WWdN), 23Skidoo and SteelerJosh.
All the tables are looking great as far as I can tell and I’m really looking forward not only to play my own table, but to railbird some if not all other tables (damn, there are nice matchups all over the place!). Exciting!

For more infos about the matches, locations/times and the participants along with the results of the tables as they happen, check out the HUC3-Blog! See you all at the tables!
Last but not least I would like to give a big shoutout to the Commish, Veneno, who made this all a reality, w00t!

Edit: I forgot to quote some interesting infos for all participants and railbirds (Source: Veneno’s blog):

“In addition to the Heads Up Matches, the following “Lounges” have been set-up as a place for railbirds, losers, and quickie winners to hang out and have some more fun! Please feel free to join in these events, even if you are not a participant in the HUC3.

Name/Title: HUC3 – Lounge
Buyin: $5 + $.25
Game: Hold’em
Limit: NL
Password: poisonrules
Date: Thursday 3/23/06
Time: 9:30 p.m. EST
Min players: 9

Name/Title: HUC3 – Lounge2
Buyin: $5 + $.25
Game: Hold’em
Limit: NL
Password: HUGoddess
Date: Thursday 3/23/06
Time: 10:30 p.m. EST
Min players: 9 ”

So, if you want to join the fun…join one of the Lounge tourneys tomorrow!

Played only a little poker today – man am I going to be relieved when the exam is done on tuesday, my head is full.

After hitting the books again I jumped into a 5$ HORSE tourney on Full Tilt which was about to start, I just can’t leave my hands of these HORSE tourneys, despite doing not all that good in them. This time it was not really different: played 2x HORSE and busted out in the 3rd Razz round…38th of 87…

After footie training I logged on to PokerStars to transfer the 15$ to the commish for the HUC3, and there was the 20k guaranteed 3$ rebuy tourney about to start, so why not?! Because I should have known better…either you’re willing to throw money at these things or you catch some cards early on getting all those lovely chips from donkeys or you go home pretty early. I did the latter as I couldn’t get anything going…when I hit trips, my opponent hit’s his boat, etc etc that combined with the fact that the chipleader is already sitting on a 60k stack after roughly 45 mins didn’t make me feel like hitting the rebuy button…Note to self: leave your hands of these rebuys…they’re not good for your wallet or your sanity.

HUC3 Pimpage:

If you want to have a look at who’s playing, when the thing is going down and more info head over to the HeadsUpChallenge-Blog! All the critical infos can be found in the banner below, too.

Tired from learning / revising all day and tired of getting sucked out on in critical hands. Played a Token satellite again, nothing much to report until we’re down to 6 handed, I need some chips and push from the button with Ad8d…SB folds…BB thinks it’s a good idea to call the additional 1k chips with 4d5d…sure enough two diamonds on the flop…blank turn…and 4 on the river…and I’m out in 6th place…no token, no joy, just the urging feeling to hit something. 🙁

Maybe I shouldn’t play when I’m so tired at all…but you know how it is, a little game won’t hurt…although in this case it did…once again. A well, you can’t win ’em all…and being tired didn’t hurt my game in DADI IV or WWdN 18 the last two days, so I guess I’m just in “just been sucked out on”-mode… 😉
Addendum: Forgot to mention my little ring game before the WWdN…nothing too spectacular, played a half dozen orbits to warm up for the WWdN, went out ahead 1 buyin… 🙂

After footie training I fired up PokerStars to pick up where I left yesterday evening – at the micro SnGs. Two junk kickings later and I’m frustrated (8th place finish in NL HE, which was okay, my play sucked as did my cards – I pot it up with 99, my first decent hand of the night, one guy reraises me to All-In, I ponder and suspect that he got me beat, but the “maybe not, just suckout”-monkey on my shoulder tells me to call…so I do and he shows his black Aces…IGHN; bring in the PLO8 and everything is looking better, until we’re down to 6 handed, this is where the story of the super-charge-luckbox-deluxe begins. This one player keeps raising every pot, which is legitimate if there are three shortstacks and you’re holding a decent amount of chips, but you’re not entitled to win every friggin pot, especially not in PLO8 and even more so if you’re pushing all the time with crap like 67KQ. As soon as we’re down to 5 handed I think “okay, time to get something going”, so I’m waiting for a decent hand and then it’s time to counterpunch…he pushes again, one of the remaining shortstacks calls and is All-In and I hold AK23, so I push, he calls…sure enough there’s no low in sight and he wins with his crap hand (I can’t even remember the exact hand, but it was something like KJ57 and he hit his 7 to J straight…way to go fool)…so we’re both out and the others are in the money. I wish the other two good luck and watch as they bust within 4 hands to the super-uber-charge-magic-deluxe-luckbox…unbelievable! I’ve never seen such a rush before…)

That’s enough PS for the night and I head over to FullTilt and play over an hour at the .10/.25 NL tables…win some, lose some…big hands don’t pay off…weak hands don’t cost me much and I call it a night slightly up…so, all in all a truly uneventful evening at the tables…

What can I say. I’m pretty much speechless. Dropped around 10$ playing .10/.25 in the first session, not much I could do, believed my hands were good and they mostly weren’t. Too bad…sometimes TPTK just isn’t enough. All good there.

Then I start to play the second session tonight and there’s nothing going my way: either I miss the flop (most of the times), or I hit the nuts (flopped boat with a nice flush draw on board) and don’t get payed off despite slowplaying. Just as I’m about to wrap things up I look down at AsAc – alrighty, one more orbit won’t hurt (how wrong you can be about a sentence like this follows)…the orbit is one hand in length…buyin goes in the middle and I get kicked in the nuts…once again. It’s tough to see Aces cracked yet again 🙁

I guess in the long run variance, the old beetch, will smoothen such nut-kickings, but in a situation like this it’s hard to believe (and looking back at my not so complete statistics – I guess I should get something like PokerTracker – I’m now officially something like 3/10 to win AA)…

So that’s the session on FTP for tonight, time to stop the bleeding (21% of the bankroll over the last four days) as nothing good will come off additional play on FTP tonight…maybe it’s time to play some on PokerStars to chill out…