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…

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!

After I heard about the new “cheap version” of Stars’ 180SnG (4$ + 0.40$) I thought I’d give it a shot. Nothing spectacular to report…half-way through the first hour I flop TPTK, turn is blank and my opponent fires…I ponder and think that there are basically four possibilities:

1. He’s trying to buy the pot
2. He’s holding two pairs
3. He’s holding a small set and is afraid of being outdrawn on the river
4. He’s trying to make me think that 1. is true

2. Is possible, but I don’t think so…3. Doesn’t make much sense either, why would you overbet the pot so much? …so I think it’s 1. and I call his push (he has me covered)….as he flips his pocket sixes to match the flopped 6 I see that it’s a mixture of 3. and 4. – nicely play, dastard! 😉 Out in 111th…

I’m about to head out to the home game in a bit, should be fun like always, so no online poker for me today. Let’s see how many people will come out tonight, I guess it’ll be anywhere between 8 and 18. Wish me luck…

Edit: Nice turnout tonight, 13 players entered the main game (tournament style)…was able to hold my own as usual and in a critical situation I was able to bust some balls. As there were 13 players we split the game to two tables. I was sitting at the table with 7 players and we were down to 5 handed (we decided that 3 players from each table would be at the final table): the blinds are pretty massive at the time and one shortstack calls the BB, I push over the top all in (“only” around 4xBB) with 3 players yet to act…two more callers….shortstack calls too…so we’re in a four-way pot with three players all-in (including me)…we show: AJo (me) vs 44 (shortstack in LP) vs JJ (bigstack in EP) vs K7s (shorstack #2 in EP)…flop comes down 88x, turn is a beautiful ace and I almost quadruple up, busting two players in the process – so the final table can start.

In the beginning we all counted our chips and I’m in 2nd chip position…that changes rather quickly as I lose a big pot with top pair to a low two pair hand. Then I look down at Qh10h in LP…two limpers, so I decide to push (4x BB)…one caller who shows A5o….sure enough there’s an Ace on the flop and IGHN. So, once again at the final table, but not ITM (top 4 ITM)…nontheless a great evening of good poker!

Sidenote: Best hand shown tonight: four of a kind 4s…”best hand” of the evening has got to goto the final hand of the sidegame (heads up) though – I didn’t play as the sidegame was paralllel to the final table – player in the SB pushes All In, BB ponders and calls…SB shows AdKd, BB shows Jd7d…wow…flop comes down Jh-8d-5d, turn: Jc, river: 7h…wow…what a hand…

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.

Made my way through a load of donkeys, couldn’t get to the final table though…so close and yet so far…24th out of 2178, not too bad 😉

PokerStars Tournament #21184731, No Limit Hold'em
Buy-In: $3.00/$0.30
2178 players
Total Prize Pool: $6534.00
Tournament started - 2006/03/16 - 19:05:00 (ET)

Dear Ingoal,

You finished the tournament in 24th place.
A $16.34 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

You earned 144.03 tournament leader points in this tournament.
For information about our tournament leader board,
see our web site at
http://www.pokerstars.com/tlb_tournament_rankings.html

Congratulations!
Thank you for participating.