5:36am: I won’t spoil the back story behind this hand, but it’s a rather interesting situation and definitely awkward for both me and the guy I was playing against. Anyways, here was the hand, which was a complete cooler for him, that essentially put the exclamation point on the match.

Also, in case you guys were wondering on the results of today’s session. I did very well, but unfortunately I have to finish the rest of the 24 games on my day off because someone dropped out of my fantasy football league, and I’ve been playing email tag ever since. I finished 9-2 so far, and will resume Friday’s session on Sunday to make up for the lost time.

Enjoy the video.
-trujm

Start a Clean Slate at a New Room, a New Sharkscope, and Keep HFL Free in the Process

5:30am: We will call this hand “how to extract chips with the stone cold nuts”.

Enjoy, everyone!

I also wanted to add that I am 6-3 so far today in $100 heads up matches, so I’m off to quite a good start. Good luck to anyone playing a session today.

Start a Clean Slate at a New Room, a New Sharkscope, and Keep HFL Free in the Process

3:13am: I thought today would be a good day to introduce finally the individual hand discussion segments. Here is a hand I played in the last match of the day. I didn’t mention it in the video, but I actually came back and won the match (see transcript below), so there was a happy ending. However, the hand itself is pretty disgusting as you will see.

This video will always be available under the “Single Hand Video Discussion” link on the left side, for future reference. Enjoy!

The hand that finally put him away:

PokerStars Game #19084271363: Tournament #97841526, $100+$5 Hold’em No Limit - Match Round I, Level III (25/50) - 2008/07/25 - 03:19:33 (ET)
Table ‘97841526 1′ 2-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: trujm (1940 in chips)
Seat 2: squishy310 (1060 in chips)
squishy310: posts small blind 25
trujm: posts big blind 50
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to trujm [8c 8h]
squishy310: raises 50 to 100
trujm: raises 1840 to 1940 and is all-in
squishy310: calls 960 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (880) returned to trujm
*** FLOP *** [Kh 6c Jd]
*** TURN *** [Kh 6c Jd] [5s]
*** RIVER *** [Kh 6c Jd 5s] [Kc]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
trujm: shows [8c 8h] (two pair, Kings and Eights)
squishy310: shows [Ah Tc] (a pair of Kings)
trujm collected 2120 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2120 | Rake 0
Board [Kh 6c Jd 5s Kc]
Seat 1: trujm (big blind) showed [8c 8h] and won (2120) with two pair, Kings and Eights
Seat 2: squishy310 (button) (small blind) showed [Ah Tc] and lost with a pair of Kings

3:41pm: The session started great (2-1) in first two sets, but the rest of the night was a mixed bag of good and bad, but mostly bad. Realistically, if most of my hands hold up, I should have finished around 15-9, or something in that vicinity. The only problem? I can’t get hands to hold up. Hands that are 75% or more to win lost probably 60% of the time tonight, and hands where I was in a coin flip (with the better end) would end in me losing about 80% of the time.

Of course, as someone wise told me tonight, the best thing to do is to take my own advice and know where it’s going in the long run, which happens to be right here baby!

All that being said, I definitely like where I stand (skill-wise) in $100 heads up matches. There are still plenty of people willing to get their money in bad, so for those of you thinking that the $100 hu sngs are just a bunch of sharks, think again. They are equally as bad as the $50 players.

Today, I have a little something special for you guys. It’s (almost) all my bad beats and coolers wrapped up into one cute little video. Keep in mind I still finished 12-12, even after all of this.

Enjoy, HFL!

3:55am: As per the request of you guys, both through email and through various comments, I will begin a series of “mini video tutorials” that will cover my thought process through single hands from video tutorials that have not been posted yet. I have decided to do it this way because I find that visual learning is the best way to communicate, and tone of voice is very important when trying to get a point across.

These videos will concentrate on hands that are debatable in nature, and those that involve solutions and situations with a high degree of difficulty. All members will be able to comment, as usual, on each video and hopefully we can generate some intelligent discussion and perhaps bring some new angles to the table.

These mini tutorials will be posted on YouTube, and uploaded and embedded here as regular posts at random times throughout the week. If all goes as planned, you guys should have 2-3 of these coming your way per week from here on out, in addition to the full length tutorial that I do once every two weeks — so keep checking this week for the new additions to HFL.

11:46pm: I was thinking about narrating these, but both opponents basically handed me the match in one form or another, so there was no real strategy in each match other than to just wait for a good spot to finally call each of them when I knew I was ahead.

These are streaming videos in flash format, so just left click each one and it should open up your flash player in a new window.

Streaming Video
Video 1: For the Tie | Video 2: For the Record

1:26am: Well, I was bored so I decided to compile some random bad beats that I took across 5-6 different videos. The YouTube version of it is posted above. If you’d like to see the cards better, try the flash version on the menu to the left.

It’s important to have a sense of humor about stuff like this, or else you will become bitter towards the game of poker. And as much as I hate to say it, we all love it - even though it’s a love/hate relationship. Anyways, enjoy the video. Will post more vids later, and an update to my new session today. Last night’s session ended at 13-11. I was content just to get in the win column after the whole day was pretty much an uphill climb.