My first live HU donkament...

[Talking Poker]

There is a poker room about 10 minutes from my houses here, but until tonight, I had never played a single hand there. I mean, why would I choose to play 35 hands per hour with tons of rake and dealer tips and a max buy in of $100 for 1/2, 2/5, and even 5/10 NL games, when I could play online instead, right?

Well, driving by yesterday, I noticed they had a HU tourney scheduled for tonight. I plau HU SNGs online all the time, and I intend to play in this summer's $5k HU Event at the WSOP, but I'd like a little live practice first, to make sure I can adjust for the slower pace, seeing my opponent and having him see me, etc. So I decided to play tonight for practice.

We started a bit late, and they really were digging to get a whopping 7 players total. $100+20... gotta love that too.

I got to talking to one guy (Tim) before we started. He's an online player and I could tell he actually knows what he's doing. Sure enough, we draw each other in round 1. He played well, but I felt good and ran well and ended up winning and advancing.

Round 2 was against an older woman, who was better than I expected her to be, but she was easy to read and was exploitable. I beat her too.

So we're down to the final 2 now, and the other guy offers to chop the would be $500/$200 prize money $350 each. I decline, both because I know I have an edge and because I wanted the live HU practice. I suggest we change the payouts to $400/$300 and basically play for $100 and he's cool with it.

I had a pretty huge edge on him and even picked up a couple of very obvious tells (Do people really shake their head in disgust, then pause for a while fiddling through their chips, and then make a huge bet when they river their flush???). I built a nice lead while the blinds were small, but got coolered once to put me a little bit behind when we were in the 4th level. On the final hand, I raised AQ, he 3 bet, and I shoved... he called with KTo, so obv GG me (T on flop). Meh, oh well.

All in all though, I'm REALLY happy about how things went down tonight. I felt like I had no trouble adjusting to the live play pace, and I am sure seeing my opponent was much more of an edge for me than not. I really do enjoy playing live and feel like I'm a better player live than online, but not nearly enough to make up for the hands per hour difference.

In summary: I'm pretty psyched about the HU Event at the WSOP this summer.