HUCVI: One and Done

Congratulations to Matty Ebs aka NoNotReally for taking me out in the first round of the Heads-up Challenge VI. (Not sure if he has a blog to link to.)

He played an aggressive match that went three games. We finally got it all in on JJ7 flop when I held QQ and he held AK. Of course the Ace on the river screwed me. I'm going to resist posting all the bad beats from Aces falling on the river this weekend.

I almost lost the very first hand of our match when I flopped top pair with 75o on a 627 board with two diamonds. I bet the flop, got raised, and called. I check-raised the turn when a King fell, and Ebs called again. Then I went all-in on the river when an offsuit Ace dropped. I didn't like the Ace because it would give a lot of flush draws top pair, but I thought it was more likely Ebs was on some kind of draw. Since none of the draws got there, I was happy to see Ebs fold.

My early lead didn't last long. I dropped down in chips but then finally came back to win the first game on the strength of two preflop all-ins at the 30/60 level: AK vs. AQ and KT vs. K9. Amazingly, both held up.

The second match went differently. This time I took a commanding lead early when I turned the nut flush, but couldn't hold on. I tried hard to dig in, keep my lead and put the match away, but Ebs clawed back. We were pretty even in chips when I made an all-in move preflop with A6s at the 40/80 level and he called with 33. He flopped a set and it was all over.

The third match was the shortest of the series. I felt good about calling his 4-bet preflop with QQ and then checking to him on the JJx flop. I put him on a strong hand, and I was willing to go out to AA or KK if that's what he had. But if he had AK, I wanted to make sure I still had an overpair before committing my stack. He pushed all in, and I called. The river was not kind.

Ebs made some strong moves and didn't make a few of the mistakes I did (like shoving all-in preflop in hopes of antagonizing him while he was down). His main weakness that I saw was a tendency to call a little bit light.

I'll be pulling for Ebs in Round Two as he faces the winner of Mike_Maloney and Riggstad's match. Go Ebs!