January is a horrible month. The financial hangover from Christmas drags along as you try and scrape by until payday at the end of the month, ug!

But how are our favorite nose bleeders doing? Some better then others by the looks of it but in all honesty its been fairly slow going up at the top. The year ended in a bang but it seems there is a little bit of a festive hang over on the big tables

Winners	Results	Sessions	Hands	Hours
Patrik Antonius	$2.583.389,70	100	7533	421,73
Gus Hansen	$1.408.991,35	148	9758	778,67
Ziigmund	$1.015.016,50	24	1344	27,89
Mafews	$280.397,75	24	2521	16,97
DaEvils	$222.729,85	14	1165	6,13
OnTheRize	$213.605,00	19	1815	14,70
Eli Elezra	$170.327,05	40	1922	62,88
David Benefield	$166.797,00	16	754	5,72
sunra18	$162.874,50	20	1569	17,71
thaaj2004	$149.623,75	46	3567	33,20

Losers	Results	Sessions	Hands	Hours
durrrr	$-2.149.472,75	138	9146	708,77
Phil Ivey	$-832.073,25	58	3298	86,67
OMGClayAiken	$-702.901,45	51	2404	137,19
tsarrast	$-418.086,50	49	2935	80,41
trex313	$-374.455,20	85	6494	405,51
LarsLuzak	$-342.551,95	26	1107	116,55
ActionJeff	$-289.407,00	5	337	21,65
Cole South	$-188.423,00	28	1397	14,27
Bobby_Club	$-138.577,55	15	1073	10,48
INTERNET POKERS	$-129.304,75	21	2082	12,74

Reading a few articles about our current WSOP Main Event Champion Peter Eastgate when it struck me he looks a lot like 60's crooner Art Garfunkel.


Judge for yourself!

My journey begins now!

I've spent the last few days organising myself ready to take the full time plunge into the murky world of heads up NLH.

In those days I've downloaded pretty much every rooms poker software and checked the games from the lowest to the highest levels. I've followed traffic reports throughout the day, checked in on the regs, shifted my bankroll around behind the scenes and updated PT to give me a heads up HUD.

I'm happy to say that now everything is in place and I haven't been this excited about poker in a while. That's not to say that I had lost my enthusiasm, I hadn't, but switching to heads up just feels right. Its hard to say exactly what that feeling is, but its there and I like it! Ha!

Moving onto the actual play, my first goals are simple and small.

1) Play 1000 hands and review
2) Play 2500 hands and review
3) Play 5000 hands and review

Since HU is such an intensive game I feel that I will be able to draw some good conclusions from those three check points. It will help me understand where I am strong and weak and seek out the right material to give me a sure footing or strong foundation in the game.

First up though is day one as a heads up player. As I said I'm pretty excited!

I'm starting with one table at a time so I can really focus on the play and the player. My goal today is to play at least 5 HU matches to the death, mine or theirs and see how I fair.

So without further a dew...well I'm gonna grab some food first...I will begin the life of a NL HU Grinder! Bo!

Played my first session of heads up no limit last night!

Its frickin wicked! Love the action, love the psychology, love the battle! Really don't know why I didn't think of this before but hey ho.

Problem is though, I had trouble finding micro stakes games being spread. The lowest on Stars was NL50, same with Party and Full Tilt.

I ended up playing on Party and felted my first opponent before taking on a 50BB short stacker and ending up half a buy in down, momentum of the match changed when my top two pair was beaten by his set of Jacks but I'm happy.

I've been searching the net looking for lower stakes HU games and it seems Ipoker go as low as NL4 but I'll be aiming for their NL20 games if I shift the role over there.

The other option is Ultimate Bet, anyone played there on their new software?

I know there was a huge scandal etc but I'm sure things have changed and there is the added bonus of getting 30% rakeback which would be very nice.

Anyway, if anyone has an opinion on UB please comment, would love your thoughts, I'll download the software tonight and check things out.

If they don't spread HU at NL20 then its an easy choice for me as I want to be adequately rolled for the game and 20 buyins at NL50 is just to risky HU in my opinion.