Where hath thy challenge gone?

In my case, down the shitter. Been playing a few $5 18s and either throwing them away on stupid moves near the bubble, or when I do actually concentrate, getting 3 outed or running big pp into bigger pp. (My pp is bigger than yours, btw).

Last night I felt pretty good about my play for once, and got rewarded by shoving 99
QQ < KK - I could have folded that one, the other dude was super tight and I had enough chips to not call the tight asses shove, but not sure if that would be a correct move - meant to look it up - hang on....
I give him these cards only: JJ+,AJs+,AKo
And stove says it's 50/50
Fold. There were better spots. I still had chips. At best this dude probably had AK for a flip, at worst I'm completely dominated.

A9 < A5 - psycho to my left throws 2k at my 150 BB. I can read that idiot like a book and have him on weak ace + almost nothing else. I put him all in for 2k more. Fucker hits a 5 on the river to knock me out, again on the bubble. Shoving on him might seem a bad play, but I stand behind it - he may as well have had his cards face up, he was that bad.

Anyway, for the most part I'm getting more confident with my reads, but getting frustrated with all the coolers + beats I've been taking. These hands are nothing special, but it seems like I'm getting an awful lot of them. I know... variance, small sample size, yadda yadda yadda... still sucks.

My BR last night dipped into the $480 range... getting close to -50% in the challenge. So of course I did the prudent thing and jumped into $50NL HU cash. Which I've never played before. And which I'm woefully under bankrolled for. And if I get stacked I will be very sad. And if I'm sad, all electronics within tentacle's reach are sad.

Luckily (collective sigh of relief from all manner of throwable objects) I was somehow able to frigging own the tables I sat at. It helped that I was hitting cards. It helped that I had spent a bunch of time at 25NL full ring. It helped that I had been playing HU sng's lately. It helped a great deal that I didn't think about the $$ and tighten up. I played about 5 different people in about an hour, and every one of them quit me. Some were smart and realized within a few hands that it wasn't going to be profitable for them. A couple weren't so smart and let me have their $$. I was patient. I was aggressive. I played position. I played small pots with small hands + built big pots with big hands. I picked at any weakness I could find.

I wish I were better rolled for this, it was fun. I know that there are huge swings with HU, and I'm not able to withstand a bad session. I may have to dabble in it again though. Hope it wasn't a fluke. Need to look at my HH and make sure I just wasn't getting super lucky. Or maybe it was because it was late sunday night and all the drunkies were out. I have no idea. I am fairly certain that 850BB/hr might not be sustainable over the long term.

BR 8/10/09 $582.25 + $33T = $615.25