The EMS heads up championships

Well I signed up to play in the eatmystack heads up tournament.
EMS does loads of community events, such as a freezeout league, they have great value in added prizes but I rarely play in them as

1. I am lousy at MTT's
2. They are always on at inconvenient times (for me that is)

However the HU tournament is different in that once your opponent has been drawn you get a week to sort out the match at a mutually convenient time and of course the greater variance in HU means a fish like me has a reasonable chance over the short term :-)

So the draw was made and I was put up against blackshuck.
Now I can't say there are many weak players in the mix but 'shuck isn't my ideal 1st opponent. He plays much higher than I am ever likely to and has a pretty good handle on the game, go have a look on his ems blog if you want to see.
So the format is best of 3 and the 1st round went on for a while. Chip lead went both ways with neither player getting too far ahead, with eventually the luck going my way. 2nd round was much faster when my open ended straight hit on the river.
So I am through to the 2nd round, and 'shuck is into the 2nd chance bracket.

I really enjoyed the match, particularly the 1st round my next opponent is ratattack, another damn fine chap, but unfortunately another damn fine player :-(

Mini upswing, poker gods liked me last night

I haven't had much chance to play the last 4 weeks or so, but managed an hour or so last night.
Was playing a little LAGgy.
Tried a squeeze play with J10o, and flopped an open ended straight draw and decided to play it aggro, bet and reraised the flop, ditto the turn. the one guy in the pot with me went to the river and was most aggrieved when the 9 came and made my straight VS his top pair crap kicker.
Then on another table I saw a flop for free in the BB with 65s and again decided to barrel every street as the board was pretty draw heavy and I was only against 1 player so thought I could represent quite a few hands. He called every bet and again spat his dummy when my flush on the river beat his 2 flopped 2 pair. His passive play cost him the hand as any bet from him would have sent me running, essentially the flop had a straight and a flush draw, the turn gave a second flush draw and yet he chose to call it down, then call a river overbet to double me up.

In no way do I think my play was optimal and each time I had to hit to win, but when these guys are so passive when you do hit it is soooo worth it!