Played a couple freeze-outs with a few buddies tonight (very first hand my AA gets crushed by Perk's AQ on a QQx flop-the bastard also flopped a Queen high straight flush against my boss full which even became quads on the river!) with no success then hit a $1 NL table @ FCP later on. Played solid for almost an hour then get stubborn and subsequently hammered by 8T on a J97 board after raising pre-flop w/KJs, leaving $50 lighter much to my dismay. Turn my attention to the $5 Plus 500 MTT. My 99 holds against KQs on an undercard 4-flush flop. Flop top pair in the BB with my Jack again on a JT7 board and push again, turning a 6 to give me 2 pair, and it is folded to me for a nice pot. 6340 @ the break. Push w/4s before the flop and after it's checked to me by the lone caller for another good pot; miss w/an AQ. The Jack situation keeps rearing its head: J9 in the BB, flop JT7, bet, turn a 9, check-check, river a blank, checked down again, safe (same exact flop very next hand!). Down to 110, 70 spots pay out of 562, can't see where I'm at though because my lobby "encoutered an unrecoverable problem" about an hour ago and if I click on it, I will be automatically logged off. Steal the blinds and we're down to maybe 90 or so I'd guess-unfortunately for me, I'm still about 1oK in chips behind the leader. Until I move on a pot pre-flop w/A6s and quickly get called by a pair of Hooks in the BB. Looking real bad on a suited flop but pairing my 6, giving me only the 2 remaining 6s or 2 of the 3 Aces left in the deck to survive as my opponent holds a suited J. The river brings a glorious Ace, a clean Ace that makes no 4-flush!!! My prayers are answered via an extremely nasty suck-out for 12K-OMFG!!! Right before the bubble too-wow, make it to the payout structure in the top 20. 45th place wins not even an extra 10 bucks-ugh. 11,216 chips, 22 out of 43 at the 2nd break. A4s in the BB, flop AQ9, decide to get out of the way, AJ v A6, river 4! AKs, KQ good, 22, no good. My JJ gets outflopped by a Queen and the next hand it's all-in w/A8 v 44, A flop! Blinds @ 1K/2K and running out of options. 22? OK-run into QQ though, flopping a Q to grind my nose in it and I'm out in 18th for an extra $20. Gotta start either making it deeper into the prize pool or paying bigger buy-ins.

My team is getting finalized for the first official season of the Full Contact Poker Heads-Up Poker League: Theresa, otherwise known as theresa113, one of our fabulous forum mods; Scott, aka sloshr99; weakdraw0 (guess I ought to find out his real name if he's gonna be on my team, huh?), who is a Protege Seat 7 winner; and Shawn, better known as hostile, a self-proclaimed H/U specialist. If not him, the spot will go to acesfull3333. And of course, moi, XX44466XX, fearless captain and clown of the Riders of Checkpoint Charlie's:-) Hope it keeps raining for one more day so I can play in the Neg-O and try to keep my point count up...