First of all, to those participating in HULA, I know this is a bit late. But honestly, with how long the HULA ‘weeks’ are taking I’ll be caught up in no time.

To those who don’t know what HULA is, here’s a full explanation. Basically, we take a player pool, divide into four teams, and then each week two teams play each other. In each match up one person from a team plays a one-on-one match against someone from the other team (2/4 with a starting stack of 200 chips each until someone busts – there are some rules to speed up the match if it takes forever, but that’s the gist).

Week 1 went well for my team (allstarrt, Brian Jensen, danzasmack, deepsquat1, frankie4dita, grantkropf, Nfinity, and PygmyHero). We managed to draw a tie, which I think was a good result considering we rested our big gun – danzasmack. I personally posted a very good result, taking down perhaps the best player on the other team, Willem (if you want to know what Willem’s about, see here – even if you don’t know how to interpret that page the fact that the blue line on the graph just goes up constantly means he’s very good). I was very pleased with this, especially since I’ve struggled so much to work on my HUHU game (dropping a fair chunk of change in the process – too bad I only won play chips).

A few days before my match I watched my captain and friend, Nfinity, play his match against the opposing teams captain, HLS2k6 (another friend, but obviously I had to cheer for my side). It seemed that HLS2k6 was getting the better of the match / was running better, but Nfinity fought until the end. I know he ended up being all in at least five times before losing, and he made at least one ridiculous fold with like 1 or 2 chips left (he literally fought to the last chip). I found that really inspiring and knew that I’d have to give my match my best effort (a match, which I’m fairly certain I was universally expected to lose – Nfinity and I had even designed our weekly match ups figuring that was the most likely result).

I’m not saying I had to win, just that I couldn’t face my teammates and say that I gave less than my best effort when Nfinity had fought like that. And that was kind of an interesting team experience for me. I’ve never really been on a team. For the most part the sports I’ve chosen (tennis, rock climbing) tend to be individual ones. There’s never really been a team around to push me or to help me improve. In some ways it was thrilling to be a part of something that was larger than just me and my efforts.