<SPAN>Well O.K. only sort of... </SPAN>

A member of my site (PokerFox.net) won a tournament that gives him the right to play Daniel Negreanu's Protege in a heads up match for $5,000, and has asked me to train him. DN's protege' against mine! We have chosen our champions, now we must train them for battle.

First of all congratulations to Jeff Noel aka Maxima (you can search for his profile here under that same name, he doesn't post but often reads the articles) on the win. He beat out a field of around 150 in a NLHE tourney to win the right to play Negreanu's newly crowned protege' Brian Fidler.

You can read about the two and the match on the front page of FullContactPoker.com. They will be stepping into the ring at 9 P.M. EST this Sunday, May 7th on Full Contact Poker. You may be able to watch the match on other PokerRoom skins as well.

Daniel has the same amount of time to train his fighter as I have to train mine, though my guy admits he hasn't played a lot of heads up matches, so I have my work cut out for me. Luckily for me he is a smart guy and a solid player in general, so with some work over the next few days we should be able to whip him into shape. And while I might not have the millions of dollars that Daniel has to back up his prodigious skills at the table, he is in my element now. I'm a poker coach, and I'm good at what I do. Mr. Fidler better be well trained because I'm already planning the montage for Maxima's training.

I'm gonna have him hitting sides of beef, running up mountains, catching chickens, all the things that guarantee success for the underdog. All of pokerfox.net and hopefully some of you P5's folks as well, will be watching the match and cheering him on.

If anyone has links to really great heads up articles or videos I would be happy to check them out and forward them to my fighter if they prove useful. I need them by Saturday night at the latest though, as we will be working together for most of the day Sunday putting in some intense hours of training right up to the start of the match.

Cue the Rocky theme, I have a montage to work on...