Andy Bloch caught an ace on the river to best Huck Seed … so he moves on to what is theoretically his second-biggest heads-up match of his career (the first being the 2006 $50k HORSE finals against Chip Reese) vs. his longtime poker pal and Full Tilt cronie Chris Ferguson.

This matchup is also an East Coast vs. West Coast thing … pitting Dr. Ferguson’s game-theory upbringing and Ph.D. in computer science from UCLA against Bloch’s degree in electrical engineering from MIT and JD from Harvard Law … so let’s hope no one gets shot.

The Final Four is set … and PokerStars, Ultimate Bet, and Bodog have all been fully eliminated. The upcoming matches:

Phil Ivey vs. Chris Ferguson
Huck Seed vs. Andy Bloch

Holy crap, it looks like it will be some actual hardcore competition amongst four notably accomplished players. Who woulda thunk it?

Also totally shocking commendable is that CardPlayer’s coverage is kicking butt …

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Though I’m not sure how official these are, some odds on who’s gonna win the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship (Feb. 29) are out … and Tom Schneider is listed in the middle of the pack at 45:1 — the same as David Williams, Jennifer Harman, Huck seed, and TJ Cloutier. Duuude. Not bad. Clonie, after all, is 80:1, which is almost as good as Jerry Yang’s 60:1.

Click below to see the full list … and while doing that, think how funny it is that this sorta poker ink comes from marijuana.com. (And Tom says I do nothing for him …)

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LAS VEGAS – Spiderman is out but Huckleberry is in and looking confident and happy at his table.

I was disappointed to read David Levi busted but on the contrary found him on break holding 360k in chips. I watched him lay down AK yesterday against JJ and 8c 6c. The 86er turned a straight and David’s lay down allowed him to return today.

Speaking of jacks, Neil “Bad Beat” Channing just picked them up and cracked aces giving him a hefty stack of about 550k.

Others – Gary Friedlander from Houston is still in the game with around 350k. And finally, Germany’s Andreas Krause (the guy that Dan refers to as “Michele’s Swede”) is holding his own as well as Gus Hansen.

Things are getting exciting as camera’s are on almost every table waiting to find this year’s champ.

Familiar faces left in Day 2a are few and far between. John Duthie (one of my favorites) is among the chip leaders with Huck Seed not too far behind and David Levi working a short stack. On break Levi said he wasn’t too excited about 50k after a big loss but since he started the day with only 15k…then he shrugged his shoulders. John Duthie said he was up and down but thought he should be okay if he made it through tonight. I should say so…Duthie is looking good with a stack over 300k

Other notables are Houston’s Ted Leva, Bobby Baldwin (see photo), Bruno Fitoussi, Neil Channing, Robert Mizrachi and Tobey Maguire. They are down to 386 players and will play down to 350 tonight “no matter what.”

BTW – I announced Liger in the media room and someone from not America said “Did you say Liger? I didn’t know anyone knew they existed, I know a lot about Ligers!”