One pairing at the NHUPC drawing party at Pure that might deserve a little attention: WSOP Commish Jeffrey Pollack, who was in attendance to draw a few pairing balls out of the keno hopper, showed up with (and left with) Jon Miller, Executive VP of NBC Sports, and apparently the network’s top acquisitions dealmaker guy.

Pollack and Miller are supposedly longtime pals … and with the WSOP’s contract with ESPN expiring next year, the two sure did seem extra-chummy. And though I’m not sure who would be courting whom, at least one well-informed, scotch-drinking little birdie tells me there’s more going on between the two of them than just a casual one-night hook-up at a Vegas club.

Here they are on the red carpet with what some might say look like bedroom eyes for each other as the two discuss what makes for good poker on TV:

And here (starting at 2:04):

I guess the bad beats finally caught up to me … I was near the top of the leaderboard all day, but in the last quadrant got smacked … as did Gavin Smith, via bad beat, who was my pick to win it all. Phil Hellmuth also advanced by suckout to my detriment.

Here are tomorrow’s match-ups:

Don Cheadle vs. Paul Wasicka
Phil Ivey vs. Vanessa Rousso
Scotty Nguyen vs. Ted Forrest
Daniel Negreanu vs. Dario Minieri

Gabe Kaplan vs. John Juanda
Zigmund vs. Elky
Jeffrey Ishbia vs. Phil Hellmuth
Tom Dwan vs. Barry Greenstein

Eli Elezra vs. Erick Lindgren
David Williams vs. Scott Fischman
John Phan vs. Jerry Yang
Sammy Farha vs. Peter Eastgate

Kenny Tran vs. Jennifer Harman
Phil Laak vs. Layne Flack David Oppenheim
Gus Hansen vs. Huck Seed
Glen Chorny vs. Brad Garrett

Click here to see the complete PokerRoad/Pokerati bracket standings after Day 1.

(Mathers is 10th, I’m 26th, TBR is 46th. And even though both Shronk and “Stapes” are both tied for 53rd, overall the PRR forumers are kicking Pokeratizen ass.)

Is he the Orel Hersheiser of 2009? Would be kinda funny since he was the bottom-ranked player by our little ESPN panel of “experts”.

We’ve got some 80 people competing in the PokerRoadRadio/Pokerati bracket game. With half of Round 1 complete, here are the leaders:

Here they are, in print-outable PDF format.

UPDATE: Join the fun and see how your predictions compare by filling out a bracket here.

UPDATE 2: With so many people getting in on our bracket action, we’re going to offer a prize to the winner. Not 100 percent sure what it is yet, nor what the rules are for winning — hey, this is kinda new to us — but you can feel pretty confident someone other than myself is getting a Pokerati T-shirt and/or a Pokerati cut card.

P.S. Action is just about to get underway. All players have been through make-up and have been called to the set. Others have complained that it’s starting some 90 minutes later than planned, to which I say, “Clearly you are not very experienced in these televised poker productions, and therefore you don’t stand a chance of winning.”

Ivan Demidov is not able to attend the NBC Heads-Up event at Caesars’ Palace this weekend due to visa issues. Hevad Khan will take his place, which was announced by Mori Eskandani on Gary Wise’s podcast on Rounders Radio.

Pokerati’s own Dan Michalski took part in an “expert panel” for ESPN with Dr. Pauly, Chops of Wicked Chops Poker, Gary Wise, Bernard Lee, Lance Bradley of Bluff Magazine, and ESPN.com’s Andrew Feldman ranking the field of the NBC National Headsup Poker Championship, starting on Friday. Since I’m only able to write an article at one of these sites, let’s take a look at how Dan ranked the field:

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On this week’s episode, our little consortium of poker media geeks report from the LAPC, phlegm it up about the National Heads-Up Poker Championship, give you a poker law and politics update, and looks a little closer at what it means when Perez Hilton gets into poker and whom David Williams is banging.

on PokerRoad

The Poker Beat
Huff, Nemeth, Michalski, Wise, Chops, Stapleton
2/26/09

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Wicked Chops reports that Michael Phelps was supposed to play, but his anti-bong-smoking handlers won’t let him get anywhere near Vegas or poker-playing, 420-friendly degens.

Dennis in Las Vegas sends along some more details about the 5th running of the National Heads-Up Poker Championship:

Field in prestigious annual event just keeps getting tougher and tougher
By Dennis Oehring
LAS VEGAS – February 24, 2009 – Get your tournament brackets ready! NBC’s 2009 National Heads-Up Poker Championship, the granddaddy of all heads-up poker tournaments, will take place once again at Caesars Palace Las Vegas on March 5-8. Now in its fifth year, this year’s event will feature an array of many of the greatest poker players in the world along with some celebrities known for their poker-playing prowess and a few amateur qualifiers. Each will battle for their share of not only the $1.5 million prize pool, but for the recognition and fame that comes with capturing the coveted title.

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1. David Benyamine
2. Andy Bloch
3. Chad Brown
4. Doyle Brunson
5. Johnny Chan
6. Don Cheadle
7. Glen Chorny
8. Allen Cunningham
9. Ivan Demidov
10. Annie Duke
11. Tom Dwan
12. Peter Eastgate
13. Eli Elezra
14. Antonio Esfandiari
15. Sam Farha
16. Chris Ferguson
17. Scott Fischman
18. Layne Flack
19. Ted Forrest
20. Brad Garrett
21. Jamie Gold
22. Clonie Gowen
23. Barry Greenstein
24. Gavin Griffin
25. Bertrand Grospellier
26. Joe Hachem
27. Gus Hansen
28. Jennifer Harman
29. Phil Hellmuth
30. Orel Hershiser
31. Jeffrey Ishbia (Caesars qualifier)
32. Phil Ivey
33. John Juanda
34. Gabe Kaplan
35. Phil Laak
36. Howard Lederer
37. Erick Lindgren
38. Jonathan Little
39. Mike Matusow
40. Dario Minieri
41. Chris Moneymaker
42. Daniel Negreanu
43. Scotty Nguyen
44. David Pham
45. John Phan
46. Greg Raymer
47. Vanessa Rousso
48. Ilari Sahamies
49. Huck Seed
50. Vanessa Selbst
51. Erick Seidel
52. Mike Sexton
53. Gavin Smith
54. Jennifer Tilly
55. J.C. Tran
56. Kenny Tran
57. Paul Wasicka
58. David Williams
59. Jerry Yang
60. Leon Yanovski (online qualifier)
61. Caesars qualifier
62. Online qualifier
63. Online qualifier
64. Online qualifier

GoDaddy.com will be the presenting sponsor for the National Heads-Up Poker Championship, according to the official press release with dates and other pertinent info. Big news, really. When a company like GoDaddy.com embraces the poker industry by sponsoring such an event, it lets other major corporations know that’s it’s okay. C’mon in. There’s money to be made from this kazillion dollar industry!

In truth, it’s a brilliant move from GoDaddy.com to make itself a friend of the industry, as poker is filled with internet-savvy, blogging, html-minded people, some of whom (not naming names!) tend to buy domain names like they’re rebuys in a tournament. And it doesn’t hurt that the National Heads-Up Poker Championship ends up airing on NBC, which is some solid air time on a major network. Welcome to our little niche, GoDaddy.

The swimmer who stunned the world by setting a new record with his eight gold medals at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing made a statement in one of his post-amazing-feat interviews. Michael Phelps told the Baltimore Sun, “I think it would be cool to play in the World Series of Poker. My game is a little off right now, so I’ll have to start improving it a little bit. But I think that would be cool, and it would be cool to meet some of those poker guys.”

Oh yeah?

Within days, Poker Shrink reported that Phelps was officially invited to play in the 2009 NBC National Heads-Up Championship. And shortly thereafter, it was the Asian Poker Tour, which is gearing up for its Macau stop scheduled for this week. A representative from the APT wrote an open letter to Phelps, which was posted on 4Flush, with sentences like, “Some have said you are a ‘human dolphin’ but we’re keen to know if history’s greatest swimmer is really a fish. You may have feet that can reach angles others cannot to give you the ultimate swimming technique but just you wait until you’ve got sharks like Vegas poker legend Doyle Brunson chasing you. We’ll see how fast you really are then when they smell blood – get some flippers on those size 14′s!” (Really? Fish and shark references? *Sigh.*)

Most likely, offers from Visa are taking precedence over poker tournaments for Phelps, but it will be interesting to see if he takes anyone up on their offers. My money would be on the NBC Heads-Up Championship, but I imagine the guy just wants to go home and have a beer right about now. If he accepts an offer to play in a poker tournament, it would be absolutely huge for the game…

Reviewing what happened last night…

In a final table that ESPN SHOULD be covering (instead of ESPN360), the final table of the $5,000 Pot Limit Omaha w/rebuys final table has been set for around 3pm.

Seat 1: John Juanda 694,800
Seat 2: Phil Hellmuth 119,000
Seat 3: David Benyamine 1,041,000
Seat 4: Kirill Gerasimov 558,000
Seat 5: Phil Galfond 1,393,000
Seat 6: Daniel Negreanu 460,000
Seat 7: Brian Rast 1,176,000
Seat 8: Adam Hourani 300,000
Seat 9: Johnny Chan 624,000

The three names that may not appear familiar to the poker fan, but those who follow the online scene know OMGClayAiken, tsarast and the_houdini very well.

Other action from last night after the jump:

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News from around the WSOP as you try to figure out what one can do with 21,000,000 Continental OnePass miles.

The poker action continues to accelerate Three tournaments will be in action today on Day 4 of the World Series of Poker. Starting at 12 noon is the $1,500 PL Holdem event, while at 5pm the $5,000 Mixed (1/2 Limit, 1/2 No Limit) Holdem event will commence. Last year, these two events drew 781 ($1,500 PL Holdem winner Michael Spegal) and 451 ($5,000 Mixed Holdem winner Steve Billirakis) and many will be watching to see if these numbers we’ll improve today.

At 2pm, the 447 combatants who made it past the minefield of Days 1a/b come back in event #2 ($1,500 NL holdem) to play down to their final table on Tuesday. Among the chip leaders include David “Gunslinger” Bach, Shane “Shaniac” Schleger, and Frank “Take That” Sinopoli. Others who’ve moved on to Day 2 include Perry Friedman, Kenny Tran, John Phan, Terrence Chan, Todd Witteles, and Gavin Griffin.

What happened yesterday:
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I’m currently watching the Heads-Up Championship on NBC — round of 16. Mildly entertaining … it was fun to see Orel Hersheiser slightly outplay Freddy Deeb in a hand, and Full Tilt has some pretty cool new commercials. But still, the show as a whole isn’t as exciting as the commercials for the PGA Players Championship. Maybe someday … This would be much better, of course, were it being aired pseudo- or semi-live, when we still cared about our brackets.

The side profiles are pretty good — Doyle Brunson on the old guys, Orel on the similarities between poker and baseball … And I gotta say, Ali Nejad is proving he’s a top-notch color analyst — witty and well-informed.

Overall, the show is sucking me in. I give it a solid A-minus. 90 if you’re using numbers. I know Oliver (Tse, not Nejad) will have many thoughts on the ratings this show is getting, and what that means for the future of televised poker. I say more coverage of the outside tables — with or without hole-card cams — would make it better. (They only had two tables cammed up when they recorded it.)

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