July 4, 2008
The 4th of July holiday certainly put a damper on the size of day 1b, as a disappointing 1,158 showed up to play at noon today. Pauly notes that some country music singer did the Star Spangled Banner and some sort of flag ceremony was attempted that didn’t go as planned. The players are currently on their dinner break, with about 850 remaining. Among those whose dream is over: Kenny Tran, Ram Vaswani, Orel Hershiser, Jamie Gold, Greg Raymer, Tuan Le, Ted Forrest, Daniel Negreanu, among many others. The early chip leader appears to be Patrik Antonius, with Robert Mizrachi, Erick Lindgren, Vanessa Rousso, and 2007 ME final tablist Philip Hilm near the top of the leaderboard. Follow the progress when they return on the WSOP.com website here.
More updates as they warrant…
May 4, 2008
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.)
More…
Posted by
DanM at 4:07 pm
March 2, 2008
Chris Ferguson beat Phil Ivey when his pocket 8s held up against Ivey’s pocket 6s (who was drawing to a 6, 2, or 7 when they got it all in).
This makes it three-out-of-four years in the history of this event that Ferguson has made the finals, and puts him position to arguably claim to be the best heads-up player out there — though being Jesus-like he probably wouldn’t ever claim to be king of anything … as he tends to leave that sorta boasting to Hellmuth … who right now happens to be sitting between Ferguson and Orel Hersheiser, apparently relaying the story to Orel about how he crashed the race car into that pole that pole got in the way of his malfunctioning race car.
Andy Bloch and Huck Seed, meanwhile, are still engaged in a pretty sedate-but-heated battle that NBC may or may not realize is fascinating to the poker geeks out there even without the long hair, big mouths, and all-ins.
Posted by
DanM at 5:16 pm
March 1, 2008
Orel Hersheiser and Minh Ly:
Hersheiser, of course, is proving to be the Gonzaga of the 2008 National Heads-Up Poker Championship. The final 8 tomorrow:
Jonathan Little vs. Chris Ferguson
Gus Hansen vs. Phil Ivey
Andy Bloch vs. Orel Hershisher
Huck Seed vs. David Benyamine
All of the above are guaranteed $75k. The final four make $125k, 2nd place gets $250k, and first is still $500,000.
Just about everyone’s brackets have fallen apart — though Gavin Smith is still throwing around the $2,000 wagers on the outcome of each game, and considering that I have no one left alive in my bracket, I gotta pretty much surrender my $20:
Rank Predictor Score Predicted Final Winner Completed
1 Taylor Larkin - 42 Huck Seed 2/29/2008 2:20pm
2 don essinger - 41 Allen Cunningham 2/29/2008 1:05pm
3 Scott - 38 Daniel Negreanu 2/29/2008 1:20pm
4 champsampson - 29 Ted Forrest 2/29/2008 1:39pm
5 Randy Brown - 24 Phil Hellmuth 2/29/2008 12:12pm
6 Kevin Mathers - 24 Daniel Negreanu 2/29/2008 12:32pm
7 California Jen - 23 Scott Clements 2/29/2008 9:43am
8 dan michalski - 21 Howard Lederer 2/29/2008 3:41am
Taylor, Don, and Scott seem to have quite a battle brewing … though it appears they may have made their picks after it got started? Floor!?!
Posted by
DanM at 10:35 pm
January 21, 2008
It’s that time of year again. The NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship is on the horizon, and many players have already confirmed that they’ll pay the $20k to get some camera time compete in the event. Sixty players have been announced, leaving four open seats for qualifiers yet to be announced.
Festivities will begin on February 28th at Pure Nightclub at Caesars in Vegas with the drawing party to determine the match-ups. The following day brings the first matches, and a winner will be determined and get his/her $500k on March 2.
Previous champs Paul Wasicka, Ted Forrest, and Phil Hellmuth will be playing, as well as numerous first-time players like David Singer, Bill Edler, Scott Clements, Jerry Yang, Brian Townsend, Tom Dwan, celebrities Jason Alexander and Brad Garrett, MLB player Orel Hershiser, and the 2007 CardPlayer favorite WSOP Player of the Year Tom Schneider.
Click below for the list of players:
More…
