Comparing 2008 NBC Heads-Up Poker Championship Participants

NBC has named 60 of the 64 planned participants for this year’s NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship, scheduled for February 29-March 2 at Caesars. The four remaining spots will be filled by those qualifying via promotions set up by NBC.

For each of the three years NBC has staged this event, the announcement of those invited has invariably been greeted with complaints about who was picked and who was left out. There a few targets this time around, the most obvious being former baseball great and Cy Young Award winner Orel Hershiser, television personality and multiple Emmy award winner Brad Garrett, SAG and American Comedy Award winner Jason Alexander, and Oscar-nominated actor Don Cheadle. Lots of awards, all right, but little in the way of poker pedigree.

I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the relative tourney triumphs of the 60 chosen. What follows is a list of all 60 ordered according to lifetime tourney winnings. Each player’s highest-ever cash is also noted.

I’ll let you take a gander and decide for yourself what (if anything) is meaningful about this here list. All stats reflect what one could find on the Hendon Mob database on the day the participants were announced. Click to view a larger picture.