The Mouth, The Brat, and Poker on the Tube (Again)

Like you I heard about Mike Matusow winning that NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship over the weekend, outlasting Phil Hellmuth in the final to win the sucker. Was somewhat intriguing afterwards to follow some of the reactions to these two having made it to the final and thus securing themselves starring roles when the tourney makes it to air this spring.

Seemed as though responses covered the entire spectrum. Some were impressed. Others dismayed. Some saw in the result reason for optimism regarding poker’s popularity going forward and/or future prospects for televised poker. Others were considerably less enthused about “The Mouth” and “The Poker Brat” finding their way back into the poker spotlight.

The “Is good for poker?” question was posed again in different ways (and with different degrees of sincerity). In some cases I thought it was just a kind of instinctive response, caused by a vague memory of having at one time cared about who played poker on television and whether that person was skilled or not. Or entertaining. Or well behaved or well groomed or well spoken or well... whatever.

Like... how do I respond here, again? Oh, right. Poker needs this because....

Still, even those who seriously desired to stake out a position on the issue seemed cognizant of how televised poker has most certainly become much less meaningful, especially in the United States where online poker remains (essentially) positioned beyond American players’ reach.

Most appeared aware that the stakes are much, much lower. That is to say, whether the ratings for NBC’s poker show are high or low matters about as much as the difference between being dealt a pair of deuces or a pair of treys. Or should I say, 9-4 or 8-3. The game is probably going to play out similarly, either way.

When both Hellmuth and Matusow made the final four of the NBCHU, I was reminded of the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event in which both made deep runs before Hellmuth finished 45th and Matusow 30th. They’d lasted long enough for people to begin considering how interesting it would be should they both make it to what was going to be the first ever “November Nine.” But neither did, and a couple of days later came the discussions of how there weren’t any “names” among the final nine (and whether or not that was “good for poker”).

When the two of them subsequently made it through to the finals, I then thought of how some viewers happening upon the shows later on might think they were watching a rerun from years ago. Incidentally, it sounds like the schedule will involve six two-hour episodes, with the first three coming on consecutive Thursday evenings (9-11 p.m. ET) starting in March, then the last three airing on Saturday afternoons (1-3 p.m.) in April. (Those prime-time shows in March will be up against the NCAA men’s basketball tourney on 3/21 and 3/28.)

I’ve written here before about both Hellmuth and Matusow on many occasions, including noting more than once that neither seem to me to be especially great ambassadors for poker. Then again, just repeating that assertion makes me want to rethink the whole idea of what such an “ambassador” really is (or should be). Clearly some are better suited than others when it comes to representing poker in a favorable, constructive way that ultimately might prove beneficial to increasing its popularity and acceptance among the general public.

I suppose in the end, those who serve the game best will find a way to do so. And it won’t require them to win the one tourney that happens to be on the teevee, either.

A Heads-Up on the NBC Heads-Up

Most readers of this blog probably have been hearing about the rebooting of the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship happening this week. After running from 2005-2011, Black Friday came along to turn the lights out on poker for a while, and the NHUPC went dark during 2012. But poker’s prospects are brightening here in 2013, and the event is returning.

As before, 64 players will compete in a “March Madness”-style series of heads-up matches. The names of the competing players were announced last Friday (save the one WSOP.com qualifier), and a draw party will be happening tomorrow at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas to determine the brackets.

The event will play out this Thursday through Saturday, Jan. 24-26. A $25,000 entry fee is being put up for each participant (either by the player or his or her sponsor). In the past, the entry fee was $20,000, with the prize pool then topped off further to total $1.5 million. Those who won two matches to make the final 16 were guaranteed $25,000, those losing in the quarters got $75,000, the semifinalist losers each earned $125,000, the runner-up took $250,000, and the winner made $500,000.*

Here is a list of who’ll be competing:



As was the case in previous years, the announcement of the list of invitees inspired a lot of conversation about who was chosen and who was left out. Donnie Peters posted a comprehensive breakdown on PokerNews over the weekend addressing all of the “snubs” and further commenting on the selections.

Like happens with the NCAA men’s basketball tournament every spring, such debates regarding the NHUPC are inevitable. And of course with poker there’s always that additional layer of discussion focusing on marketing the game and players being more or less “good for television.” As if ranking players isn’t hard enough, that additional issue regarding entertaining audiences and representing poker in the mainstream gets evoked as well to complicate further the conversation.

It’s all fairly diverting, though, and I think most agree that getting poker back on a major network represents a positive development for all. (The matches will begin airing in March.)

When I heard about the selections, I thought back to the criteria that had been previously employed for choosing players. If you recall, it was a pretty involved list that changed from year to year but usually included the previous five champions, the previous two runners-up, anyone who had cashed four consecutive years in the NHUPC, the previous three WSOP Main Event champions, and so on. The WPT Player of the Year, the EPT Grand Final winner, the BLUFF magazine POY, and others who’d achieved recent, significant poker successes were usually invited, too.

It appears that with the one-year hiatus these criteria for selecting players were probably jettisoned or at least modified considerably. For example, of the last five NHUPC champions -- Paul Wasicka (2007), Chris Ferguson (2008), Huck Seed (2009), Annie Duke (2010), and Erik Seidel (2011) -- only Seed and Seidel will be among the 64 this time.

We don’t necessarily know if Ferguson and Duke were invited or not, but I would think given both players’ current status in the poker community, it’s quite likely they were not. In fact, other than noticing a few of the more conspicuous omissions Donnie discusses in his article, the non-appearance of these two names in the list probably stood out the most for me as I first perused it.

While I know some would like the NHUPC to aspire to be more like the NCAA tourney and feature poker’s elite players and ultimately a worthy “champion,” the event obviously cannot ever realize such a goal. Even with ultra-rigorous vetting and/or selection criteria in place, the process will necessarily be imperfect. And to be honest I think it is better that there be no pretense to following some sort of quasi-objective criteria for selecting players.

(*EDIT [added 1/25/13]: Payouts for this year’s NHUPC are following a different schedule, with a total prize pool of $1.65 million: 1st, $750,000; 2nd, $300,000; 3rd-4th, $100,000; 5th-8th, $50,000; 9th-16th, $25,000. In other words, winning three matches only wins one his or her money back, and just $50,000 has been added to the entry fees.)

Another One Bites the Dust: NBC Nixes Heads-Up Championship

Like a teeny, belated aftershock to the earthquake that was Black Friday, NBC announced this week it would not continue with its popular National Heads-Up Poker Championship next spring. Thus ends a seven-year run for the annual event, sort of poker’s version of “March Madness.”

In the days following the unsealing of the indictment and civil complaints against PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker/UB, there was much talk that most televised poker would likely soon be disappearing thanks to those sites’ heavy sponsorship of many shows.

While no one was particularly thinking much about the 2012 NBC Heads-Up event back in mid-April, if asked then most would’ve probably assumed the show would be a casualty thanks to the fact that both PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker were prominent sponsors, not to mention that the sites likely handled entry fees for many of their pros who were selected to participate.

A few sidenotes: GoDaddy had sponsored the NBC Heads-Up event for the last couple of years of its run, but the web-hosting service has moved over to the WSOP now. Also, a few weeks ago NBC stopped airing the Full Tilt Poker-sponsored “Poker After Dark” following the release of the DOJ’s amended complaint that included new allegations against Full Tilt and some of its pros. Going back to April, it was just a little over a week after Black Friday when the Fox network cancelled PokerStars’ “Big Game” and “Million Dollar Challenge” shows, although I know at least new “Big Game” shows continued to be produced and can be viewed over at PokerStars.tv.

While the heads-up tourney did fill a gap there in the poker calendar, often generating a lot of buzz both over the selections and the matches themselves, I don’t think too many are going to fret too greatly over the loss of the NBC Heads-Up. And while winning the sucker was something of a feather in a player’s cap, usually the win would subsequently only be mentioned in support of some other, more substantial success when rattling off a poker player’s résumé.

Of course, it was a show that tended to capture a number of non-poker folks among its weekend audience, which Wicked Chops notes achieved ratings high enough to make it “consistently the game’s top rated program.” Thus when looked at from the broader “good for the game” perspective, it may well have helped expand poker’s appeal beyond those of us who are already immersed in the game.

I enjoyed the show. Brought us more than a few memorable moments, including that 2008 first round match between Tom “durrrr” Dwan and Phil Hellmuth that ended in a flash when Dwan spiked a set of tens to crack Hellmuth’s pocket aces.

So it goes. As that hand demonstrated, disappointment is part of life. That said, we’ll probably forget about this little footnote soon enough, which will probably rank outside the top 30 disappointments in poker in 2011. One of several moments symbolizing the end of an era.

Something Noteworthy: Duke Wins NBC Heads-Up

Was following that NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship over the weekend in which Annie Duke ended up surviving six heads-up matches, including winning two of three against Erik Seidel in the finals, to capture the $500,000 first prize. I said on Friday that despite the relatively fast, made-for-TV structures for most of the matches -- as well as the inherent luck involved in any given heads-up match -- “anyone who manages to win... will have accomplished something noteworthy.”

That Duke won will probably further fuel debates over the relative significance of the event in terms of its measure of poker skill. Of course, anything involving Duke tends further to fuel debates in the poker world.

The fact is, besides now being known by many as a reality TV star, Duke is a highly accomplished poker player. Just looking at her WSOP record, it’s kind of amazing. She has 38 total cashes for over $1.12 million (I think the WSOP site is missing one, her cash in the 1995 Main Event), 15 final tables, three runner-ups, and one bracelet (the $2,000 Omaha/8 event in 2004). All in open events, incidentally, and in a wide variety of games (no-limit hold’em, limit hold’em, Omaha/8, stud, stud/8, and pot-limit Omaha).

Of course, Duke’s biggest win in terms of career earnings was that $2 million score for winning the 2004 Tournament of Champions event, which, like the NBC Heads-Up event, was a tourney she was invited to play. In fact, only ten players were invited, and while Duke outlasted a genuinely tough field (Hellmuth, Lederer, Chan, Raymer, Brunson, Negreanu, Ivey, Cloutier, and Reese), some have downplayed the significance of her having so significantly boosted her total career tourney winnings in this single-table freeroll.

So I think there is probably a bit of prejudice already in place to downgrade Duke’s triumph this weekend. Interestingly, two articles turned up on Sunday -- before Duke had won -- that differently addressed the significance of the event. One was a piece over on Casino City Times by Gary Trask with the headline “NBC Heads-Up event held in high regard by poker pros.” The other was a blog post by Daniel Negreanu in which he rated the “World’s Top Ten Toughest Tournaments.”

At first glance, the articles may appear to share a common focus -- namely, to highlight those tourneys the top players hold in “high regard” as genuine achievements if one wins. Indeed, Negreanu’s article does provide a somewhat thorough ranking of tourneys’ “toughness” according to three primary criteria: strength of field, structure, and field size. While his list certainly invites debate -- e.g., ranking the WSOP Main Event as the sixth-toughest tourney and putting a couple of yet-to-be-played events at the top of his list -- it is clear Negreanu is focusing mainly on how well the events test players’ tourney skills.

The Casino City Times article rather focuses on other factors affecting players’ “high regard” -- namely the enjoyment they get from participating, the fun of competing (and earning bragging rights with friends/colleagues), and the intangible benefits of succeeding in a high-profile, televised event.

Trask quotes Phil Gordon noting how “we all want to play in it” and how “the fact that it’s a heads-up, one-on-one match really brings the whole ego thing into the equation.” However, Gordon recognizes how the tourney may rate lower on a “toughness” scale such as the one Negreanu put together. “[W]e all realize that when it comes right down to it, this is a crapshoot,” says Gordon. “There’s just so much luck involved in a one-time heads-up match.”

Negreanu does mention at the end of his list how the NBC Heads-Up event’s fast structure necessarily eliminates it from consideration as one of the “toughest” tourneys. But the question remains of how to rate the achievement of someone who does win the event. As an NBC Heads-Up champ, Duke joins a list of other highly accomplished players -- Hellmuth, Forrest, Wasicka, Ferguson, and Seed. Each enjoyed some good fortune along the way to win their titles, but such is true for all tourney winners to some degree.

I’ll stick to the idea that winning it is “something noteworthy,” though doubt Duke’s win will necessarily up the NBC Heads-Up event’s status as an especially “tough” test for players.

Heads Up! 2010 NBC Heads-Up Tourney Is Here

Well, it looks as though I might have overshot the 2010 Mastodon Weekend by about, oh, 675 miles or something. While others degen it up in G-Vegas, I am spending the weekend in West Palm Beach with Vera Valmore, attending with her a dressage competition. Will be, I imagine, a marginally less intense time these next couple of days here in southern Florida, although I have to say I’m very glad to be able to get away with Vera like this.

So far Florida is not the sunny, pleasant place we were hoping to find, but rather chilly and uncomfortably windy. Vera is getting to see some excellent rides, though, including some by Olympians and other top competitors in the sport.

Meanwhile, since I have found myself in a state that actually has live poker, I have already taken the opportunity to play a bit.

Gonna save the live poker report until Monday. I have made one quick (and happily profitable) trip to the Palm Beach Kennel Club thus far. May or may not get to play again -- we’ll see. Was an interesting session, though, that included a couple of semi-interesting and/or memorable hands. So, like I say, I will share a bit about it early next week.

Setting that aside, though, since poker-wise we’re all mostly preoccupied with that NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship that kicks off this afternoon. Last night a draw was held to determine the brackets. Funny to read all of the tweets from all of the players, each of whom seems to have responded to his or her draw the same way: “Tough match!”

Here is how that draw wound up:



















Clicking the image gets you to a better look. Or just go over to the NBC site and download it yrself.

Even with all of the special invites and other funny business surrounding the selection of folks to play, all four brackets look pretty tough. Once again, anyone who manages to win six matches -- even with the relatively fast structures -- will have accomplished something noteworthy, I think.

I wrote a preview of the event appearing over on Betfair today. I believe F-Train and the PokerNews folks will be providing coverage, so check that out if you’re interested (here is their live reporting page). Episodes will start airing later next month on NBC, continuing for six straight Sundays until the end of May.

Sheesh. That’ll be just in time for the start of this year’s WSOP. Already?

Enjoy the weekend, all.

Huck Lights Out Ahead of the Rest

Followed that NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship a bit yesterday, until it got down to Vanessa Rousso and Huckleberry Seed in the finals where they played two-out-of-three. (Looks as though Seed swept her 2-0.) Was reading along there on PokerNews, and the last I saw before hitting the sack was Seed and Farha in the semis constantly shoving their hopelessly-short stacks (like eight big blinds or so) over and over until Seed finally rivered a flush to move on.

Seed clearly has some heads-up game. His record in the five years’ worth of NBC Heads-Up events is remarkable, finishing in the round of 16 twice (2005 and 2007), the semifinals twice (2006 and 2008), and now winning. If my math is correct, that’s an overall record of 19-4 in those heads-up matches. Oh, and Seed additionally won the 2008 Canadian Poker Open Championships (also a heads-up tourney) just before last year’s NBC Heads-Up event.

Of course, as has been the case every year, the structures for the NBC event don’t really allow for heckuva lot of play. Now that the event is done, I thought I’d take a closer look at those structures to see just how poor they were.

Round 1: For first round matches, players began with 20,000 chips (matching the $20,000 buy-in). Blinds began at 150/300, meaning everyone had 66.67 big blinds in his or her stack to start. Levels were just 15 minutes long. Heads-up means more hands per minute, but I’m guessing they probably couldn’t average much more than a hand per minute. And, of course, one big hand requiring a lengthy visit to the tank could wipe out a third of a level or more. My buddy F-Train, who covered the event, could tell us just how many hands were being dealt each level.

For Level 2, the blinds doubled to 300/600, meaning suddenly players averaged 33.33 big blinds. Level 3 had them go to 400/800 (25 big blinds), Level 4 to 600/1,200 (16.67 big blinds), and Level 5 to 1,000/2,000 (just 10 big blinds). Looking through the live blog, it appears most first round matches were done in less than an hour, meaning few got to Level 5.

Round 2: In the second round, players took all 40,000 chips they had won in the previous match to the table, but the blinds started at 300/600 (again, 66.67 BB each). Level 2 was 400/800 (avg. 50 BB), Level 3 was 600/1,200 (33.33 BB), Level 4 was 1,000/2,000 (20 BB), Level 5 was 1,500/3,000 (13.33 BB), and Level 6 was 2,000/4,000 (10 BB). Given the similarly superfast structure, most second round matches were again done in less than hour, with probably no more than around 50 hands played in many of them.

Round 3: Here players started with 80,000, with the blinds at 600/1,200 in Level 1 (again, 66.67 big blinds each). The blinds then ramped up similarly: Level 2, 800/1,600 (avg. 50 BB); Level 3, 1,000/2,000 (40 BB); Level 4, 2,000/4,000 (20 BB); Level 5 3,000/6,000 (13.33 BB); Level 6, 4,000/8,000 (10 BB). I think John Juanda and Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier might’ve actually made it all the way to Level 6 in their third round match, which necessarily ended in a sequence of shoves from which ElkY emerged the victor.

Round 4: Players began with 160,000 here, and the blinds for Level 1 were 1,000/2,000, meaning for the first time in the tournament players began with a whopping 80 big blinds apiece. For yesterday’s matches, I’m not seeing the rest of the blind schedules, but I’m assuming they followed a similar progression as before. That would mean here in the quarterfinals, Level 2 had blinds of 2,000/4,000 (avg. 40 BB), Level 3 had 3,000/6,000 (26.67 BB), Level 4 had 4,000/8,000 (20 BB), and so forth.

The David Williams-Sammy Farha match was over by the end of Level 1, when Williams flopped a full house, then Farha rivered a better boat. And the Huck Seed-David Oppenheim match looks like it ended right at the start of Level 2, with the pair choosing to take a pocket eights-vs.-AQ race. Phil Hellmuth got knocked out in the middle of Level 1 when he ran his pocket queens up against Grospellier’s pocket rockets. Only the Daniel Negreanu-Vanessa Rousso quarterfinal lasted longer than 15 minutes or so, taking just under an hour (it appears). Negreanu built a 2.5-to-1 chip lead, but Rousso came back to advance.

Round 5: Players had 320,000 chips each to start the semis, and the blinds began at 1,500/3,000. That means 106.67 big blinds each, by far the biggest starting stack (both literally and relatively speaking) to this point. For Level 2, the blinds were 2,000/4,000 (avg. 80 BB). I’m not sure, but it looks like they might have been 4,000/8,000 for Level 3 (40 BB), then 5,000/10,000 for Level 4 (32 BB). In any event, they made it all of the way to 20,000/40,000 in the Farha-Seed match, meaning the pair had just 16 big blinds between them at the end.

Round 6: Rousso and Seed each started with 640,000 chips, and the blinds here were set at 3,000/6,000 for Level 1, meaning players again enjoyed 106.67 BB starting stacks. Not sure how the schedule proceeded from there, but I assume it resembled what they had in the semis. It appears in both matches it took Seed just under an hour to defeat Rousso.

So, yea, a sequence of crapshoots, no doubt. Over the three days, Seed probably collectively made a higher number of good choices along the way than anyone else, and thus deserved the half million in cabbage he got for taking it down. But really, it is hard to look at a tournament like this as offering much conclusive evidence of anything much.

Or, to put it another way...

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

2009 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship Concludes Today

In the NCAA tourney -- a.k.a. “March Madness” -- they love alliteration. Or should I say, they are almost always all about alliteration. So they tend to designate the various rounds with labels like “Sweet Sixteen” and the “Final Four.” (At least they don’t bother with the “Swell Sixty-Four” or “Thriving Thirty-Two.”)

So the quarterfinals are generally referred to as the “Elite Eight.” And while the need for alliteration may make the appellation seem, well, arbitrary, it basically does the job. The eight teams who make the quarters are usually pretty darned good, and winning three more games against (usually) worthy competition makes them even more deserving of “elite” status for the couple of days between the third round and the quarters.

And while the structures are a bit too fast (increasing the luck factor significantly), I suppose for the sake of convenience we can safely refer to the remaining eight players in the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship as “elite,” too.

Hellmuth bested Dwan in their rematch, but he has another tough online (and live) player awaiting him in Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier in the final of the “Spades Bracket” (or “region,” to further the analogy with the NCAAs). The winner of that one will meet the winner of the “Clubs Bracket” -- either Daniel Negreanu or Vanessa Rousso.

Negreanu bested Scotty Nguyen in the third round after showing up dressed like Nguyen with wig, sunglasses, and requisite bling (see picture). I suppose you could say Negreanu gave Nguyen a lesson in dopplegänger management. (Rim shot.)

Rousso is the last woman remaining in the event; in fact, she was the only one of the six women who were invited to make it past the second round.

Over in the “Diamonds Bracket,” Huck Seed meets David Oppenheim. Seed (the 1996 WSOP Main Event champ) has now cashed in all five NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championships. Oppenheim (you will recall) was the last-minute replacement for Layne Flack. The winner of their match will meet the winner of the “Hearts Bracket,” either Sammy Farha or David Williams.

They’ll play the whole sucker out today, starting at 11:00 a.m. Vegas time. Follow the action over on PokerNews.

Dwan-Hellmuth II (No Shinola!)

In that post earlier this week about the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship, I very nearly said something about the Layne Flack-Vanessa Selbst first round match being the most intriguing of the opening round pairings. As far as I was concerned, anyway.

I happened to have had the chance last summer to watch both Flack and Selbst win bracelets at the World Series of Poker, where I helped cover both players’ final tables. Both were especially dominant in their respective events, particularly during the endgame. Thought that would make for a helluva heads-up.

As you’ve probably heard, the match never took place, as Flack got himself into some trouble with the authorities the night before (including an arrest for DUI) and thus missed the event. David Oppenheim took his slot, and managed to beat Selbst. (Here’s the rundown on the Flack debacle, if you missed it.)

Anyhow, now they’ve reached the “sweet sixteen” out at Caesars, with several interesting matchups having come together there in the third round. Am especially interested in seeing how the Daniel Negreanu vs. Scotty Nguyen match goes, as well as John Phan vs. Sammy Farha.

Of course, the most intriguing third round match has gotta be the rematch between Tom Dwan and Phil Hellmuth, set to start later tonight. Something tells me that one is gonna last longer than three hands this time.

If yr interested, F-Train and Garry Gates are doing a great job live blogging the sucker over on PokerNews.

2009 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship Starts Friday

The fifth NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship will be played out later this week. On Thursday evening they will draw to fill out the brackets for the 64 participants, then the tourney will be played out over the next three days (March 6-8) at Caesars Palace in Vegas. The sucker will subsequently be repackaged as 12 hours of programming, aired in two-hour blocks every Sunday from April 12-May 17.

All four previous champions are in the field of 64: Phil Hellmuth (2005), Ted Forrest (2006), Paul Wasicka (2007), and Chris Ferguson (2008). The last six World Series of Poker Main Event champs will be there, too: Chris Moneymaker (2003), Greg Raymer (2004), Joe Hachem (2005), Jamie Gold (2006), Jerry Yang (2007), and Peter Eastgate (2008).

Last’s year’s World Series of Poker Europe Main Event champ, John Juanda, will also be there, but the 2007 WSOPE Main Event winner, Annette Obrestad, will not, as she still isn’t old enough to play legally in an American casino. (She’ll turn 21 this September.)

The celebrities invited include Don Cheadle, Brad Garrett, and Orel Hershiser. Jennifer Tilly and Gabe Kaplan will be there, too, although both of them have some significant poker successes to go with their celeb status.

That’s 16 of the 64. Looking through the rest of the list of those invited, one sees a number of familiar names -- that is, folks who have been there for most if not all of the previous five NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championships. People like Andy Bloch, Chad Brown, Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan, Allen Cunningham, Annie Duke, Sam Farha, Barry Greenstein, Gus Hansen, Jennifer Harman, Phil Ivey, Howard Lederer, Erick Lindgren, Mike Matusow, Daniel Negreanu, Scotty Nguyen, Huck Seed, Erik Seidel, Mike Sexton, Gavin Smith, and David Williams. Other unsurprising names on the list include David Benyamine, Eli Elezra, Antonio Esfandiari, Scott Fischman, Layne Flack, Clonie Gowen, Phil Laak, Vanessa Rousso, J.C. Tran, and Kenny Tran.

Of the remaining spots, four went to online qualifiers: Fred Collins, Blandino Gines, Nicholas Joy, and Leon Yanovski. And there were two more who qualified through tourneys at Caesars: Jeffrey Ishbia and Kenny Yeh. Ishbia is an attorney and recreational player, while Yeh is a cash game grinder and part-time dealer.

All of which means when most of the participants were announced a couple of weeks ago, there were really only a few names that especially piqued the interest of those of us who follow poker closely. That Ivan Demidov -- third-place finisher at the WSOPE Main Event and runner-up at the WSOP ME -- got the invite makes sense. John Phan, two-bracelet winner at last year’s WSOP and reigning Card Player player of the year, is a good choice, too. Glen Chorny, Gavin Griffin, and Dario Minieri have been invited for the first time. And Jonathan Little and David Pham are back, too. I suppose one could argue there’s a lot that is arbitrary in the selecting of folks, but all of these guys seem deserving enough.

The remaining four participants are the ones I’m most interested in watching, though. Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier and Vanessa Selbst have both well demonstrated their poker prowess, including heads-up play. Grospellier finished runner-up at the WCOOP High Roller Heads-Up event last September, and Selbst has made it to the semifinals of the last two WSOP Heads-Up events. Both are ones to watch, I’d say. Am also interested in seeing how Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies, the high stakes regular and Chat Box Laureate over at Full Tilt Poker, makes out in the event.

Finally, there’s Tom Dwan. His new stardom thanks to the Challenge and the new season of High Stakes Poker might have been enough to get him back on. But his brutal ousting of Hellmuth in the first round of last year’s Heads-Up Championship probably guaranteed his return more than anything.

It was just the third hand of the match. Players started with 20,000 chips, and after two hands Dwan had just a tiny chip advantage. Hellmuth limped in (for 150) from the button/small blind with , and Dwan promptly raised to 1,100 with . Hellmuth reraised to 3,600, and Dwan took about 20 seconds or so before announcing he was all in. Hellmuth quickly called. The flop came , but the turn brought the , giving Dwan the set. Hellmuth could still make a flush (or spike an ace), but the turn was the and he was out.

Here’s the pair’s entire match, including Hellmuth’s postgame blubbering:



There has been some interesting chatter on 2+2 lately about that hand, including one thread in which Daniel Negreanu jumps in to say why he thinks Dwan made a pretty obvious misplay there against Hellmuth.

Says Negreanu, “The call with 10-10, that early in the match, against this ONE specific opponent -- was a MISTAKE. Not marginally so, but clearly, a major error because Durr was the favorite in the match the longer it went, and the 10-10 were simply NOT ahead of PH’s range in that situation. There is NO WAY PH was going to look stupid, on TELEVISION, that early in the match against a player he clearly felt he could trap with the best hand. Durr could have robbed him silly with little risk, virtually never calling a PH bet and won easily.”

Dwan went on to lose to Mike Matusow in the second round. Will be very interesting to see how Dwan approaches this year’s tourney, regardless of whom he faces. First prize is $500,000 -- not bad, but not such a plum compared to Dwan’s other ventures, it seems.

From what I understand, the structures remain poor for this tournament. Still has the potential to produce some interesting stories, though, so I’ll be following.

(EDIT [added 12 noon, 3/3/09]: For a discussion of some of those not invited to the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship, see Shaniac’s post from today.]