Half of the 64 original players remained after yesterday's first round action in the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship. Caesars Palace was once again host of the event that has become a favorite for players and television viewers...
NHUPC first round set to go
Some of the interesting pairings that resulted include Phil Ivey being paired against PokerStars qualifier Alisha Kunze. She battled her way to a seat for free at PokerStars.net, proving she's got what it takes to compete in heads-up action.
However, Ivey is coming off his first World Poker Tour win, which he added to his resume Thursday night at the WPT L.A. Poker Classic while the other NHUPC players were partying.
Phil Hellmuth also made the final table of the LAPC where he came in sixth place. He's matched up against Tom "durrr" Dwan, an online player who started making a name for himself in the live poker world toward the end of 2007 when he came in fourth at the WPT World Poker Finals.
Despite women comprising a low percentage of the playing field, the first round will have some girl-on-girl action as well with Jennifer Tilly and Clonie Gowen facing off.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg of the pairings that take place today. The brackets for the event are as follows:
Hearts
- Vanessa Rousso vs. Antonio Esfandiari
- Shannon Elizabeth vs. Andy Bloch
- Todd Brunson vs. Scott Fischman
- Jamie Gold vs. Tom Kelly
- Ted Forrest vs. Orel Hershiser
- Allen Cunningham vs. Chad Brown
- Jean-Robert Bellande vs. Sam Grizzle
- Paul Wasicka vs. Freddy Deeb
Diamonds
- Jason Alexander vs. Huck Seed
- David Pham vs. Brian Townsend
- Jennifer Tilly vs. Clonie Gowen
- Daniel Negreanu vs. Michael Mizrachi
- Barry Greenstein vs. Howard Lederer
- David Benyamine vs. Jennifer Harman
- Sam Farha vs. Doyle Brunson
- Erick Lindgren vs. Eli Elezra
Clubs
- Jonathan Little vs. Erik Seidel
- Patrik Antonius vs. Gabe Kaplan
- Greg Raymer vs. Hooman Nikzad
- Kenny Tran vs. Scott Clements
- Mike Matusow vs. Joe Hachem
- Tom Dwan vs. Phil Hellmuth
- Tom Schneider vs. Gavin Smith
- Chris Ferguson vs. John Juanda
Spades
- Don Cheadle vs. Gus Hansen
- Scotty Nguyen vs. Bill Edler
- Chris Moneymaker vs. Jerry Yang
- David Singer vs. Phil Laak
- Phil Ivey vs. Alisha Kunze
- David Williams vs. Johnny Chan
- Daniel Schreiber vs. T.J. Cloutier
- Annie Duke vs. J.C. Tran
The Hearts bracket is scheduled to begin play at 10:15 a.m. (PST). The Diamonds are expected to begin play at 1:15 p.m., with the Clubs following at 4:15 p.m. and the Spades at 6:45 p.m.
You're not going to want to miss a single minute of this action, and PokerListings.com will be on scene to make sure you get all the updates from the event that you can handle. Check out the action in the Live Tournaments section.
Related Article: Players Face Off Friday at NHUPC
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2008 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship, Round Three: Hershiser Makes Quarterfinals
The story of Round Three of the 2008 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship was the continuing success of former LA Dodgers great Orel Hershiser. The drama that usually surrounds the road to the finals kicked into a fever...
#368 – NBC Heads-Up Championship #18 – Chris Ferguson Has Eliminated Phil Ivey to Make the Finals of the Championship for the Third Time in Four Years
Chris Ferguson eliminates Phil Ivey to win his way into the finals. On a board of 9-4-3-5, Chris bets 100,000. Ivey moves all-in. Chris thinks about it for 4 minutes. He’s shaking his head almost imperceptibly. He doesn’t look happy....
JudasBlue wins WSOP seat at Full Tilt Poker
He, and other players who had signed up at Full Tilt Poker through PokerListings.com, were eligible for the freeroll after earning 300 points during the qualification period. All they had to do at that point was show up to play, and one of them would walk away with a $12,500 WSOP prize package.
That player ended up being JudasBlue, from northern California. He topped a 101-player field to earn the prize.
"I was honestly quite surprised by how small the field was for this tournament. Only 101 people for a $12.5k prize on a freeroll seemed pretty insane to me," JudasBlue said. "It was great, but just very surprising. And most of the players seemed quite good. I just got lucky fairly early and went into the final table as chip leader."
At the final table, JudasBlue said he took out the player with the second-highest chip count within the first 10 hands, giving him more than half the chips in play. All he had to do was just coast to a win.
"When we were down to heads up, fane427 had around 20k chips, and I had 130k or so, but it still took around 45 minutes to finish up," JudasBlue said, "and fane427 got close to even a couple of times. I blow chunks at heads-up play and really need to work on it."
The final was pretty much a blind-out according to JudasBlue. fane427 was sitting with only 6,816 in chips and the blinds were $1,500/$3,000.
JudasBlue raised him all-in with K-6 suited against fane427's 7-8 suited. The board brought a pair of jacks, and JudasBlue won it with the pair and a king kicker.
"This is my biggest poker win ever, and I look forward to going to the Main Event of the WSOP courtesy of FTP and PokerListings.com," said JudasBlue, who has been playing poker since his father and brother cheated him out of his allowance when he was six.
Now 42, JudasBlue transformed from an occasional player into someone who's been playing poker regularly for the last couple years.
"What interests me in poker the most, I think, is that the name is amazingly close to polka, and who doesn't like polka?" JudasBlue joked. "While I play on Full Tilt, I like to get out my large collection of bootleg Lawrence Welk VCR tapes and have them running continuously in the background."
If that's the secret to his success, perhaps JudasBlue will need to load up some Welk onto an MP3 player before he heads out to take a shot at the WSOP this summer.
His $12,500 package includes the $10,000 buy-in for the WSOP Main Event as well as money for travel and accommodation, giving him a chance to take on the most prestigious event of the poker circuit and some of the world's top pros courtesy of Full Tilt Poker and PokerListings.com.
"As for PokerListings, well, there are only three sites I visit in relation to poker: FTP, Official Poker Rankings and PokerListings," JudasBlue said. "I get all my news from PokerListings and really like your site."
JudasBlue probably isn't the only player at Full Tilt Poker singing the praises of PokerListings. Several players have walked away with cash in the weekly $3,000 freeroll the past couple weeks as well.
All it takes for players who signed up at Full Tilt Poker through PokerListings.com to qualify for the weekly freeroll is to earn 150 points during the qualification period the week before.
This week, 96 players took advantage of the freeroll, with timmyk4 taking down the event. The final table played out as follows:
| Place | Name | Prize |
| 1st | timmyk4 | $960 |
| 2nd | TX FLOW | $585 |
| 3rd | lwsmith25 | $420 |
| 4th | baldfatloser | $330 |
| 5th | MikeGrasso | $240 |
| 6th | Rizzovich | $180 |
| 7th | Nealian | $120 |
| 8th | soarsoar | $90 |
| 9th | jjraider | $75 |
The previous week it was 45caliberT who walked away with the first-place prize. The final-table results were:
| Place | Name | Prize |
| 1st | 45caliberT | $810 |
| 2nd | B REIT | $510 |
| 3rd | schlingminho | $382.50 |
| 4th | bitER_2swalO | $300 |
| 5th | laptop 1946 | $225 |
| 6th | Nealian | $165 |
| 7th | soarsoar | $112.50 |
| 8th | LADYDANE | $90 |
| 9th | lokmon | $67.50 |
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#359 – NBC Heads-Up Championship #10 – Spades Wrap-Up
We’re less than an hour from starting the second round (a/k/a “round of 32”) and I still want to post a preview of the coming matches, so let me summarize very briefly how the Spades bracket sorted itself out last...
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