On Sunday Heather and I went down to Caesar's Palace to try to get seats to watch the 2010 NBC National Heads-up Poker Championship Quarter Finals. We arrived at 10:30am and we were the second people in line, and we got fantastic seats for four of the matches. I can't imagine with the seats that we had that we would not be shown on TV when it airs (NBC is starting the broadcast on April 18th but since we didn't arrive until the quarter finals it might be 2 or 3 weeks later), but I digress.
In case you don't know how the HU Championship is setup it is exactly like college basketball's March Madness tournament with 64 players starting out all broken down into brackets where if you win you move on, if you loose you are out. There is the "Sweet 16", "Great 8", "Final 4", and then finally a championship although I think that the NCAA owns those particular words so NBC doesn't use those terms.
So the quarter finals (the same as the "Great 8" this year was Eric Seidel vs Peter Eastgate, Scotty Nguyen vs Jason Mercier, Annie Duke vs Jerry Yang, and Doyle Brunson vs Dennis Phillips. What is really incredible is that Peter Eastgate, Scotty Nguyen, Jerry Yang, and Doyle Brunson are all WSOP Main Event Champions and for a while there was a chance that the final 4 and then the final 2 could have all been main event champions which would have been really cool to see. However, that isn't the way that we were hoping for things to go.
Our picks before the cards got into the air were for Eric Seidel, Scotty Nguyen, Annie Duke, and Doyle Brunson to win. At the end of the first two matches we were 2 for 2 when Seidel was able to take out Eastgate with what seemed like not much effort and literally moments later Nguyen knocked out Mercier.
Now at this point I really need to give major kudos to the NBC staff. We were the second people in line in the morning and the stage director made sure that we got to keep out seats to watch the second two matches (although we did get moved back to the second row to make room for family and friends of the players). I don't know her name but she was very nice.
The next two matches started and my only real complaint was that they had a guy with a microphone who would occasionally talk but he really needs to take some lessons from Matt Savage. He sucked. He wasn't letting anyone know what was happening at the table so as another observer tweeted, "it was kind of like a morgue"
That started to change after Annie was handling Jerry quite easily and had a huge lead when in the space of maybe 20 minutes they got all-in a total of 4 times. In each case Jerry was way behind with very little chance of winning and the first three times he hit his miracle card on the river to stay alive (actually on his first All-in he hit his card on the flop not the river but still...).
It will be interesting to see how they portray Annie on the telecast. By the third suck out you could see that she was frustrated however, she never let the disappointments affect her game. She never expressed anger, never took it out on her opponent. There are some "Pro" poker players who could learn a lot from how Annie handled herself. This is the sign of a true professional. As the case so happens, Jerry's luck ran out on the 4th all-in and Annie moved on.
The match between the Godfather of Poker, Doyle Brunson and one of the original November 9 members and eventual 3rd place finisher, Dennis Philips was not quite as exciting. Dennis seemed to have the upper hand for most of the match. Doyle did have to get lucky on his first all in to hit runner runner for a higher two pair beating Dennis' flopped two pair. Alas, it wasn't enough and not too much later Dennis knocked out Doyle.
So there wasn't going to be a final 4 with all Main Event champions but Heather and I saw 3 of our 4 choices win. Our next pick was for an Annie Duke vs Scotty Nugyen final.
Unfortunately there was going to be a 90 minute break before the next match and NBC couldn't guarantee that we would get seats for the final 4 match ups, plus neither Heather or I had eaten all day so we didn't stay.
If you have read this far you shouldn't be too upset when I tell you that Scotty wasn't able to beat Eric Seidel but Annie Duke did dispense of Dennis Philips and the final was between two friends. The final round is a best of three match at this year there was no blow out. Annie took the first round, Eric took the second round and it came down to the sudden death third round, and while I don't know all the details, Annie won and is the 2010 Heads-up Champion!!!
Next year we are planning on going for all three days, and watching every match possible.
Craig
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