2008 National Heads-Up Poker Championship (February 29 to March 2)

The National Heads-Up Poker Championship is an annual poker tournament held in the United States. It features 64 of the world’s best poker players competing in a series of Heads-Up (one-on-one games of no limit hold’em) matches to determine who is the best face-to-face poker player in the world.

Structure

The tournament has a unique, single-elimination, bracket-style format modeled after college basketball tournaments. Win a match and advance to the next round; win six matches and be crowned champion.

The first round is seeded randomly during a live Pairings Party held the night before the tournament begins. Players are divided into four brackets – Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, and Spades – and advance by winning a heads-up match against their randomly drawn opponent. The structure of the brackets then determines every match thereafter. The semifinals are comprised of one player from each bracket, with the winner of the Spades bracket playing the winner of the Clubs bracket, and the winner of the Hearts bracket matched up against the winner of the Diamonds bracket. A best-of-three-hands final match then determines which of the two finalists is crowned champion.

Brief History

The idea for the tournament was spawned from the success of the World Heads-Up Poker Championship, held annually in Barcelona, although only one World Heads up Champion (“Miami” John Cernuto) has competed in the National Heads-Up Poker Championship to date. The National Heads-Up Poker Championship is an invitation-only event. In contrast, the World Headsup Poker Championship is an open event with a maximum participation of 128 players.

The program’s debut was conceived as NBC’s NHL Lockout Replacement programming in 2005 after the network had lost an entire season because of the lockout, and was looking for replacement programming on weekends to fill up time, and to take advantage of the trend in poker programming.

The 2005 event took place at the Golden Nugget Las Vegas between March 4 and March 6. It aired weekly on NBC from May 1 to May 22 with commentary from Gabe Kaplan and Matt Vasgersian.

The 2006 edition took place from March 4 to 6 at Harrah’s Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip. NBC began its coverage by broadcasting one part of the round of 64 on April 16, 2006. The semi-final and championship matches aired May 21, 2006. Kaplan and Vasgersian returned as commentators.

The 2007 edition was broadcast from April 8, 2007 to May 20, 2007.

The 2008 event will take place from February 29 to March 2. The following players have confirmed their participation:

Jason Alexander, Patrik Antonius, Jean-Robert Bellande, David Benyamine, Chad Brown, Doyle Brunson, Todd Brunson, Johnny Chan, Don Cheadle, Scott Clements, T.J. Cloutier, Allen Cunningham, Freddy Deeb, Annie Duke, Tom Dwan, Bill Edler, Eli Elezra, Shannon Elizabeth, Antonio Esfandiari, Sam Farha, Chris Ferguson, Scott Fischman, Ted Forrest, Brad Garrett, Jamie Gold, Clonie Gowen, Barry Greenstein, Sam Grizzle, Joe Hachem, Gus Hansen, Jennifer Harman, Phil Hellmuth, Orel Hershiser, Phil Ivey, John Juanda, Gabe Kaplan, Phil Laak, Howard Lederer, Erick Lindgren, Jonathan Little, Mike Matusow, Michael Mizrachi, Daniel Negreanu, Scotty Nguyen, David Pham, Greg Raymer, Vanessa Rousso, Tom Schneider, Dan Schreiber, Huck Seed, Erik Seidel, David Singer, Gavin Smith, Jennifer Tilly, Brian Townsend, J.C. Tran, Kenny Tran, Paul Wasicka, David Williams, Jerry Yang