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NHUPC Starts Saturday
The 2006 Heads-Up Poker Championships begin on Saturday, with the three day
tournament looking to once again draw out a field of celebrities and top
poker professionals to play for the $1.5 million in prize money.
The aptly nicknamed “Poker Brat” (so called due to a tendency to have
on-camera tantrums after encountering bad luck in games) Phil Hellmuth will
be looking to defend the title he took away from the National Heads Up Poker
Tournament in 2005. Hellmuth is a little worried that as champion, he is not
guaranteed a meeting with one of the lesser players in the tournament.
Instead, he could face a top rival and get knocked out early on. On the
other hand, he could get an easy path to the finals and the $500,000 first
place payout. Hellmuth says that the problem with the Heads Up tournament is
that it is not seeded.
Hellmuth points to last year’s tournament, where he claims he would probably
have been placed top three by anyone’s reckoning. In the first draw, he
played against Men “The Master” Nguyen, who he places around 15th. He points
out that top six player Daniel Negreanu drew the owner of the Los Angeles
Lakers, Jerry Bus.
Organizers of the tournament have no intentions of changing up the format
for the 64 p[layer tournament this year, however. For the first time, it was
televised on NBC, and was a huge success, with over six million people
watching the finals on a Sunday afternoon last May. The tournament is now
being held at the Caesar’s Palace poker room on the Strip. In the past, it
had been played at the Golden Nugget in downtown Las Vegas, including the
televised event last year. The coverage of the event will be boosted by NBC
this year, with an additional two hours being added to the broadcast time.
It will also be spread out over six Sundays in April.
Jonathan Miller, senior vice president of programming for sports at NBC,
noted it is always the players who complain the loudest about the idea of
seeding, and that Hellmuth himself was one of the most passionate objectors
to the idea last year. Other players in the $20,000 buy-in tournament
include poker stars like Annie Duke and Mike “The Mouth” Matusow, and
celebrities like perennial poker tournament attractions Jennifer Tilly and
James Woods.
Hellmuth is one of the great attractions of the tournament. His antics on
camera are worth the price of admission on their own, and he is free with
his emotions in a game that is always stressful. He was recently knocked out
on the first day of a World Poker Tour event in San Jose by veteran Chip
Reese. In last year’s Heads Up tourney, he stormed away from a table (after
flinging himself to the ground) and went to his room before returning to
take the game.
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