3-time WSOP bracelet winner Mike “The Mouth” Matusow has added another accolade to his impressive list of poker achievements: winner of the NBC Heads-Up Championship. Cardplayer Lifestyle brings you all the details of his incredible run though the field, and his final heads-up match-up with none other than longtime friend and nemesis Phil Hellmuth.
The Cardplayer Lifestyle poker blog is pleased to bring you some more of the latest news in poker, with this blog post covering the NBC Heads-Up Championship cancellation, the DoylesRoom acquisition, and WSOP Main Event prop bets.
NBC Heads Up Poker Tournament Recap As our pre-event column predicted, this year’s NBC Heads Up National Poker Championship sure was entertaining! While the event won’t be aired for a little while (mark your calendars for Sunday, April 18th people!), the final tournament bracket indicates that there were plenty of awesome matchups and some surprising winners over the course of the matches played. The winner of the prestigious event was Annie Duke. It could be argued that the win “revives” her poker career. While she’s been a “name” player for a while already, the woman formerly best known as Howard “The Professor” Lederer’s sister hasn’t posted any memorable results as of late. The event is unique in its format, as well as (to borrow an old NBC slogan) “Must See TV”. What makes the Heads Up Championship a major event each year is not just the $500,000 payday it awards to…
The 6th annual NBC Heads Up National Poker Championship will be taking place soon. A major event on the annual tournament poker calendar, there are just 64 open spots, so, inevitably, some people won’t make the cut to play in the field. The event’s producers sure must have a hard time picking who will and won’t be invited to play. I guess the bottom line for them is “Which players will the most people tune in to see battling it out on TV?” – i.e., RATINGS, RATINGS, RATINGS! In answering a question like that, viewers likely want to see lots of the same “big names” they’ve gotten used to seeing over the years, like: Phil Ivey, Gus Hansen, Annie Duke, Eli Elezra, Tom Dwan, Antonio Esfandiari, Mike Matusow, Daniel Negreanu, and Scotty Nguyen. Producers also pretty much have to guarantee spots to people who have won the event before, like…