NBC Heads Up Poker Tournament
So I just got finished a grueling four days working at Ceasar’s Palace, doing stats for the NBC Heads Up Poker Tournament. In case you don’t follow the online poker reporting sites, Ted Forrest won the event after a tough battle with Chris “Jesus” Ferguson. The show airs sometime in April.
It was a pretty cool event, and I had a blast watching some heads up poker with some of the greatest players. Since I was covering the featured table, I got to watch the players that were the most interesting, according to NBC. I watched Scott Fischman crush James Woods. I watched Daniel Negreanu crush Evelyn Ng. I watched Paul Phillips crush Jennifer Tilly (nice to see her rack from the overhead cam). And I watched Phil Hellmuth lose to Chip Reese in the slowest battle of the day, a whopping 96 hands. Two great players, and it was one of the most boring matches I had ever seen.
Barry Greenstein eliminated Tuan Le in 3 hands. Totally hilarious. On the flop, Barry had a flush draw, a gutshot straight draw, and two overcards. Tuan le had a pair plus a flush draw. The flush got there on the turn and that was that. Eli Elezra yelled out, “What took you so long, Tuan?” when they got it all in.
The Daniel Negreanu vs. Greg Raymer match was interesting. Greg took an early lead, but then bluffed of all his chips to Daniel. Daniel made some sick reads on Raymer. Daniel went on to play Sean Sheikhan, and he was dominating Sean the entire way. Unfortunately, Daniel went card dead towards the end and Sean went on to the semifinals.
The final four of Chris Ferguson vs. Huck Seed and Ted Forrest vs. Sean Sheikhan happened simultaneously, and I was covering the Seed/Ferguson match. Huck Seed ran his 44 into Ferguson’s TT early, and that ended things. Sean sucked out on Forrest with a two outer, and it looked like Forrest would be eliminated. But Forrest came right back with his own 2 outer, and took the lead. He finally won the match when Sean pushed in with his J7 on a T45 board (or something like that) against Forrest’s KK. Sean cursed and threw his chips like a baby. I loved seein the king on the turn to end the match.
The final matches of Ferguson and Forrest were truly bizarre. Ferguson called down Forrest on a very scary board with just 66, and Forrest held the flush. Very bizarre as Ferguson could not beat anything except a bluff. And bluffing he was not. Amazingly, Ferguson came back from his huge chip deficit to win the first match. Forrest won the second match, leaving Ferguson in the same spot as last year… one and one with the final match deciding the winner. Unfortunately for Ferguson, he ended the match the same way he did last year, getting second place.
Again, the event was great, and other than the super long seventeen hour work day yesterday, I had a blast watching some great poker. Michael Matts from Caesar’s did a great job running the tournament, and the NBC staff was great. It was nice to meet and re-meet some of the players, as well.
Here’s a few pictures I took at the event…
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d119/veeRob/NBC Heads Up/nbc01.jpg
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Just added a few more pics I found…
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d119/veeRob/NBC Heads Up/nbc07.jpg
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