NBC Heads up poker championshio (no spoilers)

[Lathum]

Ping poker fans. Second year of the NBC heads up poker champs start Sunday. Phil Hellmuth is defending champion. Here is the link to the brackets. Some interesting matchups.

http://news.pokerpages.com/index.php?option=com_simpleblog&task=view&id=1136

Daniel Negreanu v. Evelyn Ng- great friends outside the game.


Johnny Chan v. Carlos Mortensen- 2 former wsop champions. Mortenson is ultra aggressive and NBC will love this one.

John Juanda v. Doyle Brunson- the legend vs. one of the best young pro's

Josh Arieh v. David Williams- second and third place finisher is the 2005 WSOP. Both ultra aggresive and not afraid to put all the chips in anytime.

Phil Hellmuth v. Chip Reese- Arguablly the greatest tournament player vs. the best cash game player in the world. The defending champ could easily be a first round bust out.

The hearts bracket is easily the best with 4 world champs- Raymer, Mortenson, Chan and Brunson. Add in Daniel Negreanu, T.J. Cloutier, Gus Hansen, Layne Flack, Phil "Unabomber" Laak, and David Grey the bracket is insane.

[Barkeep49]

There was a good article on ESPN about the selection. I agree that it sounds like some, like James Wood, have no place in it when Phan or Dannerman are left out.

[larrymcg421]

You may want to get rid of that link if this is a No Spoiler thread.

[Vegas Vic]

Daniel Negreanu v. Evelyn Ng- great friends outside the game.

Yeah, and that's the only reason that anyone has ever heard of Evelyn Ng. She isn't even one of the top 50 women players in the world.

She got a freeroll into the WPT "Ladies Night" a couple of years ago, even though she had zero career cashes at the time. Her only accomplishment at that time was dating Negreanu.

If you look at her gross career tournament winnings, she's actually a net loser after factoring in the buy-in fees (although she often gets staked by some of her more affluent admirers). Some people refer to Ng as the "Anna Kournikova" of poker. That's an insult to Kournikova, who actually attained a #8 world ranking at one time on the merits of her performance.

[cartman]

Something for this event didn't set well with me last year. I think it was Negreanu caliing his straight flush after the flop against Jerry Buss. That was just too much of a TV moment, and seemed like something more out of Rounders than a real event. That was followed up by Texas Dollie winning with a 10-3, saying something about it being "close enough to a hand I can never lay down".

I know it was heads up, and anything can happen, but those two events came out to me as more like scripted TV than actual poker.