PokerJobber

Chris Ferguson plays second fiddle two years in a row at NBC’s National Heads Up Poker Championship. This feat has to be tougher than winning the tournament even once. I’m sure however, that Chris would rather have claimed the title once instead of being the runner up twice. In 2005, at the tournament’s innagural event, Phil Helmuth took the title and yesterday Ted Forrest claimed first place in the 2006 event and took home a prize of $500,000.

The tournament has a form very similar to the NCAA tournament. 64 players compete, 1-on-1, in a single elimination tournament. The winner of each bracket (name the heart, spade, diamond, and club brackets) make up the final four. The only two differences between this tournament and the NCAA is that players were not seeded and were randomly assigned starting matches and brackets, and the championship event is a best of three competition. This year Ferguson won the first match, and Ted Forrest came from behind to win back to back matches and the title.

Notables: Defending champion Phil Helmuth fell in round one to two-time WSOP Bracelet winner Chip Reese. Daniel Negreanu lost in the elite 8 quarterfinal match against one of my my least favorite players Sean Sheikhan. Also I finally found the RSS feed for Negreanu’s blog. Hollywood struck out with James Woods and Jennifer Tilly, both being eliminated in the first round. However, Tilly’s breasts did make it to round two.

This event will be aired in on NBC starting April 16th every Sunday for 6 weeks at 12 noon.

Unoriginal but attention grabbing headline I saw: Forrest Crucifies Jesus in Heads-Up Poker Championship - honestly, have you ever seen Jesus (The biblical Jesus) where a cowboy hat? That would have been neat.

Bracket from: Cardplayer. Photos from: LasVegasVegas.

Somehow in less than 3 week I got my first ever straight flush, first ever royal flush, and then another straight flush. I only really got paid off big on the Royal. According to someone I work with - this will be my downfall for online poker for a while. Apparently when he got his first royal flush it took him 3 months to start winning again. I hope my luck stays strong and I don’t go down that road!

Last night in a sit ‘n go there were 4 players left and I was in the small blind and 3rd in chips (the short stack only had about 1200 or so chips left, I had about 2500). The chipleader sitting to my right raises to 600 and I think he is stealing the blinds. In the previous 10 minutes I saw him get AA at least twice and a few other monsters. Here’s where I make a mistake - holding I reraise all-in hoping to end the hand right there and picking up the $900 in the pot. I did not think this out and I find that when I think I have a big hand and do not think about the overall situation is when I make mistakes. He insta-calls with , the flop comes giving him trips and sending me out of the SNG on the bubble winning no money. I could have easily called his raise and got out of the hand if he bet the flop with trip queens. With 4 players remaining was I too aggressive with a non-premium pocket pair?

I just remembered a really bad joke I told at the table in the Bahamas. Mike Matusow was talking to Patrik Antonius about a hand they played online for some $20,000+ (cash game) where Patrik sucked out on Mike by catching trips on the river after the money was all in. Mike then said, “I smashed my keyboard against the wall, I’ve got so many holes in my walls from online poker.” This seemed like the perfect time for me to chime in “Did you get a time-out for that?” (get it?!? cause Matusow has frequently been shown at tournaments getting time outs for different things like swearing/arguing/etc)…ok it was a pretty bad joke and only 1 person laughed, the woman sitting to my right who reminded me of skeletor. I guess it didn’t make Mike mad though - he was the only player who shook my hand when I busted out of the tournament.