One on One
Saturday, June 13, 2009 - Gene Bromberg
Heads-up poker is perhaps the purest manifestation of the game. There’s none of the sitting back, playing tight, waiting for a hand that you find in a full-ring game. Every hand, you’re faced with difficult decisions. You have to play without premium hands, without hitting the flop. And you have to match wits with the person sitting across from you, who’s trying to get into your head as well.
Events such as the NBC National Heads-Up Championship and the $10,000 No-Limit Heads-Up World Championship that started today at the World Series are now among the most prestigious titles in the game. Unlike the NBC event (which is an invitational) today’s WSOP event was open to all comers, though it was capped at 256 so that there were even brackets. The field is filled with some of the most recognizable faces in poker along with a large number of young players I don’t recognize, which means they’re almost certainly online wunderkinder who have played more high-stakes heads-up poker matches than I’ve taken deep breaths. One such player was sitting down across the felt from Phil Hellmuth. I’m not sure who he is, none of the other reporters did either(update–his name is Benny Spindler):
And he got Phil steamed up after taking a hand where it appeared Phil flopped top pair to his opponent’s bottom pair. The other player made aces-up on the river and that cost Phil a big pot. He jolted out of his chair, knocking the massage cushion he was leaning against almost to the floor, and as he looked at his opponent’s cards it looked like he wanted to fling his own toward the ceiling. Hellmuth has seen his stack beaten down, but he did make a huge call after his opponent bet 7,000 on the river with the board reading Kh-6d-2c-Ks-Ah. Phil turned over Jack-Six…and so did his opponent. So even that play didn’t swing the balance back Phil’s way. Still, chopping that pot instead of surrendering it is a start, and there’s still a lot of play in this event for Phil to mount a comeback.
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Tags: 2009 world series of poker, 2009 wsop, heads-up, heads-up poker, heads-up world championship, Phil Hellmuth, world championship of heads-up poker, world series of poker, WSOP
