The invitational $20,000 event has been held since 2005 and has given home to fierce heads-up battles between superstars of Texas Hold'em. The championship will be organized at the Ceasars Palace in Las Vegas for the 8th time as usual with the participation of 64 players, whose full list has been released on 18 January.
An interesting Heads-Up battle between durrrr and Phile Hellmuth:
As expected, Viktor 'Isildur1' Blom, Jason Mercier, Phil Hellmuth, Daniel 'jungleman' Cates will all be there, accompanied by a lucky player who manages to qualify through a WSOP satellite.
The list didn't impress everybody though, David 'Doc' Sands expressed his dissatisfaction with the invitation, as he didn't get any. He tweeted: "Very annoyed that I didn't get invited to play in the NBC heads up event. Absurd to me that they don't auto-invite the top 10 in the GPI". The same issue was addressed by ESPN's Andrew Feldman in 2011, who noted that "this event doesn't feature the 64 best players in the world. It is a made-for-TV event that features names and faces that the general public recognizes, some deserving players who earned their spots based on automatic entry and celebrities who enjoy the game and could potentially move the needle."
The NBC National Heads-Up Championship will air on NBC starting from 14 March every week until 20 April.
The NBC National Heads-Up Championship's 2013 entrants:
Gaelle Baumann
Jean-Robert Bellande
Andy Bloch
Viktor Blom
Liv Boeree
Justin Bonomo
Doyle Brunson
Olivier Busquet
Daniel Cates
Mohsin Charania
Joseph Cheong
Shaun Deeb
Jonathan Duhamel
Tom Dwan
Eli Elezra
Antonio Esfandiari
Will Failla
Andy Frankenberger
Phil Galfond
Matt Glantz
Barry Greenstein
Bertrand Grospellier
Jennifer Harman
Brian Hastings
Isaac Haxton
Phil Hellmuth
John Hennigan
Maria Ho
Phil Ivey
Faraz Jaka
Kyle Julius
Eugene Katchalov
Phil Laak
Ben Lamb
Andrew Lichtenberger
Matt Matros
Mike Matusow
Jason Mercier
Greg Merson
Michael Mizrachi
Chris Moneymaker
John Monnette
Chris Moorman
Carlos Mortensen
Daniel Negreanu
Greg Raymer
Vanessa Rousso
Rob Salaburu
Matt Salsberg
Nick Schulman
Huck Seed
Erik Seidel
Scott Seiver
Joe Serock
Mike Sexton
Sam Simon
Dan Smith
Justin Smith
Jason Somerville
Jennifer Tilly
Yevgeniy Timoshenko
David Williams
Former champions of the NBC National Heads-Up Championship:
2005: Phil Hellmuth
2006: Ted Forrest
2007: Paul Wasicka
2008: Chris Ferguson
2009: Huck Seed
2010: Annie Duke
2011: Erik Seidel
