After a year-long hiatus, NBC television is bringing back its popular poker TV show the National Heads-Up Championship, although without the participation of one previous presence at the series, Daniel Negreanu. Still this latest installment of the NBC National Heads Up Poker Championship will see 64 of poker’s most well-known players facing off in an invitation-only $25K buy-in made-for-television event, says producer Mori Eskandani.
And for the 2013 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship, the events banners will promote the WSOP.com brand for the first time since the televised tournament’s inception in 2005. In addition, Caesars Interactive Entertainment Inc., the company that owns wsop.com, has recently been granted permission to legally operate online poker in the state of Nevada.
The 2013 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship started yesterday, Thursday, January 24th, and saw Jennifer Tilly facing Antonio Esfandiari, best friend of Tilly’s boyfriend Phil Laak. We won’t tell you who won, however, in case you want to watch the inevitable rerun. We will say that it promises to be an exciting season, with other matches like Ike Haxton against Justin Bonomo, Michael Mizrachi against Mike Matusow, Liv Boeree against Gaelle Baumann, and Mike Sexton against Phil Hellmuth.
Players are required to win at least two heads-up matches in order to cash in this contest, with the champion needing to win six matches to take the $750,000 first place prize.
The schedule for this 8th installment of the popular series is as follows: it’s being filmed now at Caesars Palace Las Vegas between January 24th and 26th. The 1st round on each day begins at 1:30 pm local time.