The National Heads-Up Poker Championship was an annual

poker tournament A poker tournament is a tournament where players compete by playing poker. It can feature as few as two players playing on a single table (called a " heads-up" tournament), and as many as tens of thousands of players playing on thousands of ta ...

held in the United States and produced by the

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

television network.NBC Spot in the Cards for Poker Tourney
February 2005 article from the '' Las Vegas Sun'' It is a $25,000 "buy-in" invitation-only tournament organized as a series of one-on-one games of

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Texas hold 'em Texas hold 'em (also known as Texas holdem, hold 'em, and holdem) is one of the most popular variants of the card game of poker. Two cards, known as hole cards, are dealt face down to each player, and then five community cards are dealt fa ...

matches. The participants include many of the world's most successful poker players, as well as celebrities. The championship was the first poker event to be televised on and produced by a major U.S. television network. In October 2011, NBC announced that the National Heads-Up Poker Championship would not return in 2012, ending the championship's seven-year run. After a one-year hiatus, the tournament returned for a final time in 2013. The $25,000 buy-in event ran from Jan. 24 through 26 at Caesars Palace, the same venue where the event was held from 2006 through 2011. In February 2014, NBC announced the National Heads-Up Poker Championship would not return in 2014. The Heads-Up Championship had been sponsored by online poker companies before Black Friday. The World Series of Poker (WSOP.com) is the new presenting sponsor.

Structure

The

single-elimination tournament A single-elimination, knockout, or sudden death tournament is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of each match-up is immediately eliminated from the tournament. Each winner will play another in the next round, until the final matc ...

is modeled after college basketball tournaments. Players who win a match advance to the next round; the player who wins six matches is crowned

champion A champion (from the late Latin ''campio'') is the victor in a challenge, contest or competition. There can be a territorial pyramid of championships, e.g. local, regional / provincial, state, national, continental and world championships, a ...

. The first round is seeded randomly the night before the tournament begins. Players are divided into four

brackets A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or ' ...

– Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, and Spades. A participant advances by winning a heads-up match against his or her randomly drawn opponent. The structure of the brackets then determines every match thereafter. The semifinals consist of one player from each bracket, with the winner of the Spades bracket playing the winner of the Clubs bracket, and the winner of the Hearts bracket matched up against the winner of the Diamonds bracket. A best-of-three final match then determines which of the two finalists is crowned champion.

Brief history

The National Heads-Up Poker Championship is an invitation-only event. In contrast, the World Heads-Up Poker Championship is an open event with a maximum participation of 128 players. The 2005 event took place at the

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between March 4 and March 6. It aired weekly on NBC from May 1 to May 22 with commentary from

Gabe Kaplan Gabriel Weston Kaplan (born March 31, 1945) is an American actor, comedian, and professional poker player. He played the eponymous teacher in the 1970s sitcom ''Welcome Back, Kotter''. He later became a professional poker player and a commenta ...

and

Matt Vasgersian Matt Vasgersian ( '; born 1967) is an American sportscaster and television host. Vasgersian is a play-by-play announcer for the Los Angeles Angels, as well as a studio host for MLB Network and FOX Sports. In the past, he has served as an an ...

. The 2006 edition took place from March 4 to 6 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. NBC began its coverage by broadcasting one part of the opening round on April 16. The semi-final and championship matches aired May 21. Kaplan and Vasgersian returned as commentators. The 2007 edition was broadcast from April 8 to May 20.

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took Gabe Kaplan's spot as commentator due to Kaplan competing in the tournament.

Results

References

{{Major Poker Tournaments Poker tournaments NBC original programming Television shows about poker Poker in North America

Structure

Brief history

Results

See also

References