The NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship will be making its return on January 24th, 2013, ending the one-year hiatus the popular “made-for-TV” poker tournament took after Black Friday left networks scrambling to determine if airing poker shows was 1) going to be worthwhile, and 2) going to get them in hot water with the Department of Justice should players where patches or advertise for online poker sites in some other way.

Fortunately this has all been worked out, considering the DOJ has settled with PokerStars and is working on a resolution with Full Tilt Poker, giving the TV networks prohibitive go-ahead to run poker programs once again. So now NBC is bringing back the heads-up tournament, featuring 64 of the best poker players (sprinkled with a few celebrities) which we have listed below:

Here are my thoughts on the field:

* Only six women? I understand Vanessa Selbst declined at the last minute, but what about Xuan Liu, Annette Obrestad, Kathy Liebert, Melanie Weisner, or Amanda Musumeci? If we want women to get involved in poker let’s start inviting them to these types of events. In my opinion they should have made it a priority to have at least 10 women in the field.

* Only two celebrities? With the preponderance of poker playing celebs how is it that only Sam Simon and Jennifer Tilly got an invite/ Hopefully people like Rafael Nadal, Michael Phelps, Kevin Pollack, and other well-known poker playing celebs simply turned the invite down.

* Surprises that I wasn’t expecting to see. On the one hand there are players like Rob Salaburu, Mike Matusow, Jean Robert Bellande,and John Hennigan who I feel were not deserving of an invite. On the other hand there were some pleasant surprises like John Monnette, Joe Serock, Kyle Julius, Matt Matros, and Mohsin Charania who I am happy to see get the respect they deserve.

Tags: Barry Greenstein, Chris Moorman, David Oppenheim, Full tilt Poker, Heads-Up Poker Championship, Isaac Haxton, Jean-Robert Bellande, John Hennigan, Justin Bonomo, matt glantz, Matt Matros, Michael Mizrachi, Mike Matusow, National Heads-Up Poker Championship, Nbc Heads Up Poker, Nbc Heads Up Poker Championship, Phil Laak, Shaun Deeb, Simon Huck, Vanessa Rousso

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 19th, 2013 at 9:41 am and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Roster for the NBC Heads-Up Poker Championship set”

1. JJ Goode says:

   January 24, 2013 at 9:07 pm

   Overall, I’m happy with this year’s field. I was sad to see Selbst decline, and a few of my coworkers at DISH were surprised by some of your mentioned surprises, too. I’ve been following coverage, and I can’t wait to see it air in March. I’ll be watching it a few times over to see if I can learn anything, and my DISH Hopper stores up to 2,000 hours of entertainment, so I won’t have to clear it out anytime soon. My wife, kids and I will all still have room for our series and anything else that catches our eyes.