blonde poker

Event #2: Heads Up No-Limit Hold'em Championship (256 Max)

32 of 128 remain

16 are paid

    * 1st
    * $851,192
    * 2nd
    * $525,980
    * 3rd-4th
    * $283,966
    * 5th-8th
    * $138,852
    * 9th-16th
    * $67,436



Day 1 Out in Two Rounds
 
The first-ever $25,000 Heads-Up Championship is two rounds old, and we've reduced our 128 starting players down to just 32. As you'd expect with an event with this kind of price tag, the field was small and elite and mostly made up of familiar faces. David Williams, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Laak, Jason Mercier, and Michael Mizrachi all fell to their first round opponents. Dan Cates, Erick Lindgren, Scott Seiver, David Baker, Vanessa Rousso, Jonathan Duhamel, Shaun Deeb, and Scott Clements advanced through one round before succumbing in the second round of the night.

That's a pretty solid crew of already-eliminated players, but we're still flush with talent in this thinning field. John Duthie finished second in the $10,000 Heads-Up event here in 2009, and he's still alive with a shot at Carlos Mortensen in Round 3. In the European version of the event, Gus Hansen took home a bracelet for shipping the £10,000 Heads-Up event at the WSOP-E last fall, and he'll face off against Daniel Alaei in tomorrow's first battle. We've also got Chris Moorman, Olivier Busquet, John Juanda, David Benyamine, Andrew Robl, Yevgeniy Timoshenko, and the Tom Dwan. Told you it was a stacked field.

Here's how the rest of the bracket draws out for tomorrow's money round:

David Benyamine vs. Anthony Guetti
Chris Moorman vs. Richard Lyndaker
Dani Stern vs. Jake Cody
Isaac Haxton vs. Jonathan Jaffe

Ashton Griffin vs. Tom Dwan
Daniel Alaei vs. Gus Hansen
Steve Blilirakis vs. Trevor Pope
Matt Marafioti vs. Maxim Lykov

Eric Froehlich vs. Steve Zolotow
John Duthie vs. Carlos Mortenson
Jason Smirnov vs. Darren Elias
Erik Cajelais vs. Nikolay Evdakov

Yevgeniy Timshenko vs. Amritraj Singh
Oliver Busquet vs. Andrew Robl
Kunimaro Kojo vs. Nick Shulman
David Paredes vs. John Juanda