Big Names Pile up in $25k WSOP Heads-Up Championship

Poker fans, get your party hats ready because the World Series of Poker 2011 has officially begun! And if you had any doubts at all that the 2011 WSOP would be epic, then here’s something that will dispel those dark clouds: the first open event, particularly the $25K Heads-Up Championship, has broken records by generating the biggest prize pool ever generated by a heads-up event. The prize pool is a whopping $3.04 million, with the first prize winner earning an impressive $851,000.

Of course, the reason why the event generated such a big prize pool is that the tournament organizers increased the buy-in to $25,000 from $10,000 last year. The event drew half as many players as last year did, but then the higher buy-in prize assured that the event would attract a lot of big names. Sure enough, a lot of pros turned up such as Tom Dwan, Erik Seidel, Daniel Negreanu, Patrik Antonius, Erik Lindgren, and more. What was very notable was that these pros were still wearing PokerStars and Full Tilt gear despite the Black Friday incident.

Since it was a heads up event, there were a whole lot of very interesting match ups, such as Jonathan Duhamel vs. Phil Laak, and Jason Mercier vs. Gus Hansen.

All in all, there were 128 players who joined the tournament, but after the second round, only 32 were left. Among these 32, however, are several big name pros. This could be a huge story waiting to happen. Gus Hansen is still in the running for the title, and so is John Juanda. If Gus Hansen wins, it’ll be a huge crowning achievement for his victories at the virtual felt in the first half of this year. Carlos Mortensen is also still there, along with Daniel Alaei and John Duthie. Nick Shulman is also still playing, as well as Isaac Haxton. Tom Dwan is also still playing. Who knows, there might be quite a number of prop bets out there hinging on whether he’ll win a bracelet or not. Indeed, it’s going to be very interesting to watch how the whole affair plays out. The start of the WSOP this year sure was promising, despite the grim shadow cast by the Black Friday incident. Hopefully, the rest of the WSOP will be just as exciting and action packed.

Casino Research