#068 - Heads-Up Championship Part V - Hearts Afire

They are just getting ready to start the third heat of the heads-up championship. Mike Matusow is at the feature table in the hearts bracket (the third heat today), getting ready to square off with friend and foil Daniel Negreanu. ”I just want to have fun. I don’t care if I win.”

They played once heads-up that I know of. Mike’s second bracelet, Omaha Eight or Better. It was a couple years before the explosion in poker would have automatically put something like that on TV but from what I read, it was great. Somewhere on the Internet is the late Andy Glazer’s account. Daniel was running over the table and Mike said, “You’re gonna need every chip when you get heads up against me, Daniel.” And he was right. Daniel had a big lead when they got heads up and Mike won it.

“That’s the only time in a tournament. When we were both drunk, we would play heads up a lot and he always won. But this is only the second time we’re heads up sober.”

What a great group of match ups in this bracket. In addition to that one is Juanda v. the Grinder, Phil Gordon v. Scotty Nguyen, David Benyamine v. Gavin Smith, Andy Bloch v. Jennifer Harman, Jamie Gold v. Jennifer Tilly, Johnny Chan v. J.C. Tran, and Allen Cunningham v. John Michael.

Read the updates and watch Katie Lindsay’s interviews on Pokerwire. I’ll write about some of it later. (I’m in danger of falling behind. I watched, in the second heat, the rematch of Ted Forrest and Sam Farha, and it was another epic. I’m going to write a hand for hand of that one, hopefully in my next entry.)