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#076 – Heads-Up Championship Part XII – Final Day Preview
Today is Sunday, and there are just eight players left in the NBC Heads-Up Championship. It will be a long day ahead. I am not only ignorant of how it will turn out but how I will be covering it. But that’s part of the fun, isn’t it? Anything can happen. When it’s over, we could be crowning the first female heads-up champion. I might cover it from a table in Full Tilt Poker’s $400,000 Guarantee.
You just never know until it happens.
Nasty comments from Daniel Negreanu and drinkers of Daniel’s Kool Aid nothwithstanding [I noted in yesterday's preview that Mike Matusow advanced by routing Daniel, which the Danielites could never abide], I will again preview the matches.
Shannon Elizabeth v. Humberto Brenes
How cool is this? - Shannon, holding J-6, flops J-J-6. She is against Barry Greenstein with the chip lead, and sits on it. Barry bets. Call. The turn is a paint. Barry bets. Call. The river another paint. Only after Greenstein makes a straight does Elizabeth make a bet, and she gets all her chips in with the boat.
The route of the Boy King – Huckleberry Seed tends not to rouse emotions but his loss to Humberto Brenes, in the moments after, was heartbreaking. Not because Seed managed the match beautifully. Not because Seed was unmoved by Brenes’s antics. Not even because those antics chewed up the so much time on the clock that Seed’s superior judgment was swallowed by the blinds. It’s because Seed has been sober for ten months now and the disappointment on his face and in his voice when he talked about the match immediately after with Mike Matusow and Scott Fischman was evident. Seed can beat an NBA pro one-on-one, run a marathon on the fourth of July, and golf five rounds without a cart on the hottest day of the year. Obviously, he’s going to need to be in it for the long haul to get his reward.
I think Brenes is going to have a big problem auditioning his act out for Shannon Elizabeth. He has a long career of tournament success but I think the heads-up format and his performing aspirations are going to clash and burn. Elizabeth can’t lose unless her purse touches the floor. The way she’s been playing, HER FEET have barely been touching the floor.
Paul Wasicka v. Nam Le
I wish I knew these guys and their games better. Nam Le played Ted Forrest like he had a death wish and survived. Everybody claims he’s been getting his cards dealt out of a pinochle deck, so I’ll go with that. If you outdraw Ted Forrest time after time, the world is yours.
This is going to be a treat. Like the match between Bloch and Matusow, it is a mix of much different styles. But not really TOO different. Gavin is definitely part of the get-in-your-head/feel movement, but the man has an economics degree and also thinks of these things in a logical way. Case in point: Phil Gordon has A-A, Gavin has Th-4h. They get it all-in after a flop of Q-J-9 with two hearts. Gavin acts like a goofball going after aces with T-4s but he has twelve outs. He has to push it, and he has to get it all-in it he gets pushed. He’s almost 50% to win.
But when it comes to logic, Andy Bloch is the Mr. Spock of poker. Mike Matusow STILL doesn’t know what hit him. After the match, he seriously told me how bad he thought Bloch played, and how easy he would have been to take down if Mike had been able to get just one big hand.
What Matusow didn’t realize was that Andy knew that, too. Because Mike was folding too much, not bluffing, and not check-raising, Bloch could have sidestepped a run of cards by Mike. (We’ll never know, of course, because Mike Matusow didn’t get that run of cards, but the theoretical way to beat Andy Bloch’s style is NOT by making him pay for his rote aggressiveness with big cards. You have to make him pay when you have NOTHING. Wrap your minds around that concept! We’ll get back to it sometime.)
I like Andy Bloch in this match, but Gavin is a wonderful guy and a prodigious talent.
Kristy “The Gaze” Gazes v. Chad “The Chin” Brown
This is certainly the best looking and probably best smelling match. Brown, according to Matusow one of the 12 players labeled “the biggest spook alive”, is a highly underrated tournament talent who is racking up some impressive showings. He plays in a lot of tough cash games and it’s no surprise to people who know his game that he’s here. Kristy Gazes has played very aggressive heads-up poker. She’s gotten a few cards, which has her opponents afraid to look her up.
I think those boots are for ass-kicking, not style, and those sunglasses are bulletproof.
It’s going to be a blast to watch, even if I share my attention with the $400,000 Guarantee later on.
If you have a comment or a complaint, start a topic in the forum or let me know at suicideking@fulltiltpoker.com. Or just complain to Daniel Negreanu.
