National Heads-Up Poker Championship

With Poker being ever popular, there has been a flood of events being aired by television networks in the US. The WSOP airs on ESPN, the world poker tour, a worldwide series of poker tournaments broadcast on the Travel Channel. The National Heads-Up Poker Championship on NBC is one such made for TV event .It is a $20,000 buy-in invitation-only tournament centered around no limit Texas hold 'em.

The participants include many of the world's best poker players. The 2009 edition was a three day event with 64 poker players facing off at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Out of these 64, six spots were reserved for qualifiers – four from online competitions and two from tournaments at Caesars.

There is a slight difference in the way the NHPC is conducted over other poker tournaments. In the NHPC, players are seeded randomly in the first round with players divided in four brackets – Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, and Spades. Players winning a match advance to the next round. Here winner of the spades bracket plays the one leading the clubs bracket. The same holds for the remaining two .A best of three final then decides the champion who takes home the $500,000 check. This year Huck Seed emerged victorious taking the event from Vanessa Rousso.

Poker focus.

Players tend to put little focus on the non-winning aspects of the poker game. They focus on winning pots. They think about ways to get more money in their pockets by winning it from their opponents.

Obviously this is important, but internet poker income is made during an exchange of money. The different players shove money into pots. They take money out of pots. Money moves back and forth around the poker table, over and over. A single chip may be in the possession of a dozen different people within the same hour. Poker income is not made in a nice, regular, easy to see fashion. Money is made in literally dozens of small, innocuous, cumulative ways.

Money not lost spends the same as money won. But also, the nature of poker is that you must lose in order to win. You aren’t going to win 100% of your pots. Except when playing head-up, you will always lose most of the hands you are dealt in. You will usually lose most of the pots you play. The door to poker income swings both ways -- money has to go out for money to come in.