National Heads-Up Championship Snubs Top Poker Pros
February 23rd, 2010
He might be a balla, but Yevgeniy won’t be playing at Caesars Palace.
The field for the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship has been released. While there are plenty of names we expected to see, there are also more than a few poker pros whose names should be on the list who are instead nowhere to be found.
Among the names missing from the field is one of the last year’s hottest young poker pros, Yevgeniy Timoshenko. The Ukrainian-born 21-year-old won last year’s $25,000 WPT Championship for $2,149,960 and later in the year won a major online poker tournament for another $1,715,200. He has ranked in ESPN’s list of the top 10 poker players for the last two months, so his absence is notable.
Also missing is Kathy Liebert. Despite being the most successful woman in tournament poker history, Liebert was overlooked when it came time to select the participants in favor of other female poker pros like Annie Duke, Annette Obrestad, Kara Scott and last year’s runner-up Vanessa Rousso. As for whether or not her lack of an invite is related to the issues she brought up in her recent conversation about sponsorships in poker, we’ll leave that up to you to decide.
Here is the full list of participants in this year’s National Heads-Up Poker Championship in alphabetical order:
- Patrik Antonius
- Eric Baldwin
- Andy Bloch
- Doyle Brunson
- Joe Cada
- Johnny Chan
- Don Cheadle
- Allen Cunningham
- Pieter De Korver
- Annie Duke
- Tom Dwan
- Peter Eastgate
- Eli Elezra
- Antonio Esfandiari
- Sam Farha
- Chris Ferguson
- Ted Forrest
- Jamie Gold
- Phil Gordon
- Barry Greenstein
- Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier
- Joe Hachem
- Gus Hansen
- Jennifer Harman
- Phil Hellmuth
- Orel Hershiser
- Jesper Hougaard
- Phil Ivey
- John Juanda
- Gabe Kaplan
- John Paul Kelly
- Phil Laak
- Howard Lederer
- Erick Lindgren
- Mike Matusow
- Jason Mercier
- Dario Minieri
- Chris Moneymaker
- Darvin Moon
- Greg Mueller
- Daniel Negreanu
- Scotty Nguyen
- Annette Obrestad
- Brock Parker
- Dennis Phillips
- Greg Raymer
- Vanessa Rousso
- Kara Scott
- Huck Seed
- Erik Seidel
- Mike Sexton
- Gavin Smith
- Jennifer Tilly
- Paul Wasicka
- David Williams
- Leo Wolpert
- Jerry Yang
- …and 7 online qualifiers
