Chris Ferguson shook off his own personal monkey in the National Heads Up Championship this past weekend.

In what was his 3rd trip to the final match in the last 4 years of the event, Chris Ferguson finally took home the crown of Heads Up Champion!  He and fellow Full Tilt Poker professional Andy Bloch battled it out in the best-out-of-3 final, where tensions mounted after each scored a victory on one another in the first 2 matches.

The final match would be decided by an essential coin-flip, as Chris Ferguson held pocket Jacks to Andy Bloch’s pair and a flush draw.  All the money went in on the turn, and the river would give the man they call ‘Jesus’ a winning full house.  The crowd exploded into a fury of cheers, and Ferguson was engulfed in hugs and congratulations from his fellow Full Tilt’ers, friends, and family.

The victory earned Chris Ferguson $500,000, a sweet NBC 2008 National Heads Up Championship trophy, and a $10,000 buyin to the WSOP Main Event.

(Andy Bloch walked away with $250,000 for his 2nd place finish, and Phil Ivey and Huck Seed finished 3rd and 4th for $125,000 each - great Poker News coverage this was!)

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The 2008 National Heads Up Championship will begin play this weekend in Las Vegas, Nevada.  This is one of the most talked-about events of the year, and has certainly drawn quite a crowd over at Caesars Palace.  The event will feature not only past and present WSOP Main Event champions, but it will also showcase some of the top online talent (’durrr’ and ’sbrugby’, for example) around the nation.  Celebrities like Don Cheadle will also be playing, with former baseball pitcher Orel Hershiser even being thrown into the mix.

Here is what the pairings and brackets look like for the initial first round:

Heart Pairs:

Vanessa Rousso vs. Antonio Esfandiari
Shannon Elizabeth vs. Andy Bloch
Todd Brunson vs. Scott Fischman
Jamie Gold vs. Tom Kelly
Ted Forrest vs. Orel Hershiser
Allen Cunningham vs. Chad Brown
John Robert Bellande vs. Sam Grizzle
Paul Wasicka vs. Freddie Deeb

Diamond Pairs:

Jason Alexander vs. Huck Seed
David Pham vs. Brian Townsend
Jennifer Tilly vs. Clonie Gowen
Daniel Negreanu vs. Michael Mizrachi
Barry Greenstein vs. Howard Lederer
David Benyamine vs. Jennifer Harman
Sam Farha vs. Doyle Brunson
Erick Lindgren vs. Eli Elezra

Club Pairs:

Jonathan Little vs. Erik Seidel
Patrik Antonius vs. Gabe Kaplan
Greg Raymer vs. Hooman Nikzad
Kenny Tran vs. Scott Clements
Mike Matusow vs. Joe Hachem
Tom Dwan vs. Phil Hellmuth
Tom Schneider vs. Gavin Smith
Chris Ferguson vs. John Juanda

Spade Pairs:

Don Cheadle vs. Gus Hansen
Scotty Nguyen vs. Bill Edler
Chris Moneymaker vs. Jerry Yang
David Singer vs. Phil Laak
Phil Ivey vs. Alisha Kunze
David Williams vs. Johnny Chan
Daniel Schreiber vs. TJ Cloutier
Annie Duke vs. JC Tran

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As reported earlier, Phil Ivey was the main headline for the final 6 at the 2008 WPT LA Poker Classic. Him and another “notable” Phil [Hellmuth, that is] were the heavy favorites to take down the event, with tournament pros Nam Le and Quinn Do the dark horses looking to spoil their party.

It was a high-flying final table, even though the action was relatively slow when it came down to starting the taping of the event. Phil Hellmuth was surprisingly knocked out very early in the match, and the final 3 players pitted a WSOP bracelet winner (Quinn Do) and a veteran WPT champ (Nam Le) against the almighty one - Phil Ivey himself.

Nam Le was in huge contention to outduel Ivey and Do - that was until his pocket Aces were cracked by Phil’s pocket 3’s when an unlikely turn card brought the “Tiger Woods of Poker” a stunning set. When no Ace came on the river, Nam Le was left in shock as he exited in 3rd place.

That pot brought Phil Ivey’s stack to over $11M, with his heads-up competition in Quinn Do only having a little over $2.5M in chips. It was a daunting and almost-impossible lead to overcome, and unfortunately for Do, there was no miracle comeback that took place.

2 hands into heads-up play, Ivey induced Quinn Do to commit the rest of his stack on the turn, where Phil hit an unbeatable full house. Quinn Do’s two pair was drawing dead, and Phil Ivey was declared the winner of the 2008 LA Poker Classic. The win is Ivey’s FIRST World Poker Tour victory. His previous 7 final tables ended with less-than-favorable results, so his win in this tournament vaulted his career resume even further.

Phil Ivey took home over $1.6 Million for his efforts, as well as a free buy-in to the season-ending $25,000 WPT Championship. When play ended, Phil was ready to pack up his bags to fly back to his home town of Las Vegas, where he is slated to play in the NBC National Heads-Up Championship - which begins play this weekend.

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The Commerce Casino will be home to one of the sickest TV final table lineups ever for the World Poker Tour. The L.A. Poker Classic, normally one of the biggest and most popular events of the year, will pit poker’s greatest tournament “brat” in Phil Hellmuth and poker’s greatest living all-around player in Phil Ivey against one another in a very historic showdown.

In addition, tourney specialists Quinn Do and Nam Le are also apart of the final 6. Both of these “Asian Assassins” (pun intended coming from the Pino himself) will be trying to put the two legendary Phil’s in their place come television taping time, but it will be a daunting task to say the least. Both Hellmuth and Ivey are no strangers to pressure, and both have made their fair share of WPT final tables. However, they’ll have to really watch out for Le, who is one of the best tournament players in the world. And if you all remember, it was he who took down the WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star Main Event back in 2006 (for more than a cooooool million bucks).

With Hellmuth and Ivey being the main attractions for this star-studded final table, it’ll be tough to NOT root for a Phil vs Phil heads-up battle. We’ll update who takes down this event as it gets reported.

Here are the final chip counts for the remaining 6 players:

Seat 1. Quinn Do - 1,450,000
Seat 2. Nam Le - 1,180,000
Seat 3. Phil Hellmuth - 2,380,000
Seat 4. Phil Ivey - 4,100,000
Seat 5. Charles Moore - 1,510,000
Seat 6. Scott Montgomery - 2,680,000

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This was posted on Tony G’s blog a few weeks ago, but it slipped through the cracks here on HSB. I was researching some other poker sites and forums, and found this amazing high stakes cash game story. Looks like everyone’s favorite foreign shit-talker managed to take down a pot worth $3.15 million pot in an ultra high-stakes cash game in Moscow, Russia! Tony G, known for his larger-than-life personality and poker game, scored a reported $5 million dollar profit for the session. Here is an excerpt from his blog .

“Now comes the biggest hand of my life so far. I hope I can play as there is a mandatory straddle of 7k and a reraise. I re-pop it to make it 85k before the flop with 4 way action. The flop is 10-7-6 with 2 diamonds giving me a nut flush draw, there is a bet of pot but the guy is close to all in so I move over the top and get called by a big stack. 3.15 million in the pot now. The cards are shown. They both have the nut straights, with one guy having a flush draw as well and the other guy having one diamond so just 6 outs for the flush or I need a pair and an Ace from space. The turn and river are both Diamonds.

And I gave out a scream and kind of lost my voice - just a little. I do get too emotional and excited with poker. Please excuse me, but I do have more fun then most playing the game.”

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