National heads up championship season 3 is on the way. This tournament is, if you listen to the poker professionals a big and very prestigious tournament to win.

The tournament is in its third year, and has grown every year in popularity, both at the viewers but also at the poker players. This type pf tournament, the structure of playing “mano a mano” on every table makes the game very personal with hard losses and sweet wins. The players know that one wrong played hand can be the end of the tournament, when you know you have to be the winner on the table to advance to the next round.

It all starts out with 64 players participating, making 16 tables in the first round, and 8 tables on the second round and so on. This means that the if you make it to the sixth round, you will have a seat at the final table, playing heads up for the championship.

The player which has done best in National Heads up championship before this season has to be Chris Ferguson in my opinion. He have never won the tournament tough, but he was on the final table in both 2005 and 2006 giving him the great result of 10 wins and 2 losses, both on the final table. On the first ever National Heads Up Championship, in 2005, Phil Hellmuth became the winner. The next year in 2006 Ferguson got beaten by Ted Forrest on the final table. I think Ferguson will be a force in this year’s championship as well, when as we all know he is a tournament no limit hold’em specialist and feared by many. You will see many new faces in this year tournament, for example the winner of the latest World Series Of Poker Main event, Jamie Gold and the runner up in the same event, Paul Wasicka. I wouldn’t count on Jamie Gold going far, his play has never really impressed me, but maybe Paul Wasicka can be a threat in the tournament.

The one’s who have never seen this tournament before; here comes two clips with interviews of the participants:

 

As you can see, almost all of the top players in the circuit are in this tournament, so it will be a real treat to us viewers.