And Then There Were Eight

[user75032]

A very bleary-eyed good morning to you from the Caesars Palace Poker Room in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. The Day 3 action at the 2009 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship starts at the ungodly-early-for-poker hour of 11am today -- and with the adjustment of clocks last night for Daylight Savings Time, it's really the even-more-ungodly-early-for-poker hour of 10am. Thankfully, there's coffee on set.

We started this tournament two days ago with eight tables on the set and 64 players in the field. Yesterday the field was cut in half to 32 players on four tables and by the end of the day it was down to eight. This morning, two more tables have been taken off the set. We'll play two matches at a time from here on out.

We haven't received any indication yet as to the order of matches today, but if recent history is any guide, the Hearts Bracket and Diamonds Bracket finals will be first up. In Hearts, David Williams will take on Sammy Farha; Diamonds pits last-minute substitution David Oppenheim against the only player to cash in all five years of this event, Huck Seed.

We expect that the Spades and Clubs finals will take place at about 1:30pm local time. On the Clubs side, it's a battle of Team PokerStars Pros when Vanessa Rousso and Daniel Negreanu square off. The Spades final could represent a changing of the guard, with old-school veteran Phil Hellmuth, the only former NBC Heads-Up Champion remaining in the field, taking on internet phenom Bertrand 'ElkY' Grospellier.

Play is scheduled to start in roughly twenty five minutes. Don't go anywhere!