National Heads-Up Poker Championship

So the National Heads-Up Poker Championship is coming back and will be on Peacock and PokerGO later this year. They have the old shows posted on PokerGO, so I watched the first episode from 2005. It's notable how many players from that time are now dead:

Doyle Brunson
Chip Reese
Mike Sexton
Curtis Bibb
Amir Vahedi
Layne Flack
Henry Orenstein
Jerry Buss
Rene Angelil

Also, a lot of the other players have totally disappeared from the poker world.

--(also from 2005, PokerGO has Todd Druff Witteles' WSOP Limit final table, which is "entertaining.")

Here is the 2005 Heads Up episode 1 on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmuqsMe-c54&t=1s

Watched this live at Caesars Palace in the old poker room sometime in later 00’s, can’t remember the exact year, maybe 08?

Remember lots of perceived “upsets” but was the nature of the game so maybe they really weren’t. But yea you are correct, it was a who’s who of the time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dive_Bar_Dave

So the National Heads-Up Poker Championship is coming back and will be on Peacock and PokerGO later this year. They have the old shows posted on PokerGO, so I watched the first episode from 2005. It's notable how many players from that time are now dead:

Doyle Brunson
Chip Reese
Mike Sexton
Curtis Bibb
Amir Vahedi
Layne Flack
Henry Orenstein
Jerry Buss
Rene Angelil

Also, a lot of the other players have totally disappeared from the poker world.

--(also from 2005, PokerGO has Todd Druff Witteles' WSOP Limit final table, which is "entertaining.")

---

I first started playing poker in Deadwood in the early 90's. Layne Flack was a poker dealer there at Miss Kitty's. When he wasn't dealing he was playing poker and usually sucking down Budweiser. Sometimes when he got off shift he would immediately start playing poker....and play until his next poker shift. In which case he looked like a mummie in the box.

The mouth won it a few years ago , you could tell his 5 % was his life roll

I left out Miami John Cernuto who shows up at the end of episode 2.

So the complete list is:

Doyle Brunson
Chip Reese
Mike Sexton
Curtis Bibb
Amir Vahedi
Layne Flack
Henry Orenstein
Jerry Buss
Rene Angelil
Miami John Cernuto

That's 10 out of 64 players.

So the new National Heads-Up Poker Championship premiered on Peacock on Dec 4th. I have Peacock and I had no idea the show was airing, so the promotion for it hasn't been great. There are four episodes up on the site as of now. I will check it out.

https://x.com/PokerStarsUSA/status/1996644421006245969

Im guessing that Michael The Grinder Mizrachi will win!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dive_Bar_Dave

It's notable how many players from that time are now dead:

Doyle Brunson
Chip Reese
Mike Sexton
Curtis Bibb
Amir Vahedi
Layne Flack
Henry Orenstein
Jerry Buss
Rene Angelil

---

That really is a lot of people dead. Cursed tournament!

Some t of these guys weren't even old (Vahedi, Flack, Reese, for example).

To be fair, Flack did it to himself, and Reese had damage to his heart from childhood rheumatic fever and also from a lifetime of obesity. Vahedi was the only one that was a complete surpirse, as other than being somewhat overweight, he didn't appear to be unhealthy.

Reese supposedly also had a 70s “party” phase and Vahedi was diabetic and loved cigars.

A lot of the players on the current heads-up show are very overweight. It seems like poker becomes all-consuming for some people and they forget to exercise.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dive_Bar_Dave

Reese supposedly also had a 70s “party” phase and Vahedi was diabetic and loved cigars.

A lot of the players on the current heads-up show are very overweight. It seems like poker becomes all-consuming for some people and they forget to exercise.

---

It's more than forgetting to exercise.

One of my favorite "poker health" stories is one I've told before on radio, and I think on this forum, too.

I was in a $100/$200 limit holdem game at Bellagio in the 2000s. I had been there awhile, and the game was good but nothing unusually great.

I stood up at about 10am after playing all night and said, "Well, I've gotta go... time for the dentist".

Someone at the table said, "Wow, you're really leaving to go the dentist?"

I said, "Yes, I have an appointment at 10:30."

The guy said back, "That's great you're going to the dentist, most people I know here don't do that."

Then the table chimed in that they all rarely see the dentist, and thought I was so responsible to not only make a dental appointment, but actually quit a poker game to go to it.

I walked out thinking, "What the fuck is wrong with these people? I just got congratulated for going to the fucking dentist."

But yeah I forgot about Vahedi being diabetic. He was a nice guy. Didn't know him well, but he was always very pleasant when we played together.

Diabetes does raise your heart attack chances by a very high degree, but still... dying at 48 is a bad beat.

In the mid-2000s he was banging a blond girl 20+ years his junior, who was the daughter of an LA tournament player who went by "The Snake".

All three of us (me, Vahedi, and Snake) were deep in a limit holdem event there, I think in 2006, and the girl was there on the rail. She went up to Snake and hugged him at one point, and the tournament reporter (yes, those tournaments had reporters at one point) thought she was Snake's girlfriend, and included it in the writeup.

Well, next time I saw her and Snake, I asked if she had seen that writeup, and she said no. I told her that they thought her dad was her boyfriend. She was visibly disgusted and said, "Ew!! How could they think that? Even if they didn't know he was my dad... how could they think I was dating him? Gross!"

Then I found out later she was dating Vahedi.

I thought that was funny. She was grossed out that they assumed her dad was her boyfriend, but she was actually dating a guy her dad's age.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dan Druff

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dive_Bar_Dave

Reese supposedly also had a 70s “party” phase and Vahedi was diabetic and loved cigars.

A lot of the players on the current heads-up show are very overweight. It seems like poker becomes all-consuming for some people and they forget to exercise.

---

It's more than forgetting to exercise.

One of my favorite "poker health" stories is one I've told before on radio, and I think on this forum, too.

I was in a $100/$200 limit holdem game at Bellagio in the 2000s. I had been there awhile, and the game was good but nothing unusually great.

I stood up at about 10am after playing all night and said, "Well, I've gotta go... time for the dentist".

Someone at the table said, "Wow, you're really leaving to go the dentist?"

I said, "Yes, I have an appointment at 10:30."

The guy said back, "That's great you're going to the dentist, most people I know here don't do that."

Then the table chimed in that they all rarely see the dentist, and thought I was so responsible to not only make a dental appointment, but actually quit a poker game to go to it.

I walked out thinking, "What the fuck is wrong with these people? I just got congratulated for going to the fucking dentist."

---

Ha. Yeah I remember when I first started playing poker in 2004 and I was playing 2/4 limit at the casino. A number of the older players were missing teeth. Some of them would brag about being long-time poker regs. It seemed like they would prefer to have the money for a few more buy-ins, rather than "waste it" at the dentist.