2011 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship

The Clubs/Spades quarterfinals are underway. Up front, it's the battle of men with French heritage: Olivier Busquet and Jonathan Duhamel. For once, the French *have* to win. In the back, 2003 Main Event winner Chris Moneymaker is taking on Las Vegas cash game regular David Oppenheim.

Players start with 200,000 in chips. Blinds start at 1000-2000.

The 2011 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship started Friday afternoon with 64 players in the field. (Actually, if you want to be technical about it, the tournament started the night before at the open bar at the bracket party in PURE Nightclub). Half of the players were eliminated by the end of the day Friday. Three-quarters of the remainder hit the rail yesterday, paring the field down to a manageable eight players.

Those eight players will have to win three more matches to claim the top prize of $750,000 in this event. Only one of them will do it. Will it be last year's runner-up, Erik Seidel? Perhaps perennial first alternate David Oppenheim? Or will it be one of the three newcomers to the event: Andrew Robl, Jonathan Duhamel and Olivier Busquet?

Today's schedule will break the quarterfinal matches into two separate groupings. Spades/Clubs will take the floor at 11am, with Olivier Busquet against Jonathan Duhamel on the feature table and Chris Moneymaker against David Oppenheim on the back table. Hearts/Diamonds will follow at roughly 1:30pm. Vanessa Selbst and Erik Seidel are front and center at that time, with Andrew Robl and David Benyamine relegated to the back.

Once the quarterfinal matches are complete, there will be a one-hour break for the crew. The semifinals are scheduled to start at approximately 4:45pm, with the best-of-three finals to follow at about 7:15pm. This could be a very long day, but for one of these eight players the pot of gold at the end of it will ease all hurts.

See you back here in about 30 minutes.