20 PocketFivers Selected to NBC Heads-Up Field

Dan · January 18, 2013

The Draw Party for the 2013 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship will take place next Wednesday, January 23 at Cleopatra’s Barge inside Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The following two days, the made-for-television, bracket-style event will play out from Caesars Palace and air on NBC starting in March. The list of the 64 Heads-Up entrants was released on Friday morning and includes 20 PocketFivers, who together make up 31% of the field.

Chris moorman1Moorman (pictured) and Shaun shaundeebDeeb are among those who will appear in the 2013 National Heads-Up Poker Championship, which returns following a one-year hiatusin the wake of Black Friday. Moorman is the highest earning member of PocketFives, having tallied over $7.5 million in tracked cashes. In fact, Moorman is just $1.2 million shy of becoming the first PocketFiver ever to reach $10 million. He has also piled up a record-setting 12 Triple Crowns and has been a beacon of longevity.

Deeb (pictured) is the lone person to win five PokerStarsSCOOP tournaments, the most recent of which came in May 2012 in a $2,100 HORSE event. He is over $5 million in tracked online poker MTT winnings and, like Moorman, is a former #1 player in the PocketFives Poker Player Rankings.

WSOP Main Event 10th place finisher Gaelle Baumann, who is a member of the France pokercommunity, received an invite to this year’s Heads-Up event in Las Vegas. She bubbled the Main Event’s final table, narrowly becoming the first woman since Barbara Enright in 1995 to reach the final nine of the $10,000 tournament. Also bubbling the Octo-Nine in 2012, but not appearing in the Heads-Up field, was Norway’s Elisabeth Hille. Besides Baumann, Octo-Niners that you will see include Greg Mersonand Rob Salaburu.

Here is the full field of 64 players that will vie for supremacy in the 2013 National Heads-Up Poker Championship:

Gaelle Baumann
Jean Robert Bellande
Andy Bloch
Viktor Blom
Liv Boeree
Justin Bonomo (ZeeJustin)
Doyle Brunson
Olivier Busquet (livb112)
Daniel Cates
Mohsin Charania (chicagocards1)
Joseph Cheong (subiime)
Shaun Deeb (shaundeeb)
Jonathan Duhamel
Tom Dwan
Eli Elezra
Antonio Esfandiari
Will Failla
Andy Frankenberger
Phil Galfond
Matt Glantz
Barry Greenstein (barryg1)
Bertrand Grospellier (ElkY)
Jennifer Harman
Brian Hastings (Stinger885)
Isaac Haxton
Phil Hellmuth
John Hennigan
Maria Ho
Phil Ivey
Faraz Jaka (The-Toilet)
Kyle Julius (KJulius10)
Eugene Katchalov
Phil Laak
Ben Lamb (Benba)
Andrew Lichtenberger (luckychewy)
Matt Matros
Mike Matusow
Jason Mercier (treysfull21)
Greg Merson (gregy20723)
Michael Mizrachi
Chris Moneymaker
John Monnette
Chris Moorman (moorman1)
Carlos Mortensen
Daniel Negreanu
David Oppenheim
Greg Raymer
Vanessa Rousso
Rob Salaburu
Matt Salsberg
Nick Schulman
Huck Seed
Erik Seidel
Scott Seiver
Joe Serock (leemur)
Mike Sexton (Mike Sexton)
Sam Simon
Dan Smith
Justin Smith (Boosted J)
Jason Somerville (JCarver)
Jennifer Tilly
Yevgeniy Timoshenko (Jovial Gent)
David Williams
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