SPOILER ALERT: National Heads-Up Poker champion revealed
The National Heads-Up Poker championship was decided over the weekend at Caesars Palace and the tournament, taped for broadcast by NBC, will begin airing on six consecutive Sundays starting April 18.
Annie Duke didn’t win the television reality series “Celebrity Apprentice,” but she did outlast a Heads-Up poker field of 64 players to take home $500,000 and become the first woman to win the annual made-for-television tournament, now in its sixth year.
Duke, who finished as the runner-up to comedienne Joan Rivers on last year’s season of the Donald Trump-inspired reality show, defeated fellow poker professional Eric Seidel in the best-of-three finals.
The tournament featured 64 players in single-elimination rounds of hold’em poker played over three days. The field included 11 former champions of the World Series of Poker’s Main Event, other well-known poker professionals, Hollywood celebrities and sports celebrities.
Duke, arguably one of the most successful female poker players on the circuit, owns one individual event World Series of Poker champions bracelet earned in 2004 and has collected more than $1.13 million in career winnings at the tournament.
In previous the Heads-Up tournaments, Duke never made it past the second round.
“I came into this tournament really focused and it feels great to finally break through in this event.” Duke said.
Seidel, who has won eight World Series of Poker individual event champion bracelets and ranks 9th on the tournament’s all-time money list, took home $250,000 as the second-place finisher.
