Stars Aligning for Full Tilt $25K Heads-Up Championship

Saturday, the largest buy-in in online tournament in poker history takes place at Full Tilt Poker with its $25,000 Heads-Up Championship. So far, 70 entrants have registered, including a handful of Full Tilt pros and a roster of online pros who will make this event one of the toughest online playing fields ever.

At the current attendance, field will drop down to allow the first 64 entrants to play (to make for an even six rounds of heads-up matches). That means the winner will get $560,000. The NBC National Heads-Up Championship, won this year by Full Tilt Pro Chris Ferguson, paid $500,000, and last year’s World Series of Poker $5,000 heads-up championship paid $425,954 to the winner.

The runner-up Saturday will receive $320,000 with the current prize pool. The top eight would get paid at least $96,000. There will not be fewer than 64 entrants, because players are not allowed to unregister for this event.

There are several satellites still running (but they are full), so that prize pool will increase slightly by the time the tourney start at 3 p.m. ET. The tournament is celebrating Ferguson’s NHUPC win. He will host the event, as well as play in it.

The Full Tilt Pros that are registered include Ferguson, Andy Bloch, Phil Ivey, Erik Seidel, Gus Hansen, Howard Lederer, Brandon Adams, David Benyamine, David Oppenheim, Huck Seed, Nick Schulman, Nenad Medic, Steve Zolotow, David Singer, Erick Lindgren, Eli Elezra, Gavin Smith, Max Pescatori, and Taylor Caby.

Scott Fischman and Scott Clements are registered for the remaining qualifiers that are taking place today and are already filled.

The ballers who are non-Full Tilt Pros to keep an eye out for include:

Cory “UGOTPZD” Carroll, who has won more than $1.8 million playing live tournament poker and hundreds of thousands playing online tournaments. Since 2007, he’s lit up live tournaments by cashing seven times, winning one WSOP Circuit event for $505,176, finishing as runner-up at a WPT event, and most recently finishing fourth at the WPT $25,000 Championship event for another $593,000.

Patrik “FinddaGrind” Antonius, who has won more than $2 million playing live tournament poker, but has not cashed since September of last year. He’s still one of the most recognized players in poker and is feared in live cash games that take place around the world.

Daniel “FakeSky” Alaei, who is another cash-game master and has won more than $1.5 million playing live tournament poker going back to 2004. Last year, he finished 25th in the $10,000 WSOP main event and can be seen busting heads on High Stakes Poker reruns.

Tom “durrr” Dwan, who already cashed four times in live tournaments in 2008 for more than $500,000, the most recent being a ninth-place finish at the WPT Championship event ($184,670).

Dani “Ansky451” Stern, a PokerSavvy Pro and Card Player Pro poker video coash, who occasionally appears as a columnist in Card Player magazine and can be found playing most of the big buy-in events online. He’s cashed for more than $200,000 online.

Jeff “ActionJeff” Garza, who has won more than $353,000 playing live tournament poker. His most recent big score came in January at a $4,400 no-limit hold'em event held at the Aussie Millions, which was good for $88,000. He also finished sixth at WPT North American Poker Championship in November ($178,727).

This is not, by far, a full list, because most of the players who registered for this event can never be called lightweights. At least three more players will wind up in the tournament, thanks to the qualifiers scheduled to take place in the next few hours.

And, on Saturday, take advantage of a Full Tilt deposit bonus offered through CardPlayer.com, play some poker, and watch the best of the world play for the big bucks.

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