Full Tilt, PokerStars Sending Players to Heads-Up Championship

NBC’s National Heads-Up Poker Championship features 64 players battling it out one-on-one until only one is left standing.  60 of those players are invited poker pros and celebrities.  That leaves four seats.  Two of those four will go to players at FullTiltPoker.net and PokerStars.net. 

Those at FullTiltPoker.net can play in any of the 360-player freeroll sit-and-go’s, which run constantly.  The top three finishers in each sit-and-go will move on to the weekly round two freeroll, held each Saturday at 4:35pm ET through February 16.  The winner of each weekly tournament will move on to the final NHUPC qualifier.  The player left with all the chips at the end of that qualifier will receive a $22,000 NHUPC prize package, which includes a seat in the field of 64. 

Customers of FullTiltPoker.com, Full Tilt’s real money site, can participate as well, but have the benefit of only having to play in 180-person round one tournaments. 

It works a bit differently at PokerStars.net (players are PokerStars.com are eligible, as well).  Each player is allowed one attempt in a round 1A multi-table freeroll tournament (daily at 7:00pm ET) and one attempt in round 1B tourney (10:00pm ET).  The top 200 finishers in each advance to their choice of round 2 tournaments, which take place every Saturday through February 23 at 4:00pm ET.  The top 50 move on to the final, where the winner gets the seat in the NHUPC.  There is also one “last chance” tournament on February 23, which gives out six seats to the final qualifier.