Now We'll See Who's Really The Best

That' s the tagline of the European Heads Up Championship (reminder : last years final was between Angelo Blanco Puras and Mark Banin). The US version has just been completed. With surprising restraint they have contented themselves with only calling it the National Heads-Up Poker Championship. Nonetheless, sample quotes include "the winner [will be] considered poker's best one-on-one player" and "the ultimate big-stakes poker showdown".

And what do you know, Hellmuth won it. Well, if Phillips and Hellmuth can kiss and make up, maybe I can ease up on the Hellmuth bashing for a while. Until my next Gutshot piece anyway :-). What I really found amusing though was the fact that Sklansky beat Ivey. And Chan. In "the ultimate big-stakes poker showdown". I find that so amusing on so many levels I'm not going to explain it (as The Hat points out, if you have to explain it then it's not funny anyway). In the words of the man himself, I leave it as an exercise for the reader.

7/3/05 A bit later : Unintentionally amusing poker snippet #2 : Daniel Negreanu saying on his blog "I'm not one to name drop". Nor am I, as I said to the Pope the other day.