2009 NBC Heads-Up Seeds

Have you ever wondered how the NBC National Heads-Up Championship brackets would look if the tournament was seeded the same way that the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship is every season? Well, I did as well, and I have decided to act on that curiosity. Here are my seeds for the 2009 NBC Heads-Up tournament if the first-round matches didn't hinge on a random draw.



The main guidance in my consideration was prior NBC heads-up success. When trying to seed something with this amount of luck and variance in the mix, past success is the best indicator to work with. Obviously, some players are seeded on their overall talent, but whenever a close call came up in this process, prior NBC heads-up success was the tie breaker. Remember, only two players (Huck Seed and Scott Fischman) have cashed in all four NBC Heads-Up championships, while players like Howard Lederer and Erik Seidel (Seidel has fallen in the first round all four years) have never cashed. If this is a player's rookie year at the NBC Heads-Up, that factored into the decision as well. Chris Ferguson is the all-time NBC Heads-Up money winner with $1,000,000 and he is also the defending champion after winning in 2008. Other former champions include Phil Hellmuth (2005), Ted Forrest (2006), and Paul Wasicka (2008).



Some of the spots filled themselves in, the online and Caesars qualifiers are very similar to the play-in game champion in March Madness, celebrities are the mid-majors, and the 19 reserved spots for POY champions, main event champions, etc…feel very similar to automatic bids given to conference champions in the basketball version of March Madness.



With that in mind, here are my seeds, feel free to disagree with the seeds, but I think we can all agree that seeding this tournament would make things a lot more interesting.



Spades



1 Phil Ivey vs. 16 Leon Yanoski (Online Qualifier)



2 Ted Forrest vs. 13 Kenny Yeh (Caesars Qualifier)



3 Daniel Negreanu vs. 14 Jerry Yang



4 Paul Wasicka vs. 13 David Williams



5 Johnny Chan vs. 12 Annie Duke



6 Allen Cunningham vs. 11 Hevad Khan



7 Chad Brown vs. 10 Joe Hachem



8 Sam Farha vs. 9 Howard Lederer



Hearts



1 Chris Ferguson vs. Fred Collins (online qualifier)



2 Doyle Brunson vs. 15 Jeffrey Ishbia (Caesars qualifier)



3 Kenny Tran vs. 14 Jamie Gold



4 Phil Hellmuth vs. 13 Orel Hershiser



5 Gus Hansen vs. 12 Peter Eastgate



6 Jonathan Little vs. 11 Vanessa Selbst



7 Gavin Griffin vs. 10 Layne Flack



8 John Phan vs. Eli Elezra



Clubs



1 Huck Seed vs. 16 Blandino Gines (online qualifier)



2 Tom Dwan vs. 15 Brad Garrett



3 Andy Bloch vs. 14 Clonie Gowen



4 Scott Fischman vs. 13 Jennifer Tilly



5 Jen Harman vs. 12 Glen Chorny



6 Erick Lindgren vs. 11 Phil Laak



7 John Juanda vs. Dario Minieri



8 Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier vs. 9 Antonio Esfandiari



Diamonds



1 J.C. Tran vs. 16 Nicholas Joy (online qualifier)



2 David "The Dragon" Pham vs. 15 Gabe Kaplan



3 Barry Greenstein vs. 14 Don Cheadle



4 David Benyamine vs. 13 Chris Moneymaker



5 Gavin Smith vs. 12 Vanessa Rousso



6 Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies vs. 11 Erik Seidel



7 Mike "The Mouth" Matusow vs. 10 Mike Sexton



8 Scotty Nguyen vs. 9 Greg Raymer