First Match is Antonio Esfandiari vs Phil Hellmuth for $50k July 30th.

Then it gets a little confusing.

"The first round of “High Stakes Duel” has a $50,000 buy-in with the winner advancing to Round 2 of the battle. The loser in each round receives the option to challenge the victor for a rematch prior to the next round of the game being offered to any player willing to put up the money required. The stakes will double with each round, resulting in a potential total prize pool of $12,800,000 in Round 8. In order for a player to walk away victorious, they must win 3 straight matches before Round 6 or 2 in a row from Round 5 onward. If there are no challengers within 30 days of the previous match, the most recent winner also walks away victorious." according to this Poker Central Article.

Could be fun. What do you think?

I think Esfandiari better not stick in his whole stack with two tens.

would be good if they brought some HU specialists

The way i'm understanding this slightly confusing description is that anyone in the world that can put up the stake can challenge the victor of the first round once the loser refuses to double the last stake? I would imagine some HU specialists somewhere would come out of the woodworks knowing they have an edge against either of these two.

Had to read that carefully but actually awesome format. The real question is at what round does Wiktor get on a plane to vegas? lmao

True or he will be gone in five years

Absolutely. Hellmuth and Esdandiari should be easy opponents or almost fish to the world's best HU players.

We need Isildur in this yes.

Wish it would be a produced/edited show and not a live one. Live live poker is just so boring even with personalities.

Yeah exactly. Poker is something you put on background if it's live because it's so slow still. It would be good if you could filter hands somehow and see the action part. Then it's worth watching every hand.

so if you must win 3 games, 50k first, you need to put up 50 more for the second, vs 100? and then 100 more vs someones 200?

and this any challengers, and you cant quit if you win, you're stuck to keep putting up money to play more?

what happens if 20 people sign up for 2nd round?

pickyourstakesheadsup

The first game is a 50k buyin. After that one is over, the winner of it has has 100k (50+50=100). Someone can then pony up 100k to play that first winner for the total 200k (100+100=200). The winner of that match then has 200k in front of him. Someone can THEN pony up 200k to play a match for 400k.. And so on

If you win a 5 dollar flip and the loser asks for double or nothing, you as the winner dont have to pull out more money outta your pocket. Think about it

I'm a little in between on this. For starters, "boring" is a subjective term overall, but I'm a MLB fan more than I'm an NBA fan, and I prefer comedies and dramas over action, so you have a baseline for what is my speed (literally) when it comes to viewing.

I always thought Poker After Dark did one thing right: show every hand but "lightly edit" the coverage to shorten the wait times, tanking, etc. Of course, this still meant some dead hands and walks, but if the lineup was right, the table banter filled in those gaps. After all, it was conceived as a poker version of Dinner For Five.

In a heads-up format, the players will simply play more hands so the slowdowns of PAD are reduced further. Thus, my ideal poker show would probably be a heads-up matchup but edited like PAD rather than like the WSOP. Not a total highlight reel of all-ins and coolers, but also not a fully live telecast where we sit through bathroom breaks and the dealer shuffling.

Furthermore, I'd like to see a format without escalating blinds, or at least a slow structure. One of the worst parts about the NBC Heads-Up event was that it devolved into a short-stacked shovefest too quickly. Hoping this doesn't do the same.

WSOP itself has flirted with a lot of different formats. For example, the entire 2003 Main Event was 7 episodes, whereas in 2012 and 2013 they did 6 episodes just for day 7. If you want to watch the edited coverage from start to finish for those years, you're looking at 20+ episodes total. The funny thing is that even with all those episodes, the 2012 FT seems really fast when in reality Balsiger/Merson/Sylvia were playing an epic marathon when it got down to three-handed play.

More recently they've been doing the streaming coverage in conjunction with a small number of edited shows released after the fact. You can go on PokerGo right now and find the edited versions of the 2018 WSOP where Lon and Norm have recorded new commentary even though they had actually already called that event live.

My stance is that a small number of episodes filled with coolers and memorable hands is preferable for a casual audience. For a more hardcore audience, I think you want to see a lot of hands and really get a sense for the level of play. I had never watched the end of the 2012 or 2013 MEs until recently, and seeing ~5 hours of day 7 hands gave you a really good feel for the contenders and how they played.

Since the new HU show will presumably be on PokerGo and aimed at a more serious audience, I would expect them to milk it for a lot of content. If it were headed to ESPN or CBS for a casual audience, it would probably make sense to chop it down to 1-2 hours per match.

So this starts tonight? Seems like little fanfare

I would resubscribe to watch this but it looks like they've removed pokergo from amazon firetv so now you can only watch on apple tv?

Enjoyed it until the audio went haywire. Bad echo on Schulman's mic for the last 60-75 minutes.

What makes it interesting is the dynamic between the two personalities. Antonio is constantly needling and winding up Hellmuth. Adds some spice to the match up. If this were just two wizards silently battling then it probably wouldn't be as watchable even if the level of play were higher.

Exactly
I’m gonna watch later, but only Bc I know Phil and Antonio will put on a good show.
I have zero interest in HUNL with like Fedor and Galfond or Dan Coleman etc etc

When I try and watch the replay it’s just a 2 second video that says “Technical Difficulties”

Doing a great job as always PokerGo

Loved the show (minus echo) but does anyone else think this is a way for the old guard to pump themselves back up the all time money list since they can't compete in real high rollers?

Is this on demand on the site anywhere? You'd think it'd be front and center on the main page but its just the teaser and that warm up talk they did. It really is one of the worst UI I've seen for trying to find something to watch.

I found it but they're repairing their servers so looks like it'll be going on to youtube in about an hour.

Full epi free on YouTube FYI:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zguv8YVYOgI

I’m 10 mins into the match and Schulman has said “It is what it is” literally 8 times