NBC Cancels National Heads-Up Poker Championship

According to reports at Card Player Magazine and Wicked Chops Poker, NBC has decided to cancel the National Heads-Up Poker Championship. The tournament, which has been played each year since 2005, will not take place in 2012 – though the network has not ruled out a return for the event in future years.

The NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship had been a popular – and for a while, fairly unique – event on the poker calendar. Each year, 64 players were invited to participate in the bracket-style knockout competition. Each match produced a winner who moved on, and a loser who was eliminated. This only changed in the finals, where the winner had to win two-out-of-three to be declared the champion.

The tournament gathered an interesting mix of players. The vast majority came from the ranks of poker’s elite, featuring players who had dominated in tournament and cash game play. Several celebrity poker players were also invited to each event. In later years, one or more spots were also reserved for online qualifiers.

Several of poker’s biggest names had won the event over the years, including Phil Hellmuth, Chris Ferguson, Huck Seed and Erik Seidel.

Not surprisingly, one of the major reasons for the tournament’s cancellation was Black Friday. Given that the tournament was a made-for-TV event, and most of the advertising dollars for the show came from Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars, their removal from the USA poker market was a huge blow to the show’s advertising potential. In addition, the ratings for the televised coverage had been dropping in recent years, though they were still reasonable enough that the show would likely have continued if advertising hadn’t been a factor.

Several televised poker shows have been cancelled since Black Friday, mainly due to ties to the indicted sites. The most prominent of these cancellations have been the PokerStars Big Game and Poker After Dark.

While the National Heads-Up Poker Championship may no longer be on the poker schedule, its impact can be felt in other areas, such as the World Series of Poker, which now has a high-profile heads-up event each year.