Jun 18, 2021
Day 1 of the WPT Heads Up Poker Championship Presented by Poker King is set to kick off at 11 a.m. (PST) as half of the field will hit the felt for a total of eight matches with eight more lined up for tomorrow. The invitational tournament will be hosting an event that consists of mostly professional poker players with a mix of well-known streamers and celebrities sprinkled into the field. A standout match will be kicking off the festivities, having the world-famous DJ Steve Aoki attempt to upset four-time WPT champion Dan Smith.
The eight matches on Day 1 and Day 2 will have staggered starting times with two matches taking place in each time slot. Playing simultaneously alongside Aoki and Smith will be Stefan “Stefan11222” Burukov who takes on Timothy Adams. Burukov, an online high-stakes cash player, will be put to the test with his first-round match against Adam’s who is a Triton regular that boasts over $24.4 million in career cashes, sitting second on Canada’s all-time earnings list.
Linus Loeliger will be faced with the task of defeating heads-up specialist Olivier Busquet when they take to the virtual felt at 1 p.m. (PST). Also playing during this time slot will be Alexandra Botez who is a Chess champion that streams on Twitch with over 850,000 followers and she will be up against Hafu, who is a former World of Warcraft professional with over a million followers.
Nick Schulman is broadcasting throughout the tournament but will be handing the mic over to Joey Ingram at 3 p.m. (PST) while Schulman takes a seat in his first-round match with Chris Kruk. The other match taking place during that time will see Shiphtur who is a former League of Legends pro take on the highly accomplished Anthony Zinno, having over $3.1 million in WPT earnings and three WPT titles.
Brad Owen versus Daniel Dvoress and Tuukka “ButtonClickr” Sevanen versus an online qualifier. Dvoress is a Canadian pro with over $15.9 million in career earnings that currently is sitting third in the WPT Player of the Year standings. He is set to play against a poker blogger with over 250,000 YouTube subscribers in Owen,
All players will begin the match with 100,000 in chips and blinds will start at 400/800 with levels going up after every seven hands. Each match will be a best of three until the finals where a champion will be decided in a best of five match. Stay tuned here at WPT.com for all updates throughout. All live updates will be on a two-hour delay to coordinate with the live stream, tune into WPT Twitch at 12:00PM PST to watch the exciting preshow and live actions during the meantime.