February 27, 2006
The cream of free pokerparty com games makes up the rest of the Heads Up field, including Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan, Annie Duke, Ted Forrest, Barry Greenstein, Phil Ivey, Howard Lederer, 2006 Poker Player of the Year leader Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi and 2005 Poker Player of the Year Men "The Master" Nguyen are just a few of the names that have committed to the pokerparty event. There will also be those three "wild cards" that should be an interesting addition to the tournament. A couple of weeks ago, one of those finalists was determined through an online competition at the official website for the tournament, pokerparty.com. Two more slots will be filled through satellite events held at Caesars Palace. These players will fill out the sixty four player field for the single elimination tournament.
The 64 pokerparty players will be broken down into four brackets of sixteen players each, which will be drawn on Friday evening. The competition begins Saturday morning and continues through Monday, when a best two-out-of-three championship match will determine the winner. The pokerparty .com tournament will be taped for broadcast on NBC over six consecutive Sundays that starts on April 16th and runs to the championship confrontation at the end of May. "The National Heads-Up Poker Championship is unique in a couple of ways," offers Jon Miller, Sr. VP Programming for NBC Sports. "The field of 64 enables us to bring in virtually all of the top players. Then, they are on the verge of elimination throughout the tournament because of the one-on-one format. Fortunately, most of these players like the pressure."
Someone who is ready for the battle in this year's Pokerparty championship is the defending champion, Phil Hellmuth, who took down the $500,000 first place prize a year ago. "My chances of repeating are realistic," offers Hellmuth. "There are many great players in this tournament to be sure, but all I have to do is win six times. Certainly there can be no doubt that I am the pre-tournament favorite." PartyGaming has developed a stronger stance as a leading online gaming company by launching a "fully integrated, Party-branded gaming platform" that allows convenient access to PokerParty.com and the new PartyCasino without separate registration, sign-in, or banking activities. Players now have an even more flavorful choice of games including several poker games from PokerParty such as Hold 'em, Omaha, and Stud and Slots, Video Poker, and BlackJack from PartyCasino all the while drawing from a single PartyAccount source.
PartyBingo is another member of the PartyGaming site and is filled with enjoyable games with entertaining graphics and cheerful titles such as Bingo Royale, Board Babe Slots, and Funky Chicken Slots. Players here can participate using play or real money, as in PokerParty and PartyCasino. Four or five good sessions playing tight at low-stakes tables (where the loose players swim freely) has resulted in regular 100% to 200% returns on initial stakes. Usually this was achieved in one to two hours maximum, each session. However, last night I decided to have a free pokerparty game after coming in from a night out. That means an element of tiredness crept in and I ended up scraping a minimal profit in two hours.
