The 64-player starting field at the NBC national Heads-up championship was filled with the biggest names in the poker world today. Even for someone who hasn't followed poker for all that long - most of the players who took part in this tournament must be familiar. Anyhow, even though the starting field was dominated by men, it came to be a women who took down the tournament. Annie Duke played focused, concentrated and showed no fair against any player she was up against from the very first hand she played. However, she had a really, really hard road to walk since she was up against some of the world's best HU poker players.
Anyhow, in the final, Annie Duke was up against the poker legend Erik Seidel who has won not less than 8 WSOP Bracelets. Just like Annie Duke, Erik had played great poker from the very first hand in the tournament. However, Erik had also crushed some of his opponents on the way to the final table (for example: Peter Eastgate - 2008 WSOP Main
Event champ) and earned lots and lots of respect as he proved to be extremely good at playing heads-up.
Even though Seidel dominated the heads-up, Duke managed to take down a few big pots and turn it around and also take down the first prize of $500,000! Its really great to see a female poker player winning such a prestigious tournament as the NBC National Heads-Up Championship. Hopefully this will inspire more women to start playing poker and maybe also to win big tournaments like this one.
. I don't know when this picture was made but now she is 45. Her current image is that: 
