Tom Dwan Faces Doug Polk In WPT Heads-up Opener [June 22nd]

Tom Dwan will be battling Doug Polk this week in the highlight fixture of the $25,000 WPT Heads-up Championship opening round which will also see Phil Ivey and Patrik Antonius in action...

The event will be played out on the Poker King platform, Dwan and Ivey both ambassadors for the site, with many of the players playing from Cabo San Lucas on the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula.

The Dwan-Polk match-up drew an amused, or confused perhaps, “Hey, huh?” tweet from Jungleman Dan Cates, clearly in reference to his unfinished match against ‘Durrrr’ from the good old days.

Cates may not be among the 32 players battling for the WPT Heads-up title but there are plenty of interesting pairings for fans of the game to get their teeth into on the rail.

The winner of Polk-Dwan, which was drawn live and randomly live on Polk’s YouTube channel, will face the victor between Patrik Antonius and Japanese pop star GACKT, aka Gakuto Oshiro, who is regarded as “the Japanese Michael Jackson.”

The left-hand bracket of the draw sees celebrity DJ Steve Aoki face a tough challenge in the shape of “Cowboy” Dan Smith, and a battle of the streamers between TwitchTV chess favourite Alexandra Botez and professional gamer Rumay “Hafu” Wang.

There are several big matchups in the other half of the draw, with Ivey against Manig Loeser the pick of the bunch, and two qualifier spots still to be announced.

Stephen Chidwick, Linus Loeliger and Nick Schulman will also feature when the action kicks off on June 22nd, the 5-day event due to be streamed on TwitchTV.

You can check out the full draw in the image below...