As the new season on NBC’s Poker After Dark continues, the format experiments continue as well. The new season opened its first week with a cash game format as apposed to its typical 6 handed freeze-out winner take all format. The second week saw a return to the regular format after the cash game was deemed a success. This week NBC is doing a little cross promotion event taking the Four champions from the National Heads Up Poker Championship.

These four past champions will be participating in a double elimination format. Each player is required to put up $50,000 USD of there own money, the winner will walk away with lot $200,000. The four contestants are:

Phil Hellmuth Jr. 2005 Champion
Ted Forrest 2006 Champion
Paul Wasicka 2007 Champion
Chris Ferguson 2008 Champion

To start things off Phil Hellmuth will face Ted Forrest and Paul Wasicka will draw Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, with the winner of each match facing off for the 200k and the bragging rights.

At the outset Chris Ferguson has to been seen as the favorite as he has had a very successful career in heads up format. Not only did he win this year (2008) but he also finished runner up to both Phil Hellmuth and Ted Forrest in the years they won. It will be interesting to see how the action progresses and whether or not Phil will have another monumental melt down on Poker After Dark.