ESPN WSOP Coverage Features Tournament of Champions

Huck Seed will get plenty of airtime on ESPN tonight.

After kicking off its coverage of the 2010 World Series of Poker last week with Michael Mizrachi’s victory in the $50,000 Poker Players Championship, this week ESPN is bringing the Tournament of Champions to viewers around the world.

The field for this year’s Tournament of Champions – the first one held since 2006, when Mike Sexton defeated Daniel Negreanu heads-up for the title – was split between automatic qualifiers and players selected by the public. The three previous TOC winners (Mike Matusow, Annie Duke and Mike Sexton) and the reigning WSOP Main Event and WSOP Europe Main Event winners (Joe Cada and Barry Shulman) all got automatic invites; two seats were held back by the event’s sponsors, and the rest were selected by the public from the ranks of living players who had previously won a WSOP bracelet.

Former WSOP Main Event champion Huck Seed was among that last group, though he never expected to be there. But as he has done so often in the past, the 1996 world champion made the most of the opportunity presented to him. He jumped out to an early advantage and held on to it long enough to make the final table against a tough lineup that included Duke, Negreanu and Jennifer Harman. Then he outlasted Johnny Chan and Howard Lederer in three-handed play to win the $500,000 top prize – not bad for a guy who never thought he would get voted in to the tournament in the first place.

The two-hour coverage of Seed’s victory in the Tournament of Champions begins tonight at 8 p.m. on ESPN.