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Some of Phil Hellmuth's more vehement detractors might call him poker’s version of the anti-Christ—and it’s a label that seemed especially appropriate when he opposed poker’s “Jesus,” Chris Ferguson, for the National Heads-Up Poker Championship title in 2005. Hellmuth, of course, went on to beat Jesus in the best-two-out-of-three finale to win the championship.

In 2006, Ferguson again reached the finals of the NHUPC, and again he lost the best-two-out-of-three showdown. But this time, his defeat didn’t come at the hands of the anti-Christ. If anything, it came at the hands of the anti-Hellmuth.

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Ted Forrest, this year’s Heads-Up champion, is everything that Hellmuth isn’t. Hellmuth talks a big game; Forrest plays a big game. There is no hype and self-promotion with Forrest, no trademark garb with logos galore, no quotable one-liners, no berating of foes and congratulating of self. It’s not about the look with Forrest (if it was, he would have gotten rid of that stubble moustache he’d been growing for about three days before reaching the TV table at the ’05 Mirage Poker Showdown). It’s not about the trash talk. It’s all about the poker. Ted Forrest plays cards, he does so with ruthless efficiency, and despite an ultra-competitive streak, he’ll never let losing knock him out of his chair and onto the floor the way some NHUPC champions might.

“Phil Hellmuth is Phil Hellmuth, and Ted Forrest is Ted Forrest. I’m not trying to be anyone else,” Forrest told ALL IN after outlasting 63 other competitors to win the NBC-televised tournament and the $500,000 first prize. That’s Ted Forrest at his understated best. You want more? We asked him to describe the feeling when the final card fell and he’d defeated Ferguson for the title. “I was just real happy.” And how about what was going through his mind after losing the first game of the Ferguson match? “You know, I was pretty glad it was best-two-out-of-three format.”

It may sound like Forrest is an ungracious interview subject rattling off quick and careless responses, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. On questions about poker, about the hands and the opponents and the style matchups, his reflections are thorough and profound. But on questions pertaining to stardom, his thoughts just don’t run as deep. “I don’t really think too much about stardom,” he said. “I mean, whatever it is, it is.”
So what is it? Or, more precisely, what could it be on the heels of this victory? In the opinion of Jon Miller, the senior vice president of NBC Sports, the NHUPC has already become the second most important event in poker, behind only the World Series. And many people would agree with Miller on that point. It’s hard to reach a wider audience than a free broadcast network like NBC does. Combine that with the fact that this is a tournament that picks and chooses its 64 participants with marketability very much in mind, and you have a series that drew an average of four million viewers per episode in ’05, with six million tuning in for the Hellmuth vs. Ferguson finals.

“In terms of this tournament turning Ted Forrest into a superstar, I certainly don’t think it hurts,” said Miller. “Being a superstar is dependent upon the player. Does he want to continue, does he want to be recognized, does he want all the trappings that come with being a star? I think it’s a little bit overwhelming to a guy who hasn’t gone through a lot of that before, and how he deals with it, for a large part, is his call. There’s a lot of opportunities for him. During April and May, millions and millions and millions of people will have seen him. More people will have seen him in one or two shows than have ever seen him on the World Poker Tour or any of these other shows combined.”

And what they’ll have seen him do is win six consecutive heads-up matches against premium competition. But before he started winning, Forrest first had to lose something: his cell phone. He lost it at the airport shortly before the tournament began, and that turned out to be a serious piece of serendipity.

“That was pretty much the best preparation that I could have possibly done for this tournament,” Forrest cracked. “There were certainly a lot fewer distractions.”
But losing his mobile phone wasn’t the only inadvertent prep Forrest did that helped get him in the zone for the NHUPC.

“A couple of weeks before the tournament, I had played Andy Beal heads-up a number of times in Limit poker,” he said, referring to the Texas billionaire who’s been taking on top pros for the last several years in the highest-stakes cash games on record. “That was not necessarily something I was doing to prepare for this tournament, but it was probably, accidentally, a good training grounds.”

In the first round of the tournament, while extroverts Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu, Jennifer Tilly, and James Woods got the majority of the attention, Forrest sat quietly at a side table, paired against another quiet veteran, Erik Seidel. With 12 World Series bracelets between them, this was, to hardcore fans, one of the most fascinating matchups of the first round. And it turned out to be every bit as challenging as expected for Forrest.

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“I like to refer to the way Erik played initially as the play of a stone-cold killer,” Forrest remarked. “He grabbed the chip lead by making these big, oversized stabs at the pot. Erik was very difficult to handle during the time that he had the chip lead.”
But Forrest, known for having perhaps the most acute radar in poker, swung the pendulum with one hand in which he read Seidel correctly and picked off a bluff. Seidel, erring on the side of aggression, fired three bullets with nothing, and Forrest, holding a modest hand, kept calling, ultimately taking down a huge pot and seizing the chip lead. And after that, it was Forrest who was able to get aggressive and decimate Seidel’s stack, advancing to the second round in a little under an hour.

By all reasonable estimations, it was assumed that Forrest would be playing 2005 ALL IN Player of the Year Phil Ivey in the second round, but in a stunning upset, respected but relatively little-known Chad Brown bumped off Ivey on the tournament’s first day. One of the most memorable hands of the tournament saw Brown all in with trip aces after the turn, way behind against Ivey’s aces full of eights. Brown’s only hope for survival was to chop if an eight hit on the river, and sure enough, a snowman fell from the sky. Brown eventually battled back to win, setting up a second-round meeting with Forrest.

But the card gods offered no such help to Brown in Round Two, as Forrest built an early lead and quickly put his foe away when the sometimes actor followed Forrest’s ideal script, attempting to take a stand with Q-J offsuit against Forrest’s pocket aces.

The third round was as far as Forrest got in the 2005 tournament, but whereas he drew eventual semifinalist Antonio Esfandiari at that stage last year, his ’06 draw looked like a relative walkover. NBC and host Caesars Palace elected to reserve three spots in this year’s tournament for qualifiers—one from an online competition that attracted 30,000 hopefuls, one from a $200 buy-in tournament open to the public, and one from a private tournament arranged by Caesars for some of its high-rolling casino regulars. Ernie Durack, a blackjack player from Canada, won the latter of the three tournaments, then confounded the experts by defeating Scotty Nguyen and Paul Phillips in succession to set up a Round-of-16 showdown with Forrest. Having seen Durack pull off the two biggest upsets of the tourney already, Forrest was not taking the upstart lightly.

“I actually watched part of his match with Paul Phillips, and Paul was going all in like every time with hands he shouldn’t have been going all in with. And I’m wondering, Why is he playing like this? Why does he think he needs to play like this?” Forrest said. “It actually seemed like Ernie was outplaying Paul.

“Then when I played Ernie, it became clear he was a guy who knew how to play. But still, he really should have been one of my easier matches. I found a way to make it one of my most difficult.”

How difficult? About an hour into the match, Forrest was all in and one card away from elimination when he hit a four-outer on the river to chop the pot. But before we get into the details of that miraculous hand, first there’s the hand where Forrest went against his best judgment and made the match difficult for himself.

“A key hand comes up where it’s 1,000/2,000 blinds (the players started their third round matches with 80,000 in chips), and I’ve got K-5 of clubs on the button, I limped in, and he raised it the minimum, 2,000, so I called. And it looked like he almost string raised it, or tried to raise more, and so I felt he had a pretty big hand. Now the flop comes a king, and the Q-10 of clubs. So he bet 5,000, and I raised him 10,000, and he moved all in for another 36,000, and I just felt like he had aces or A-K. I’m about even money against either one of those hands, and I’m getting 2-to-1 on the money. But it actually took a long time to make this decision. He was probably the only player in the tournament that I could possibly think of folding this hand to and declining to take 2-to-1 on an even-money shot, simply because if I fold, we’d be about even in chips, and I thought I might be a 2-to-1 favorite to beat him from that point. But if I call and lose, he’s going to have a big chip lead on me. As it turned out, I took a chance to knock him out right there, and he in fact did have two aces, so I had 14 outs twice. And two blanks came, so he had me severely outchipped.”

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That risky and regrettable decision from Forrest set up the hand that very nearly sent him packing. Forrest got it all in with A-10, a reasonable hand to push with in heads-up play, but Durack held pocket rockets for the second time in about five minutes to have the 41-year-old Las Vegas resident dominated. The board came 3-Q-4-2, and Forrest’s tournament appeared over—until a five on the river made both players a straight.

“That’s poker,” Forrest reflected. “Anyone that wins a tournament like this probably had several opportunities where he could have lost or got knocked out. But whenever I reached that position, I just told myself, Don’t ever give up.”

Forrest dug in his heels, played small-pot poker after that, and battled back to win the two-hour-plus duel. But he had no idea how much he’d need to bust out that “Don’t ever give up” attitude in his quarterfinal match the next day.

Forrest’s match against Sam Farha was, in a word, ridiculous. There were 13 all-ins and calls before the player who was all in finally lost. The showdown lasted a full 31/2 hours, breaking the previous record for NHUPC match length by about 30 minutes. You have Ali-Frazier in Manila, McEnroe-Borg at Wimbledon, and now Forrest-Farha at Caesars. This was a one-on-one duel for the ages.

Early on, Forrest was down as low as 40,000 in chips, facing a 7-to-1 disadvantage. But he just kept surviving, and so did Sammy, neither one ever conceding defeat no matter how small their stacks got.

“We were down to eight players when I got matched up with Sammy, and out of the eight players, he would have been my last choice as far as who I would’ve wanted to play,” Forrest said. “The thing about Sammy is, he’s a much better heads-up player than he is a ring-game player, because he plays so many hands. Playing in a ring game, he runs into someone with a better hand a lot of the time. But heads-up, he’s going to have the best hand half the time.”
Back and forth the two wily veterans went, and even when it seemed it was over and Forrest had advanced, the chips were carefully counted and it turned out Farha still had a few left. The players had both almost exited the poker room when they were summoned back to finish the neverending match.

“We went back,” Forrest said, “and he had like 18,000 or 20,000 in chips left, and the very next hand I got two nines, and he got A-3, and I survived the flop. And then I just kept thinking, Oh God, what if an ace comes? I just kept preparing myself for an ace to come and having to play on.”

But an ace did not come, and Forrest moved on to represent the “diamonds” bracket in the semifinals, joining Ferguson (who’d beaten Jim McManus to win the “clubs” bracket), Huck Seed (who’d topped Barry Greenstein to take the “spades” bracket), and Shawn Sheikhan (who’d stunned Daniel Negreanu to win the “hearts” bracket). Sheikhan’s unlikely run to the Final Four began when he crippled Gus Hansen by making quads to Hansen’s full house, and he proceeded to bump off Doyle Brunson, David Grey, and Negreanu. But Forrest found a way to end another Cinderella story, as he defeated “Sheiky” and moved on to a meeting with Ferguson in the finals.

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“Before the final match started,” Forrest recalled, “I asked him, ‘So, Chris, how does this game theory stuff work anyway?’ And he said, ‘Well, I can’t tell you, but I’ll show you.’”
Forrest’s attempts to get a peek inside the mind of Jesus were unsuccessful, and to make matters worse, Ferguson had luck on his side in the opening game of the best-of-three. With a flop of Q-10-2, Ferguson moved all in with bottom pair, and Forrest called with top pair. But the turn brought another deuce, allowing Ferguson to double up. Not long after, Forrest got it all in with the better hand again—pocket tens against A-9—but Jesus willed an ace on the river, meaning Forrest needed to win two straight games to make the championship his.

“I felt like I played that first match extremely well,” Forrest said. “He made a couple of mistakes that happened to work out. But I still think he played real good. He’s certainly a lot tougher to read than most players. He wears those sunglasses, and he’s like a statue, and he takes time on his decisions—he’s pretty tough to get a read on. And, at the same time, he has an excellent ability to read other players.”

In other words, Forrest was in an unenviable position: down a game against the kind of player you don’t want to be down a game against. But if there’s one thing Forrest proved throughout the tournament, it’s that he doesn’t mind uphill battles, and it took him less than an hour to draw even, winning nearly every big pot in Game Two and finishing Ferguson off when his A-4 held up against Jesus’ J-7.

The key hand of the rubber match came a little more than an hour in. Holding a lowly 6-3, Forrest was behind the whole way against Ferguson’s K-9, as the board came K-9-6-Q. Forrest had made a loose call to get to the river, but he was rewarded when another six fell, giving him a set and allowing him to make a large bet that Ferguson reluctantly called. Jesus was in bad shape after that, and it wasn’t long before he put the rest of his chips at stake with Q-J against Forrest’s K-7. Forrest hit a king on the flop and another on the river, and the trips became quads when Forrest himself became the king of the 2006 National Heads-Up Poker Championship.

NBC and Caesars have already renewed the deal for the NHUPC through 2008, with an option for ’09. So this tournament isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. And when it comes back on the first weekend of March next year, all eyes will be on Forrest, just as they were on Hellmuth this year. Forrest won’t beg for the spotlight, he won’t make a spectacle of himself, he won’t tell everyone he’s the best player in the tournament. But the spotlight will shine on him just the same.

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Phil Hellmuth may be Phil Hellmuth, and Ted Forrest may be Ted Forrest, but Ted Forrest isn’t quite the same Ted Forrest anymore. He’s now the champion of the second-highest-profile event on the poker calendar. And for the guy who always seems to know what his opponents are holding, it’s now all about what he’s holding and what moves he chooses to make.

The Longest Matches
1. Ted Forrest def. Sam Farha, Quarterfinals, 3 hours, 30 minutes
Two of poker’s finest engaged in the match that refused to end
2. Sam Farha def. Rene Angelil, First round, 2 hours, 30 minutes
Mr. Celine Dion put up a titanic effort, but fell short
3. Ted Forrest def. Ernie Durack, Third round, 2 hours, 15 minutes
Wasn’t Durack supposed to be an easy out? Nobody told him that
4. Shawn Sheikhan def. Daniel Negreanu, Quarterfinals, 2 hours, 10 minutes
A heartbreaker for “Kid Poker,” and a monumental win for “The Sheik”
5. Sam Farha def. Michael Mizrachi, Third round, 2 hours, 5 minutes
Apparently, quick and easy matches aren’t Sammy’s thing

The Shortest Matches
1. Barry Greenstein def. Tuan Le, Second round, 8 minutes
Teacher and student both wanted it over with quickly, going all in on flush draws
2. Josh Arieh def. Eli Elezra, Second round, 13 minutes
Overpairs are nice, Eli, but not when the other guy has made the nut straight
3. Michael Mizrachi def. Howard Lederer, Second round, 15 minutes
“The Grinder” doesn’t always have to grind ’em out
4. Josh Arieh def. David Williams, First round, 24 minutes
Suffice to say Arieh was in the zone his first two matches
5. Ted Forrest def. Chad Brown, Second round, 26 minutes
Brown made a move at the wrong time, going all in against pocket aces

The Biggest Upsets
1. Ernie Durack def. Scotty Nguyen, First round
It’s not every day an anonymous qualifier topples a former WSOP champion
2. Ernie Durack def. Paul Phillips, Second round
We figured Durack-Nguyen was a fluke … and then this happened
3. Shawn Sheikhan def. Daniel Negreanu, Quarterfinals
“Sheiky” wasn’t supposed to make it out of the first round
4. Shawn Sheikhan def. Doyle Brunson, Second round
We’d make Sheikhan the favorite in arm wrestling, but not poker
5. Chad Brown def. Phil Ivey, First round
The only way to beat Ivey: Hit a two-outer on the river to chop

The Matches With Plotlines
Barry Greenstein vs. Tuan Le, Second round
Who’s your daddy? Le took a licking from his father figure
Josh Arieh vs. David Williams, First round
They have WSOP history, plus they’re both Bodog boys
Daniel Negreanu vs. Evelyn Ng, First round
Not only did they used to date, but it even ended badly!
Johnny Chan vs. Carlos Mortensen, First round
World Series Main Event winners draw each other in Round One
Chris Ferguson vs. Huck Seed, Semifinals
Two more WSOP Main Event champs, fighting to reach the finals