It’s March Madness!  At least, for poker fans it is.  The big basketball tournament may still be a couple of weeks away, but poker fans are already busting out their brackets in anticipation of the invite-only NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship.

Thursday night, the elite field of 64 players gathered at Pure night club inside Caesar’s Palace for the official draw party, where the televised event’s hosts Leanne Tweeden and Ali Nejad drew the names and announced the pairings.  Here is the breakdown of the Round One match-ups.  The winner of the Clubs bracket will advance to play the Spades bracket champ, while Hearts and Diamonds winners will square off to claim the second seat in the championship round. (Note: the pairings are listed in order of the bracket, to give you some idea of who will square off against each other in later rounds):

Clubs
Patrik Antonius vs. Chris Moneymaker
Leo Wolpert vs. Eric Baldwin
David Williams vs. Joe Cada
Erik Seidel vs. Huck Seed
Dan Ramirez vs. Erick Lindgren
Peter Eastgate vs. Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier
Stephen Quinn vs. Ted Forrest
Dario Minieri vs. Jamie Gold

Spades
Gavin Smith vs. Phil Ivey
Richard Edwards  vs. Scotty Nguyen
Shawn Rice (Caesars qualifier) vs. Joe Hachem
Gabe Kaplan vs. Johnny Chan
Daniel Negreanu vs. Jason Mercier
Pieter de Korver vs. Mike Sexton
Phil Gordon vs. Tom Dwan
Phil Laak vs. John Juanda

Hearts
Jesper Hougaard vs. Allen Cunningham
Eli Elezra vs. Greg Mueller
Annette Dworski  vs. Chris Ferguson
Kara Scott vs. Dennis Phillips
Brock Parker vs. Doyle Brunson
JP Kelly vs. Don Cheadle
Howard Lederer vs. Phil Hellmuth
Annette Obrestad vs. Orel Hershiser

Diamonds
Barry Greenstein vs. Vanessa Rousso
Sam Farha vs. Antonio Esfandiari
Jennifer Harman vs. Jennifer Tilly
Jerry Yang vs. Mike Matusow
Darvin Moon vs. Bill Huntress
Andy Bloch vs. Annie Duke
Andrew Wilson vs. Paul Wasicka
Gus Hansen vs. Greg Raymer

You can check out a PDF of the official bracket at NBC Sports.  Be sure to check in with BLUFF for updates throughout the weekend on the competition.

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