Sam Morris

Players compete Friday in the National Heads-Up Poker Championship at Caesars Palace. Chris Ferguson beat Andy Bloch on Sunday.

By Jeff Haney (contact)

Wed, Mar 5, 2008 (2 a.m.)

Publicity photo

Orel Hershiser

On the way to his second-place finish in the National Heads-Up Poker Championship, Andy Bloch faced three consecutive World Series champions.

In the final round, Bloch’s opponent was Chris Ferguson, who won the main event of the 2000 World Series of Poker.

In the semifinals, Bloch faced Huck Seed, who won the main event of the 1996 World Series of Poker.

And in the quarterfinals, Bloch faced Orel Hershiser, who led the Los Angeles Dodgers to victory in the 1988 World Series ... of baseball.

Hershiser, who won the Cy Young Award and the World Series MVP Award in 1988, became a full-time Las Vegas resident in August in part to pursue his passion for poker.

After gaining an invitation to the National Heads-Up event as one of a smattering of celebrity entrants in the 64-player field, Hershiser emerged as the biggest surprise of the tournament.

He won his first three matches, beating former heads-up champ Ted Forrest and world-class poker pros Allen Cunningham and Freddy Deeb before losing to Bloch. Hershiser earned $75,000 for making the quarterfinals.

“I don’t think I know the game of heads-up hold ’em well enough to even assess how I did, other than I followed the instruction of some great teachers,” said Hershiser, who consulted with poker pros Mark Gregorich, Gavin Smith, Bill Edler and Scotty Nguyen before this past weekend’s tournament at Caesars Palace.

“I think I’ll leave that to the pros to make their comments and figure it out. I was fortunate that the deck hit me, I had some good luck and I was able to win a few matches.”

The professional poker players who made up the majority of the heads-up field probably saw the former pitcher as a soft spot in the lineup, even though Hershiser regularly plays no-limit Texas hold ’em at the Bellagio, the Venetian and Red Rock Resort.

“Nobody said anything to my face,” said Hershiser, who is renting a home in Summerlin and plans to buy a home in the same area. “But if you were a poker pro who plays for millions of dollars in cash games and tournaments like these guys, and all of a sudden you have some celebrity who got a buy-in, you would consider it a great draw. I’m sure I was very high on the list of guys they would want to get.”

Hershiser, who set a major league record with 59 consecutive scoreless innings pitched in 1988, acknowledged feeling nervous before his match with Forrest, the 2006 heads-up champ.

“Ted is very stoic,” said Hershiser, 49. “He’s known as ‘the Spook’ because of the way he can read his opponents and is somehow able to know their cards.

“It was my first poker match on TV and my first playing heads-up, and I don’t have a lot of experience, so I think the whole conglomeration of that made it very intimidating.”

Hershiser was humble, even self-effacing, after upending Cunningham and Deeb, the reigning champ of the $50,000 buy-in World Series of Poker HORSE event, a mixed-games tournament considered a grueling test of all-around poker skill.

“Allen is an amazing gentleman, a real prince of a guy,” Hershiser said. “It was almost like I was playing my younger brother. I think the deck hit me, because I know I didn’t outplay him.

“Freddy is a guy I’ve run into in town a few times and befriended, so I wasn’t intimidated against him, other than the fact I was just trying to play well.”

Hershiser knew a little about Bloch’s background as a former member of the MIT blackjack card-counting team of the 1990s, and the two hit it off, talking baseball and other sports before and during their match.

Hershiser went “card dead” at the wrong time against Bloch, he said, and was forced to fold trashy hands more than a dozen times in a row.

“I felt like I got the worst cards of my four matches, and I think I really needed the best cards to beat Andy,” Hershiser said. “Between being a weaker player mathematically and cardwise, it was pretty much a done deal I would lose that one.

“I thought Andy probably played perfectly. I don’t think you can play better heads-up hold ’em than that.”

Bloch, who clinched it when his ace-9 held up after Hershiser went all-in with jack-10, said Hershiser played a bit too tight when the “blinds,” or forced bets, became high compared to the players’ chip stacks.

“I was basically able to steal my way past him,” said Bloch, one of poker’s most accomplished and respected professionals. “That was probably the biggest fault in his game that I saw. But overall he played well. I think it’s great when you have a champion like him from another sport come in and compete in poker.”

Hershiser, an analyst for the ESPN program “Baseball Tonight,” said he’d like to pursue a similar role in poker.

“I’m going to continue to try to become a better and better poker player,” he said. “Maybe because of the success I’ve had here, some things will open for me in the television end of it, and I’m really excited about that.”