Recently, 2009 CardPlayer Player of the Year Eric basebaldy Baldwin competed in the annual National Heads-Up Poker Championship, which will air on NBC beginning in April. Baldwin, a sponsored pro of the USA-friendly online poker site UB.com, battled reigning World Series of Poker (WSOP) Heads-Up Champion Leo Wolpert. His opponent, like Baldwin, received an automatic bid to the invite-only tournament. Although Baldwin fell in the first round, PocketFives.com sat down with its longtime member to relive the experience.

PocketFives.com: Give us a breakdown of Leo Wolpert’s heads-up game.
Eric Baldwin: Leo is obviously very talented to be able to win a $10,000 tournament with 256 players at the WSOP. That’s not a soft field either; there are lots of heads-up specialists. We were very even for the whole match and then the blinds got big. It was tough to pick up chips against him. We were both playing hands in position and were careful not to get into trouble out of position. Both of us have a good understanding of stack sizes.

PocketFives.com: Who did you want to draw in the first round?

Eric Baldwin: I wanted to draw Doyle Brunson (pictured at left) or Orel Hershiser, being a baseball fan. I thought that NBC might make a back story out of that. I haven’t had the chance to play against Doyle. I didn’t want to draw them because they were soft or anything like that; I thought the experience would be unique. There weren’t many soft spots in the field.

PocketFives.com: What was your preparation for Wolpert?

Eric Baldwin: I didn’t do a lot of preparation before our match, but I studied before the tournament began. I read a book, read some strategy articles, played a lot of heads-up sit and gos online, and talked strategy with my friends. I figured out how I wanted to play against different types of players, so I had to make some assumptions about how Leo was likely to play.

PocketFives.com: Give us some insight into to your own heads-up strategy.

Eric Baldwin: It varies based on your opponent’s tendencies. If a player is tight-passive, you can build pots in position and take it away from them after the flop. If a player is loose-passive, you’re only going to want to build the pot when you have it. Against a loose-aggressive player like I believed Leo to be, things are a lot tougher. There are not that many easy spots to pick up chips. You have to play your buttons aggressively and your opponent is going to do that also. We played for an hour with 20,000 starting chips each and no one was above 25,000 for most of the time.

PocketFives.com. Talk about fellow UB.com pro Annie Duke (pictured at right) winning the 2010 National Heads-Up Poker Championship.

Eric Baldwin: I’m happy for her. I didn’t follow the tournament that closely after I busted because I was still sick from it, but I was definitely sweating the updates. Obviously, you have to run well to win that tournament, but you also have to play well. There should be some good publicity for UB.com as a result.

PocketFives.com: We thought you were taking time off following your CardPlayer Player of the Year run in 2009.

Eric Baldwin: I have been taking time off, but I didn’t know what to do with myself and I got bored. My old man is in town, so I wanted to play a $1K event at the Wynn. After that, I might just watch college basketball.

PocketFives.com: Who is your college basketball pick this year for the NCAA tournament?

Eric Baldwin: I’ll go with my Wisconsin Badgers as a sleeper this year.

Read our article detailing the 2010 National Heads-Up Poker Championship final results.