Going into the 2012 WSOP Event #6 NLHE Mixed-Match tournament, the big story involved how this was the first “mixed-match” event in WSOP history. Coming out of the tournament, everybody was taking about the record heads-up match that was played between Aubin Cazals and Warwick Mirzikinian.

As for the mixed-match topic, players were to compete on 9-handed tables during Day 1, six-handed tables on Day 2, and heads-up matches on Day 3 and 4. In actually, Day 4 stretched into a fifth day – thanks in large part to the marathon semi-final heads-up match between Cazals and Mirzikinian. The two grinders took over nine hours to complete their heads-up match, which was a full two hours longer than when David “Chip” Reese and Andy Bloch dueled each other in a $50k Player Championship six years ago.

The truth is that Cazals and Mirzikinian will probably see asterisks in the record books because they weren’t officially in the heads-up part of the tournament (due to the semi-finals). However, most people will probably contend that this is indeed a record for the WSOP.

Moving along, once Cazals busted Mirzikinian out, he moved on to face Joseph Cheong, who enjoyed a relatively easy semi-finals match (two hours) against Hugo Lemaire. Cheong was looking for redemption after having somewhat of a meltdown in the 2010 WSOP Main Event, where he spewed off a lot of chips and ended up busting out in third – though it looked like he would be eventual champion Jonathan Dumahel’s heads-up opponent.

Unfortunately, Cheong didn’t find what he was looking for here after a five hour heads-up match. While holding pocket 4’s, he all-in six-bet Cazals (pocket kings) in mistakenly thinking he was playing weak. However, the Frenchman wasn’t weak at all with his pocket kings, and Cazals won the tournament along with a nice $480,564 prize.