Last year NBC covered the First National Heads Up Poker Championship. The tournament was a single elimination event with a bracket system that mimiceked the NCAA basketball championships. The final event was two out of three falls. Phil Hellmuth took the 2005 title by defeating CJ Ferguson.

This year, the tournament took place at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas in the beginning of March. There were 64 top poker pros and personalities invited to compete.

NBC will air the broadcasts of the event on Sundays in April and May, with cNbc airing repeats on the following Friday Nights. There will be six episodes, taking 10 hours of airtime to show.

This year, players were able to qualify for the National Heads Up Poker Championship online. In January and February, the Nbc Heads Up website hosted an online tournament that drew thousands of contestants. Twenty-one year old Josh Lochner came out on top, and received a prize package that included the $20,000 buy-in fee for the tournament.

You can play heads up tournament poker in the same format as the Nations Championship online at the prima poker rooms. If you're interested in giving this a try, I'd recommend visiting Poker Time. There you can get $10 on the house to start with.

The 64 man field for this tournament includes:

1. Sam Farha
2. Rene Angelil
3. Josh Arieh
4. Bobby Baldwin
5. Layne Flack
6. Ted Forrest
7. Steven Glassner
8. Barry Greenstein
9. Todd Brunson
10. Allen Cunningham
11. Kassem "Freddy" Deeb
12. Annie Duke
13. Ernie Durack
14. Eli Elezra
15. Antonio Esfandiari
16. Lyle Berman
17. Chad Brown
18. Doyle Brunson
19. Chris Ferguson (2005 Heads-Up Runner-Up)
20. Scott Fischman
21. Jerry Buss
22. Mike Caro
23. Johnny Chan
24. David Chesnoff
25. T.J. Cloutier
26. David Grey
27. Amir Vahedi
28. Cyndy Violette
29. David Williams
30. Antanas Guoga
31. Gus Hansen
32. Dan Harrington
33. Phil Hellmuth (2005 Heads-Up Champion)
34. Huck Seed
35. Erik Seidel
36. Mark Seif
37. Mike Sexton
38. Shawn Sheikhan
39. James McManus
40. Michael Mizrachi
41. Gavin Smith
42. Jennifer Tilly
43. Men Nguyen
44. Scotty Nguyen
45. David Oppenheim
46. Paul Phillips
47. Greg Raymer
48. Chip Reese
49. Chris Moneymaker
50. Carlos Mortensen
51. Daniel Negreanu
52. Evelyn Ng
53. Phil Ivey
54. John Juanda
55. Phil Laak
56. Howard Lederer
57. Barry Shulman
58. Jeff Shulman
59. Tuan Le
60. Erick Lindgren
61. Josh Lochner (2006 NBCHeadsUp.com Online Tournament Winner)
62. Dee Luong
63. Mike Matusow
64. James Woods