The fifth edition of the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship premieres on US airwaves on Sunday April 12th. There will be six weeks and 12 hours of exciting action, with the final episode broadcast on May 17th.

The episodes will air at noon ET in the US (6pm CET in Europe). For non-US viewers the episodes will be widely available in the internet just a few hours after the original airing. The first place to look is Youtube as usual.

64 players battled it out for the $500,000 first place prize. Apart from a few satellite qualifiers and celebrity invitees, the field was packed with the top names of poker. This year, Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies was one of the invited top players along with names like Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan, Doyle Brunson, Phil Hellmuth, Peter Eastgate and the reigning champion Chris Ferguson and runner-up Andy Bloch.

You can view a full list of the players here. Of the invited players, Ivan Demidov had to pull out because of visa problems and he was replaced by Hevad Khan. Another and more embarrasing story was Layne Flack, who could not take part because he was arrested the previous night charged with speeding and DUI. He was replaced in a hurry with high stakes cash game player David Oppenheim.

The featured matches in the first two-hour episode will be Daniel Negreanu vs. Chris Moneymaker, Mike Matusow vs. Dario Minieri, Mike Sexton vs. Phil Hellmuth and Gabe Kaplan vs. Chris Ferguson. Hopefully we will also see some interesting hands with Ilari and his first round opponent Gavin Smith.

NBC National HU Championship starts airing on Easter Sunday