Bodog Beat

Leanne Tweeden has been announced as the new hostess of the NBC Heads-Up Poker World Championship. (Image Courtesy of AskMen.com)

The official list of attendees for the 2008 NBC Heads-Up Poker Championship has been announced and consists of the usual mix of poker celebrity, poker-playing celebrities and some other random invitees.

Heading up the list of the poker pros that will be in attendance are Phil Ivey, Doyle Brunson, Phil Hellmuth, Gus Hansen, Erick Lindgren, Bodog poker pro David Williams and the list goes on. The Hollywood celebrities include Don Cheadle, Jason Alexander, Shannon Elizabeth and Jennifer Tilly and the most random addition is baseball great Orel Hershiser.

A couple of online poker players who made a big splash in the poker world this year by finishing first and second at the WPT North American Poker Championship will also be in the field, Scott "BigRiskky" Clements and Johnathan "FieryJustice" Little, respectively.

There are two "regular" guys already on the list after they qualified for the tournament thanks to an event at Caesar's Palace. Those two will be joined by another couple of qualifiers who will come from a series of events held online.

One of the biggest changes for this year will be the (temporary?) replacement of the pregnant Shana Hiatt, who hosted last year, with model and television personality Leanne Tweeden. This is the second poker show that Tweeden will have hosted.

The show will air weekly on Sunday nights beginning on April 13th at midnight. On NBC, in case you missed that part.

The full field is after the jump:

Alexander, Jason
Antonius, Patrik
Bellande, Jean-Robert
Benyamine, David
Brown, Chad
Brunson, Doyle
Brunson, Todd
Chan, Johnny
Cheadle, Don
Clements, Scott
Cloutier, T.J.
Cunningham, Allen
Deeb, Freddy
Duke, Annie
Dwan, Tom
Edler, Bill
Elezra, Eli
Elizabeth, Shannon
Esfandiari, Antonio
Farha, Sam
Ferguson, Chris
Fischman, Scott
Forrest, Ted
Gold, Jamie
Gowen, Clonie
Greenstein, Barry
Grizzle, Sam
Hachem, Joe
Hansen, Gus
Harman, Jennifer
Hellmuth, Phil
Hershiser, Orel
Ivey, Phil
Juanda, John
Kaplan, Gabe
Laak, Phil
Lederer, Howard
Lindgren, Erick
Little, Jonathan
Matusow, Mike
Moneymaker, Chris
Mizrachi, Michael
Negreanu, Daniel
Nguyen, Scotty
Pham, David
Raymer, Greg
Rousso, Vanessa
Schneider, Tom
Schreiber, Daniel
Seed, Huck
Seidel, Erik
Singer, David
Smith, Gavin
Tilly, Jennifer
Townsend, Brian
Tran, J.C.
Tran, Kenny
Wasicka, Paul
Williams, David
Yang, Jerry
Thomas Kelly (Caesars Palace Qualifier 1)
Hooman Nikzad (Caesars Palace Qualifier 2)
TBD (Online Qualifier)
TBD (additional player)