Poker After Dark is an hour long, six days a week poker television show on NBC. The show started running in January 1, 2007 and is presented by Shana Hiatt. Oliver “Ali” Nejad is providing the voice-over commentary. This commentary will help television viewers to understand the game and the things that are happening on the poker table.
The format of the game progresses during the first five episodes happening fro Tuesday to Saturday. The sixth day, which is a Sunday, is presented in a director’s cut format. It has bits and pieces of the entire week’s games and moves towards the final table where the first prize winner will be coming from.
Poker After Dark setup starts with a $20,000 buy-in and the blinds start at $100/$200. The blinds escalate slowly leading to the final table. Another notable feature in this television tournament is that the buy-in is a winner-take-all prize of $120,000.
To make the show far more exciting than any other poker television shows running, the producer’s of the show experimented with a double-elimination Heads Up battle coming from the NBC’s other poker television show the National Heads-Up Poker Championship.
Likewise, starting on Season 3, there is a Dream Table where a novice poker player was fitted against five (5) poker professionals on the table. In one episode, a novice player by the name of Ken Light was fitted against five of his favorite poker players.
While he said that the organizers merely asked him to list his favorite poker players, and when he sat at the table, it was his favorite poker players going to play with him.
The game being played in the show is a no-limit Texas Hold’em variant. It is usually the same game that is being played in tournaments and several poker television shows.
It may be worth noting that Full Tilt Poker regularly advertises on this show. Thus, some poker professionals who are known to be associated with Poker Stars stop appearing on the show.
Shana Hiatt who is the presenter of the show provides additional excitement and useful addition to the games. While there was an initial struggle into the contract of Shana Hiatt to work for the game, she continued to do so up to this time.
Poker After Dark is running in many television networks in different countries such the following:
• Poker After Dark in Canada airs on Rogers Sportsnet
• Germany’s Poker After Dark airs on DSF
• In UK, Poker After Dark airs on Setanta Sports 1
• Poker After Dark of Netherlands airs on Veronica. In Netherlands, the commentaries of Ali Nejad are offered with Dutch subtitles
• In Mexico, Gabriela Hill hosts the show. The director’s cut episode is called Full Tilt Poker en la noche: adicion del director, which airs on Azteca 7
• In Brazil, their Poker After Dark airs on BandSports with analysis provided by Full Tilt Poker pros Leandro Pimentel, Christian Kruel and Raul Oliveria.
• Latin America Poker After Dark airs on Fox Sports en Latino America.
• The Sweden Poker After Dark airs on TV4 Sport.
Poker After Dark offers the excitement of actual poker tournaments. While you have to keep awake way beyond primetime to watch the show, it proves to be worth the wait. Especially if you want to play poker for real money, the insights you will get from this poker television show will be quite helpful.
So, enjoy watching this late night poker endeavor.
