Poker After Dark Professional poker players such as Phil Hellmuth, Mike Matusow and Annie Duke compete against others in a game of No Limit Texas Hold 'em on a nightly basis in this heated show until only one player is left holding the cards and the winner take the prize of $120,000. Good Afternoon! Hopefully most of you have off from work this week as we approach the chunky part of the holiday season. Here at Poker Night in America headquarters in Fargo, North Dakota, aka Santa’s Workshop for Televised Poker, we have our minions editing around.

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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/PokerAfterDark

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The year was 2006, the popularity of Poker was at it's absolute apex, and networks were chomping at the bit to get as much of the game on television as possible. Shortly after GSN's debut of High Stakes Poker, NBC joined the fray with Poker After Dark. Both shows, unlike most poker shows, did not depend on a tournament schedule, and were thus able to run at any time, with games being very easy to get together. The show ran until 2011, when the Black Friday criminal case kicked up a lot of dust around major sponsor Full Tilt Poker, leading to the show's sudden cancellation. The show returned in 2012 to air repeats on NBCSN, and eventually ran the unaired season seven episodes that were cut short by the cancellation.

Oliver 'Ali' Nejad provided voice-over commentary of all seven seasons. Shana Hiatt, Marianela Pereyra, and Leeann Tweeden hosted over the course of the show's run. Over a hundred professional and amateur poker players partipicated, from the kings of old such as Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan, to the new-wave internet psychos like Tom Dwan and Patrik Antonius, to the most recent world series champions like Jamie Gold and Joe Hachem, to the amateurs looking for some experience and a good time like Jennifer Tilly and Bob Safai.

The show featured two main formats:

• Poker After Dark: Sit N Go: The most common format, PAD ran a total of 48 Sit N Goes during it's run. Effectively a tournament with only six players, each of the six players would buy in for twenty thousand dollars (occasionally fifty or one hundred thousand), start with the same number of chips, and play a six-handed game with tournament rules (increasing blinds, elimination upon losing all chips). The table would play out over the course of five episodes, each episode usually having one elimination, leaving one winner at the end who would take the entire prize pool.

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• Poker After Dark: The Cash Game: Introduced starting in season four, PAD: The Cash Game was, well, a cash game, with players buying in for assorted amounts of money (at least one hundred thousand, occasionally one-fifty or two hundred thousand) and playing for it. Unlike High Stakes Poker, which was almost always eight-handed, PAD's cash games were six-handed, changing the dynamic. Again, cash games would play out over five episodes, though this time players would leave whenever they wanted to and could be replaced if another player was available. All in all, PAD ran eleven cash games.

Provides Examples of:

• The Ace: Johnny Chan made a total of six appearances in the Sit N Go format. He won four times, finished second once, and went out in fifth once. No one else can boast such a high success percentage, nor did anyone else manage to win four different times. Phil Hellmuth, who is second in PAD titles with three, totaled fifteen entries.
• And Now For Something Completely Different: The introduction of the cash game format in season four.
  • Also in season four, one episode series had a four-way Heads Up challenge between the first four winners of the NBC Heads Up Championship (Hellmuth, Ferguson, Forrest, Wasicka), a double-elimination series of Heads Up matches between the four. Hellmuth and Ferguson advanced to the final, Hellmuth coming out on top.
  • A season three episode series followed the typical Sit N Go format, but allowed any player who busted in the first six hands to rebuy for another twenty thousand. Eli Elezra busted in the first hand, and rebought, creating a prize pool twenty thousand dollars larger.
• Announcer Chatter: Very little. Unlike High Stakes Poker, where Gabe Kaplan and AJ Benza would discuss virtually every player action, offer up opinions and predictions as well as assorted jokes, Nejad was content to keep silent as much as possible. Occasionally describing the action and developments in the hand, Nejad would also often fall silent for minutes at a time, letting the player conversation rule the broadcast.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Most episode titles were named in a way to represent something notable about the six players participating. A few others called attention to something of significance that happened during the episodes.
  • The very first episode of PAD, Poker Brat Attack, became one of the most notable episodes the series would ever have thanks to the Brat himself. Facing a tough decision to either go all-in or fold with ace ten offsuit, Phil Hellmuth asked for quiet on the table. After a couple minutes, player again began to talk, and Hellmuth demanded that the producers penalize players that wouldn't keep quiet. This lead to an argument between Hellmuth and Shawn Sheikhan, Shawn insisting that Hellmuth had already decided to fold and was now just trying to 'get TV time' by creating a spectacle. Hellmuth eventually folded, citing ongoing distractions keeping him from being able to make a decision, and left the table, becoming the first ever elimination from a PAD show in the process, suggesting he might not ever be willing to play on PAD again unless rules were put in place against distractions during a big decision. For whatever it's worth, it was a correct fold, as Annie Duke held pocket kings.
  • WSOP Champions featured six players who had won the WSOP Main Event at least once.
  • Earphones Please was populated by loudmouth players who used table talk to try to gain an advantage routinely (Sam Farha, Phil Hellmuth, Tony G, Mike Matusow), and two players who almost always keep silent and let their chips do the talking, who would likely regard verbal antics from the other players as an annoyance (Phil Ivey, Andy Bloch).
  • Several episodes were titled Dream Table, and pitted an amateur player who had won a Full Tilt poker contest against five of their favorite professionals. For example, Ken Light got to play against Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, Jennifer Harman, Mike Matusow, and Scotty Nguyen, five of his favorite professionals.
  • Ladies Week featured six female players. Gus and the Ladies featured Gus Hansen (at the time considered one of the sexiest men in the world by People Magazine) and five female players.
  • Love at First Raise had three sets of couples (some married, others simply dating) who played poker.
• Main Characters: The most frequent participants on the show were Phil Hellmuth and Mike Matusow, with fifteen SNG entries apiece.

Shana Hiatt (born 17 December 1975) is an American model and presenter who has appeared in several magazines.

Background[edit]

A former Army brat raised primarily in Tabernacle Township, New Jersey,^[1] Hiatt is best known for hosting the first three seasons of World Poker Tour on The Travel Channel.

Poker[edit]

While Hiatt was a non-player prior to her job with the World Poker Tour, she is now an avid online poker player who occasionally plays in casinos.^[2] She was the host of Poker After Dark and the National Heads-Up Poker Championship, both on NBC. Hiatt left the shows in 2008 due to pregnancy. She was replaced by Marianela Pereyra in Poker After Dark and by Leeann Tweeden in the National Heads-Up Poker Championship.^[3]

After leaving the World Poker Tour in 2005, Hiatt sued the producers in order to get a restraining order to prevent them from keeping her from working on a rival poker show on NBC, Poker After Dark. The WPT argued a non-compete clause was part of her contract, but Hiatt countered that she never signed it. The suit additionally revealed Hiatt left the WPT over a 'hostile working environment' involving her husband, movie producerTodd Garner, whom she married in October 2005.^[4] Hiatt was formerly married to James Van Patten, brother of World Poker Tour co-host Vince Van Patten.

Modeling[edit]

Hiatt was Miss Hawaiian Tropic USA in 1995 and had represented Beach Haven, New Jersey, after winning the local Hawaiian Tropic pageant at Touché nightclub in 1994. After becoming Miss Hawaiian Tropic USA, Hiatt was the cover model and posed nude inside the pages of Playboy in their April 1995 The Girls of Hawaiian Tropic issue. She also was on the cover for the video of that photo shoot Playboy: The Girls of Hawaiian Tropic, Naked in Paradise .

Hiatt was a guest host of Wild On! featured on the E! network. She has also appeared in television shows and movies including Must Love Dogs and Grandma's Boy .

Notes[edit]

Watch Poker After Dark

1. ^Bodnar, Jason. 'Shawnee grad bets on childhood dream through poker series', Burlington County Times, November 18, 2004
2. ^NBC.com: The Goddess of PokerArchived 2007-02-04 at the Wayback Machine
3. ^'Leeann Tweeden bio'. NBCsports.MSNBC.com. NBC Universal. 2008-04-19. Archived from the original on 2012-02-07. Retrieved 2008-04-22.
4. ^CardPlayer.com: Injunction Granted on Hiatt's Behalf

External links[edit]

• Shana Hiatt on IMDb

Poker After Dark