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Poker
After Dark
Poker
After Dark Producer Mori Eskandani Discusses Season
V
1st January 2008
On
Monday, the fifth season of NBC’s “Poker
After Dark” kicked off. The show featured
the theme “Close But No Cigar” and
included players who had made the final table
of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event,
but had yet to score their first championship
in poker’s biggest tournament. One of the
men behind the show is Mori Eskandani, who is
also one of the producers for GSN’s “High
Stakes Poker.”
Sixteen
new events will air in total as part of the new
season of “Poker After Dark.” However,
Eskandani and other show officials have had to
walk a fine line between airing cash games and
tournaments, each of which caters to a different
viewing audience. Eskandani told Poker News Daily,
“When you’re in the business of producing
poker for television, you have to cater to your
viewers and sponsors. The viewers are split. They
enjoy tournaments, but also like to watch cash
games.” Eskandani is fresh off filming one
of the world’s largest televised cash games,
“High Stakes Poker,” which airs on
cable station GSN. “Poker After Dark”
airs on NBC, a network with a much greater reach.
A total of seven weeks of cash games will air.
On
the horizon for “Poker After Dark”
are a variety of themed player groupings, including
one called “Speak Your Mind.” Eskandani
revealed, “This episode will feature the
guys who aren’t shy to tell you what they’re
thinking. Of course, we’ll have Phil Hellmuth
in the middle of that.” An episode dubbed
“Brilliant Minds” will host poker
players who hold a PhD in mathematics or physics
and includes former MIT Blackjack Team member
Andy Bloch, David Sklansky, Bill Chen, Chris “Jesus”
Ferguson, and Brandon Adams. Show organizers even
went so far as to include two episodes devoted
to “Hellmuth Bashing,” which will
see Hellmuth, Tom Dawn, Kenny Tran, and Antonio
Esfandiari, among others, hit the felts of “Poker
After Dark.”
Another
cash game episode is entitled “Top Guns”
and includes players who are in the upper echelon
of the ring game world. “Railbird Heaven”
features a star-studded cast of poker players
including Full Tilt Poker pro Patrik Antonius,
Gus Hansen, Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, and Esfandiari.
Appropriately, those players are often fan favorites
at live tournaments and have become some of the
most recognizable names in the industry.
“Poker
After Dark” features a unique flair whereby
the banter between the players takes center stage.
Its season five debut featured Irishman Andy Black,
Lee Watkinson, 2008 Poker Hall of Fame inductee
Dewey Tomko, Bodog poker pro David Williams, five
time WSOP bracelet winner Allen Cunningham, and
Mike “The Mouth” Matusow. Leeann Tweeden
reprises her role of Hostess for Season 5. Former
World Poker Tour (WPT) hostess Shana Hiatt was
the show’s original Host. For the first
episode, each participant put up $20,000 of his
own money and its winner will scoop the entire
$120,000 pot.
The
first tournament on “Poker After Dark”
began on Monday and runs for five consecutive
nights. After NBC’s trademark sketch comedy
show “Saturday Night Live” this weekend,
a special episode called “Director’s
Cut” will air. Tweeden will recap the week’s
episodes and interviews with the show’s
stars will also air. Overall, the weekend episode
is an inside look at the action on “Poker
After Dark.”
The
show is sponsored by FullTiltPoker.net, which
is the educational online poker extension of its
dot com counterpart. FullTiltPoker.net will also
serve as the presenting sponsor of the seventh
season of the WPT, which debuts on Fox Sports
Net this Sunday night, January 4th. Twenty-six
episodes will air as part of the new WPT season,
each one hour in length. Interested WPT fans are
encouraged to check local listings for more information
on what time the new episodes will air in their
market. (Credit:
Poker News Daily).
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