Poker After Dark Season Seven Begins January 3rd
.jpg "Poker After Dark Season Seven Begins January 3rd")
The next season of NBC’s popular late-night poker series, Poker After Dark, is set to begin airing again on January 3rd. The show will continue its traditional combination of tournaments and cash games, with a few new twists that should add some variety to the proceedings.
The biggest change for the show is the introduction of Pot Limit Omaha to the lineup, which will make the show one of the few to show something other than no-limit Texas Hold’em on television. Of the thirteen scheduled episodes, seven will feature tournament play, while six will feature cash games. Two of the cash games will be of the Omaha variety.
This continues a trend for the series, in which more recent seasons have contained more cash game content. In the show’s first three seasons, the format was exclusively tournament play, with most being standard single-table winner-take-all events. By season four, a couple of weeks of cash game action were added to the mix.
The cash games quickly became among the most popular of all episodes for the show. Season Five saw six weeks of televised cash games out of 16 total episodes, while Season Six featured six weeks of cash games out of 13 episodes. This is also the mix that will be used in the upcoming 7th season for the show.
However, the minimum buy-ins for the cash games has been increased, with some weeks featuring buy-ins as high as $200,000. The first two weeks will require players to buy in for at least $100,000.
The first two weeks of cash game action will feature some of the game’s top stars. Week One will include Brandon Adams, Jean-Robert Bellande, Chris Ferguson, Phil Hellmuth, Peter Jetten, Mike Matusow and Michael Mizrachi. The second week will see Hellmuth returning, along with newcomers Andy Bloch, Antonio Esfandiari, Annette Obrestad, Huck Seed and Justin Smith.
The success of Poker After Dark has guaranteed that the show will remain on the air for some time to come. In addition to announcing the upcoming season’s schedule, Poker Productions – the producers of the show – have also announced that they have reached terms with NBC on a deal that will keep Poker After Dark on the air for at least four more years.