Gabriel Weston Kaplan (born March 31, 1945) is an American actor, comedian, and professional poker player.[1] He played the eponymous teacher in the 1970s sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter. He later became a professional poker player and a commentator for the series High Stakes Poker on PokerGO.
As a child, Kaplan had aspirations of being a Major League Baseball player. However, he was unable to make the roster of a minor league team and decided to pursue other interests. He began working as a bellman at a hotel in Lakewood, New Jersey. Touring comedians sometimes performed at the hotel, and Kaplan began to work toward his own career as a stand-up comedian. Gabe honed his standup routine in 1964 in places such as the Cafe Tel Aviv at 250 West 72nd Street, New York City.
Kaplan's comedy was successful, and he toured the country with his act based on his childhood experiences in Brooklyn. He appeared five times on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson from May 1973 to December 1974. During that time, he also recorded the comedy album Holes and Mello-Rolls, which included long routines about his high school days and other topics. The sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, whose central characters he helped Eric Cohen and Alan Sacks create and whose core format he helped them to develop, was in part based on his comedy act. In the sitcom, Kaplan played Gabe Kotter, who returns as a teacher to the dysfunctional high school where he had been a student. The series ran from 1975 to 1979, and Kaplan bought a home in Palm Springs, California with his earnings.[5] "Up your nose with a rubber hose!", sanitized from the original album line "Up your hole with a Mello-Roll!", became an unlikely catchphrase from the show. It became so popular that a comedy record by Kaplan, Up Your Nose, was released by Elektra Records. The record, co-written and co-produced by Kaplan, dented the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1977, peaking at #91. The phrase also became the title of a board game for the series, which came with a small, green tube to be inserted in a nostril by an opposing player upon the conditions required to recite the catchphrase.
From 1976 to 1978 and again in 1981, Kaplan participated in the ABC celebrity athletic competition Battle of the Network Stars. For the first five competitions, Kaplan was the captain of the ABC network team. In the very first competition, Kaplan defeated Robert Conrad, who was participating in the event representing the NBC team as its captain, in a race much to Conrad's chagrin. Kaplan, who was 31 at the time, passed Conrad, then 40, with a strong sprint to the finish line, giving ABC television network the win with 175 points. In 1981, Kaplan returned to the competition as the team captain for the NBC side, as he was appearing in the NBC TV show Lewis & Clark.
After Welcome Back, Kotter, Kaplan continued with his stand-up act and was in several movies, including a starring role in Fast Break in 1979. In 1982, he portrayed Groucho Marx in a play titled Groucho. A filmed version of the play aired on HBO in 1983.
Poker
Kaplan became involved in financial markets and poker during his acting career. He made his first appearance at the World Series of Poker in 1978. In 1980, Kaplan was considered one of poker's elite, as he won the main event at Amarillo Slim's Super Bowl of Poker and was presented with "a loving cup that was so enormous it made the gaudy gold bracelets given to the winners at the World Series of Poker look understated."[6] Over the next five years his reputation was solidified as he made the final table at the Super Bowl's main event two more times.
In July 2004, Kaplan finished third in a World Poker Tour no-limit Texas hold 'em event, earning more than $250,000. He also finished second in the 2005 World Series of Poker $5,000 Limit Hold 'Em event, winning $222,515. Kaplan was joint TV commentator for the 1997 and 2002 WSOP events. In 2007, Kaplan won on NBC's Poker After Dark in the episode "Queens and Kings" after defeating Kristy Gazes heads-up and outlasting Howard Lederer, Ali Nejad, Vanessa Rousso and Annie Duke in a $20,000 buy-in, six-person No-Limit Texas Hold-Em winner-take-all Sit-and-Go.
In the 2007 World Series of Poker, Kaplan finished in ninth place in the $50,000 World Championship HORSEevent, winning $131,424. As of June 2017, Kaplan's total live tournament winnings were $1,991,248.[7] His eleven cashes at the WSOP were $539,159 of those winnings.[8]
Kaplan returned to host High Stakes Poker when Season 8 aired on PokerGO in 2021 alongside A.J. Benza.[10] He retired from his position after the first episode of Season 10, with Nick Schulman replacing him.
In 2007, he appeared in Zak Penn's improvisational comedy The Grand as Seth Schwartzman, father of brother-and-sister poker players. Also in 2007, Kaplan published a book titled Kotter's Back: E-mails from a Faded Celebrity to a Bewildered World.[13] In the book, people react to absurd e-mailed claims by Kaplan, such as that he:[13]
In December 2022, PokerGO announced Season 10 of High Stakes Poker.[17] The first episode of the new season aired on January 24, 2023, and during the episode, Kaplan hinted at retirement. On January 25, 2023, Kaplan officially retired as the High Stakes Poker commentator with a replacement to be named on the next episode.[18][19][20]
Phillip Jerome Hellmuth Jr. is an American professional poker player who has won a record seventeen World Series of Poker bracelets. He is the winner of the Main Event of the 1989 World Series of Poker (WSOP) and the Main Event of the 2012 World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE), and he is a 2007 inductee of the WSOP's Poker Hall of Fame. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest tournament players of all time.
Barry Greenstein is an American professional poker player and former mathematics postgraduate student. He has won a number of major events, including three at the World Series of Poker and two on the World Poker Tour. Greenstein donates his profit from tournament winnings to charities, primarily Children Incorporated, earning him the nickname "the Robin Hood of poker". He was elected into the Poker Hall of Fame in 2011.
Ihsan "Sam" Farha is a Lebanese professional poker player. He is best known for finishing as runner up in the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event in 2003. He has won three bracelets at the WSOP in his career.
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Philip Courtney Laak is an Irish–American professional poker player and a poker commentator, now residing in Los Angeles, California. Laak holds a World Poker Tour (WPT) title, a World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet, and has appeared on numerous nationally aired television shows.
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Nick Schulman is an American professional poker player and commentator.
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Patrik Antonius is a Finnish professional poker player, former tennis player and coach, and model from Vantaa, Finland. He currently resides in Monte Carlo. Antonius was mentored by poker pro Marcel Lüske as a member of Luske's "Circle of Outlaws" and later advised by Jennifer Harman. Antonius has two children.
Chad Brown was an American actor, poker player and color commentator, based in Los Angeles, California.
Alfred Joseph Benza is an American gossip columnist and television host.
Jamie M. Gold is an American television producer, talent agent, and poker player, based in Malibu, California. He is known for winning the 2006 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event and currently divides his time between his activities as president of production for the entertainment company, Buzznation and poker competition, primarily major tournaments.
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The Super Bowl of Poker was the second most prestigious poker tournament in the world during the 1980s. While the World Series of Poker was already drawing larger crowds as more and more amateurs sought it out, the SBOP "was an affair limited almost exclusively to pros and hard-core amateurs."
Jason Koon is an American professional poker player from Weston, West Virginia, known for his accomplishments in live and online poker tournaments.
PokerGO is an over-the-top content platform based in Las Vegas, Nevada. PokerGO was launched in 2017 as a subscription-based streaming service, offering poker centric online streaming.
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