The Pro-Am Poker Equalizer is a televised poker tournament in which professional poker players play Texas hold 'em against celebrities which began airing on ESPN in January 2007. In order to "equalize" the playing field, the celebrities start the tournament with 50% more chips than the professionals. The Pro-Am Poker Equalizer is commentated by Phil Gordon and Ali Nejad. The winners of each of the six regular episodes will face off in the final episode for a $500,000 grand prize.
Six episodes of the Equalizer have been produced, featuring commentary by Phil Gordon and Ali Nejad, and sideline reporting and interviews by Mieke Buchan. The series features the following celebrities and pros: [1]
Episode 1 (first aired January 7, 2007):
Episode 2:
Episode 3:
Episode 4:
Episode 5:
Episode 6:
Championship:
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.
Jennifer Tilly is an American–Canadian actress and professional poker player. Known for her distinctive breathy voice and comedic timing, she is the recipient of a Saturn Award, a Fantasporto Award, and a GLAAD Award, as well as nominations for an American Comedy Award, a Gemini Award, two MTV Movie Awards, and an Academy Award.
Phillip Dennis Ivey Jr. is an American professional poker player who has won eleven World Series of Poker bracelets, one World Poker Tour title, and appeared at nine World Poker Tour final tables. Ivey is regarded by numerous poker observers and contemporaries as the best all-around player in the world. In 2017, he was elected to the Poker Hall of Fame.
Celebrity Poker Showdown is an American celebrity game show that aired on the cable network Bravo from 2003 to 2006. It was a limited-run series in which celebrities played poker, with eight tournaments during its five-season run.
Huckleberry ''Huck'' Seed is an American professional poker player best known for winning the Main Event of the 1996 World Series of Poker.
The World Series of Golf was an annual golf competition. The competition differed from traditional golf tournaments in that the winner is decided not by the lowest stroke-play score or by winning a bracket-style elimination in match play, but by winning wagers bet on each hole in a betting style similar to poker.
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.
Cynthia Dawn Margolis is an American glamour spokesmodel and actress.
Andrew Elliot Bloch is a professional poker player. He holds two electrical engineering degrees from MIT and a JD from Harvard Law School.
Allen Cunningham is an American professional poker player who has won five World Series of Poker bracelets.
The World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions is an invitational freeroll poker event. The WSOP ToC has been played intermittently five times in the 21st Century with different formats. The four WSOP ToC events held from 2004-2010 did not count as official WSOP bracelets events, with the winners receiving instead a large trophy in the shape of the official World Series of Poker logo. In 2010, the WSOP Tournament of Champions returned with a new format more akin to a typical sports league All-Star Event format. 27 players vied for $1 million, with 20 of those players selected by the fans via online vote at the WSOP's website. Controversies over the inclusion of commercially sponsored players resulted in a hiatus in the WSOP ToC for over a decade. The WSOP ToC was reintroduced in 2022 as an official WSOP bracelet event.
Poker Royale is a television series on the Game Show Network (GSN), which featured No Limit Texas hold 'em Poker. The first series began on December 7, 2004. The eighth and final series, Poker Royale: Young Bloods II, began airing on December 9, 2005. The series host at its conclusion was John Ahlers, with commentary by Robert Williamson III and sideline reporting by Lisa Dergan.
High Stakes Poker is an American cash game poker television program. The poker variant played on the show is no limit Texas hold 'em. The first four seasons ran from January 16, 2006 to December 17, 2007 on GSN. The next three seasons ran from March 1, 2009 to May 21, 2011, and was simulcast in 3DTV on N3D. The show was revived on December 16, 2020 on PokerGO.
The Big Game is a high-stakes poker cash game played in "Bobby's Room", a cardroom named after Bobby Baldwin, at the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas. In 2010, the game partially expanded to "The Ivey Room" at Aria Resort and Casino. The table features no-limit and pot-limit games with wagers up to $100,000 per hand. Limit games as high as $4,000/$8,000 are often played but $800/$1,600 is normal.
Poker After Dark is an hour-long poker television program that originally aired on NBC, premiering on January 1, 2007. The series was canceled on December 3, 2011, following the "Black Friday" criminal case, which involved major sponsor Full Tilt Poker as one of the defendants. The show rebooted on August 14, 2017, with appearances from Tom Dwan, Daniel Negreanu, Antonio Esfandiari. Poker After Dark episodes are now filmed exclusively at the PokerGO Studio at ARIA Resort and Casino, and distributed on video streaming service PokerGO.
Oliver "Ali" Nejad is an Iranian-American television personality, who has hosted several shows including Road Trip on ESPNU, and has been a fill-in host for UNite, also on ESPNU. In May 2014, Nejad began working at HLN and hosted the network's program The Daily Share. He also executive produced and hosted his own award-nominated show, The Social Life.
Polaris is a Texas hold 'em poker playing program developed by the computer poker research group at the University of Alberta, a project that has been under way for 16 years as of 2007. Polaris is a composite program consisting of a number of bots, including Hyperborean08, the winner of the limit equilibrium series in the 2008 Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Computer Poker Competition. Polaris also contains a number of other fixed strategies, and chooses between these strategies during a match. Polaris requires little computational power at match time, so it is run on an Apple MacBook Pro laptop during competitions. Polaris plays only heads-up Limit Texas hold'em.
The World Series of Poker bracelet is considered to be the most coveted prize a poker player can win, but in most years there have been competitive events that did not award a bracelet to the winner. While most of these events are charity events or are related to poker, a few are not.
Face the Ace was a poker-themed game show on NBC, first airing August 1, 2009. The show was hosted by Steve Schirripa along with hostess/spokesmodel Megan Abrigo and featured the commentary of Ali Nejad, who also served in the same capacity for NBC's Poker After Dark. The show's primary sponsor was Full Tilt Poker, which supplied the contestants and the professional poker players ("aces") against whom they competed.
This is an alphabetical list of poker topics.