"Poker After Dark" ("PAD") was one of the most popular of the long string of poker shows that came and went during the poker boom. The explosion of poker programming began around 2004 and continued a little past the infamous Black Friday, April 15, 2011. On that day, the broad indictment in the federal criminal case against PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and UltimateBet was unsealed and the boom imploded (basically, big-time media sponsorships and advertising dried up).
"PAD" debuted on New Year’s Day 2007. It was a one-hour program that aired six late nights a week on NBC.
The poker format was a weekly, six-handed, winner-take-all, no-limit hold 'em tournament with a $20,000 buy-in ($120,000 to the winner). It took five shows to complete a competition; the sixth show was the "director’s cut," essentially highlights from the week’s action, complete with player commentary. The tournament structure -- slowly escalating blinds that started at $100/$200 -- was widely seen as conducive to good poker playing, though it caused the action to often start out slowly for the first two or three episodes, while the blinds were small.
Still, what viewers seemed to like best about the show was the table talk -- the banter, teasing, personal stories, whining, and flaming among the likes of Phil Hellmuth, Mike Matusow, Howard Lederer, Annie Duke, Tom Dwan, Patrik Antonius, Chris Moneymaker, Jennifer Tilly, Eli Elezra, Annette Obrestad, Gus Hansen, Sammy Farha, Doyle Brunson, Andy Bloch, Phil Ivey, Joe Hachem, Huck Seed, and many many others made for highly entertaining television.
"PAD" managed to run for seven seasons, which was especially impressive given its programming times: generally 1 a.m. or later Tuesday-Saturday and midnight Sunday. Some of the people we know who watched it recorded it for viewing over breakfast the following morning.
The show was taped at South Point for the first few seasons, then the Golden Nugget, then Aria. Beginning with season 4, various new formats were introduced, including no-limit cash games, which made the show even more popular.
"PAD" was cancelled, somewhat abruptly, on September 23, 2011, a few days after a U.S. Attorney in New York alleged that the show’s main sponsor, Full Tilt Poker, had perpetrated a Ponzi scheme on its players.
The program returned to television in the U.S. on the NBC Sports Network in early March 2012. It aired reruns into early June, when it began running unaired episodes from the 2010 season. These included no-limit cash games, a standard sit-and-go tournament format, and even a few pot-limit Omaha games.
No new episodes were produced following season 7 (2011). Today, if "PAD" airs in a market, it’s all reruns. Here in Las Vegas, for example, "PAD" runs six or seven nights a week at 1 a.m. on TWSC, Time Warner Cable Sports channel.
