Late Night Poker

Filming of the new season of Late Night Poker, which will return to Channel 4 early in the new year, will commence next week and the names of the players who will take part have now been confirmed.

The winner of this year’s WSOPE, 19-year-old Annette Obrestad from Norway, and the controversial winner of the 2006 WSOP main event, Jamie Gold, will both be joining the likes of Dave ‘The Devilfish’ Ulliott, Marcel Luske, Roland de Wolfe, the Hendon Mob and Padraig Parkinson for the televised tournament.

“We’re happy so many of the old faces are back and are pleased with the line-up. There is also going to be a celebrity special table filmed the same day as the final – details of which will be released in the near future,” said a spokesman for sponsors PartyPoker.

There will also be two recent poker converts joining the pros – Maud Mulder from Holland, who came second in the Dutch version of Pop Idol and Agnieszka Rylik, a television journalist from Poland who has had coaching from Mike Sexton in Las Vegas.

The format of the next season of Late Night Poker, presented by poker player and journalist Vickey Coren, will reflect early episodes of the show which focussed more on the player’s personalities. In addition to the better known players will be ten online qualifiers who all won seats through satellite tournaments on PartyPoker.com.

Rob Thomas, producer of Late Night Poker for production company Presentable said: “The convention for every poker show these days is to show all the player’s cards as soon as they enter a pot. When Late Night Poker started, the style was very different.

“Player’s cards were revealed at appropriate moments during the hand to create more drama as the hand progressed. Twice in each show we will see the hand from one player’s perspective. We’ll only see their particular hole cards which gives the viewer a different perspective as the hand develops.

“TV poker is about creating drama and tension and, in these instances, the commentators will have great fun guessing what the opponent might be holding, and then there’s the excitement of the “reveal” moment at the end of the hand.”

There will be 49 players competing in this year’s event, each stumping-up a $5,000 buy-in which will create a prize pool of $335,000 – $125,000 going to the first place winner. There will be seven heats featuring seven players who will all fight to get a place at the final table.