Celebrity Poker Showdown

The Celebrity Poker Showdown to a famous celebrity show aired on cable network named Bravo. This limited show series featured celebrities who play poker and during the five seasons it run, it had eight tournaments. Between 2004- 2006, the game show starred Dave Foley, 2003- 2005- Phil Gordon, Phil Hellmuth and Kevin Pollak in 2006 and 2003 respectively and Robert Thompson between 2003 and 2006. It was originally from US and was filmed at The Palms Casino, Nevada, at Paradise between 2003 and 2005 and in Harrah’s, New Orleans in 2006. It ran for 120 minutes and six episodes in the show were 1 hour. The original run of Celebrity Poker Showdown was between December 2, 2003 and July 5, 2006.

Each show in Celebrity Poker Showdown featured five celebrities playing the no limit Texas Hold’em for charity. Winners of the qualifying games won commemorative silver poker chips and also advanced to play the game’s championship. The player winning the championship won the big prize for the charity he or she represented in addition to gold commemorative casino chips. Every tournament featured twenty five celebrities and the show comprised of 6 episodes, one championship game and five qualifying poker games. The game show was hosted by Dave Foley but the ninth episode wasn’t produced because Bravo never ordered for new episodes.

The first seven poker tournaments of Celebrity Poker Showdown were taped at in Paradise Nevada at Palms Casino where live studio audience was present. The 8th tournament was taped at Harrah’s Entertainment which was designated as the official casino for Celebrity Poker Showdown. Upon elimination, the players would be moved to ‘Loser’s Lounge’ where he or she could watch the remaining part of the game. The lounge was later renamed to ‘SoCo Lime Lounge’ when taping of the 8th tournament was moved to New Orleans. Color commentary was provided by a professional poker player by the name of Phil Gordon for the initial seven tournaments with Phil Hellmuth taking over the last eighth tournament. Robert Thompson, a tournament director officiated all the games. His famous catchphrase, the ‘Shuffle up and deal’ was very common among the tournament viewers.

Some celebrities have made appearances in multiple poker tournaments at Celebrity Poker Showdown and five of them won separate tournaments. The first tournament and the third one were both won by David Cross, both second and seventh tournaments were won by Dule Hill and other winners included Kevin Nealon, Michael Ian Black and Jason Alexander. No celebrity ever won more than a single championship game. Joshua Malina and Andrew Hill Newman were the producers of Celebrity Poker Showdown. The final episode of the tournament that was aired on 5 July 2006 was won by Jason Alexander. Some of the celebrities in the series parlayed their poker game play in visits in World Series of Poker and World Poker Tour. Some celebrities like Brad Garrett, Nicholas Gonzalex, Shannon Elizabeth and James Woods participated in the main event of Texas Hold’em WSOP for $10,000 prize money.