With all the ruckus around the holidays I forgot to mention that NBC's new late night poker show, Poker After Dark, was starting up this week. I'm not sure of the scheduling everywhere, but we are getting it at 3AM up in the pacific northwest. That's mighty late for most folks, but with DVRs, VCRs, and the like, time doesn't matter much anymore.

I've been checking out the show in the morning before heading off to work, and I have to say, it's not bad. I think the most popular poker show going right now is probably GSN's High Stakes Poker, and Poker After Dark has taken a lot of clues from that show's success. They've brought in a a great group of pro players. This week features Phil Hellmuth, Gus Hansen, Shawn Sheikhan, Annie Duke, Huck Seed and Steve Zolotow. Because of all those great personalities, the commentators mostly stay out of the way and let the interactions of the players power the show.

If you thought that the poker craze had finally run its course, NBC would like to disagree with you. The network has announced a new late-night poker show called Poker After Dark. Beginning January 2nd, the hour long show will air Monday through Friday at 2:05AM. On Saturday there will be a one hour recap called "the director's cut."

The format sounds similar to many of the other poker shows currently on television. A group of the world's top pros, all miked of course, will compete for a $120,000 jackpot. And if you watch poker on TV, you can probably already guess the names that have been announced for the series. Those include Daniel Negreanu, Howard Lederer, Jennifer Harman, Gus Hansen, Erick Lindgren, Chris Ferguson, Doyle Brunson, and Phil Ivey.

I'm a casual poker fan. I play occasionally and watch a few of the various television shows. The World Poker Tour on the Travel Channel is what originally got me interested in Texas Hold'em. Because of that, I was naturally a Shana Hiatt fan. A blooper reel of her WPT work after the jump will give you an idea why.

The former Miss Hawaiian Tropic was the hostess for the show prior to being replaced by Courtney Friel for the fourth season. I'd wondered where Shana disappeared to, and why we hadn't seen her pop up on another show yet. She seemed to have a pretty good fan following. And now we have some idea.

It seems that Shana has been trying to get a couple different gigs, but has been hampered by a disputed no compete clause in her WPT contract. But now a judge has granted an injunction on Hiatt's behalf.