Poker After Dark is the extremely popular late night TV poker show that started in January 2007 and is currently in its fourth season.

This show from NBC has been able to create interesting themes that have added spice to the poker play.

This week’s episodes are named “Love at First Raise” and feature three popular romantically linked couples. So each person will have to defeat not only the other two couples but also his or her own mate for the $120,000 winner-take-all prize. The airing of the episodes has commenced on Monday and will run till Friday.

The couples that will be involved in this week’s contests are Jennifer Harman and Marco Traniello, David Benyamine and Erica Schoenberg and Phil Laak and Jennifer Tilly. All six have participated in earlier seasons of Poker After Dark. It is difficult to tell whether the women have a greater reputation or the men. The women have three WSOP bracelets among them, with Harman winning two and Tilly winning one. Against this none of the men have won ant bracelets. However the men have fared better in other competitions. The question on everyone’s mind is how well do the mates know each other. Will they fall for the bluffs or catch the bluffer. Only time will tell.  

Marco Traniello met Jennifer Harman in 1999 when he was vacationing in the United States. In true Hollywood style their cars were parked next to each other’s in the parking lot of The Mirage and it was love at first sight. The two were married within two months. Traniello was a famous hairdresser in Italy, but he moved to Las Vegas to be with Harman, setting up his salon there. Over the next five years Harman’s passion for poker began to rub off on him. Traniello made his tournament debut in 2005. Though he has never won, he has cashed several times, his biggest win being $156,000. Jennifer Harman has taken up the task to improve her husband’s game. On his part Traniello has cooperated by selling his salon to concentrate on poker full time.

With Phil Laak and Jennifer Tilly the roles were reversed. Laak was the thoroughbred pro and Tilly the willing learner. Tilly is professionally an actor who has secured an Oscar nomination for Bullets Over Broadway. However she has played a lot of amateur poker. The two met while participating in a WPT invitational tournament in 2004, which Laak won. The meeting turned first to friendship and then to love. Laak began to tutor Tilly and soon Tilly was doing fabulously well on the poker circuits.

David Benyamine and Erica Schoenberg are dating each other. They are different from the other two couples in the sense that neither has tutored the other. Benyamine’s first choice for a career was tennis but arthritis made him switch to poker. He is one of the more popular and successful players from France. Schoenberg too made a career shift, from modeling to blackjack. Her success at backgammon gave her the sobriquet “Blackjack  Babe”. Then she made another switch from blackjack to poker.