CardRunners instructor Brian Hastings announced on his blog late last week that he will be making his first televised poker appearance on NBC’s “Poker After Dark.” Hastings said that he will join fellow Full Tilt Red Pros Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan as well as high-stakes regular Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond in a $300/$600 Pot Limit Omaha game with a minimum buy-in of $100,000. Hastings wrote the blog while en route to Las Vegas for the taping of the show.
“The reason I am flying to Vegas is that I am going to be on ‘Poker After Dark,’” an elated Hastings wrote. “This will be my first televised poker appearance and I am very excited. Lana (CardRunners Marketing Director) worked very hard to get me on the show and called me Friday afternoon to let me know about it. It totally caught me off-guard, especially since I have a big assignment due Tuesday for my architecture class, but I quickly decided that I was in, got an extension on the assignment, and now here I am flying cross-country.”
Patrik Antonius, Sam Farha, Brandon Adams, and Jared “harrington25” Bleznick could also be playing in the game according to Hastings, making for what should be an exciting week of televised poker. Hastings, just 22, hasn’t yet made a name for himself on the live circuit, but the Cornell University student is renowned for winning the most money in a single day in online poker history. In December of last year, Hastings stepped up to the plate to face Swedish phenom “Isildur1” at the $500/$1,000 Pot Limit Omaha heads-up tables on Full Tilt Poker. Five hours later, Hastings had taken around $4 million from the Swede and gained instant fame within the poker community.
Now, Hastings gets his shot at another big game, this time a six-max format under the bright lights of “Poker After Dark.” “We will be taping tomorrow (Monday) and although unfortunately I will not be able to disclose results before the show airs, I will fill you in with the details that I can provide when I know them,” Hastings said. “I do know that the episodes will air sometime in 2011, although I’m not sure when yet.”
This will mark the first set of episodes in the history of the show that offer a game other than No Limit Hold’em. Pot Limit Omaha has increased in popularity online in recent years, much of that due to the intense action at the nosebleed stakes among players like Hastings, Dwan, Galfond, Bleznick, Daniel “jungleman12” Cates, and the rest of the high-limit players on Full Tilt Poker. All of the aforementioned pros are among the biggest Pot Limit Omaha winners on the site since the results started being tracked by HighStakesDB.
Season 7 of “Poker After Dark” is being filmed at Aria after spending the first six seasons at the South Point Casino and the Golden Nugget. Season 6 began airing in January and featured poker pros like Howard Lederer, Phil Hellmuth, Mike Matusow, Annette Obrestad, Antonio Esfandiari, Annie Duke, Eli Elezra, Erick Lindgren, Antonius, David “Viffer” Peat, Chris Ferguson, Jennifer Harman, and Dwan. The show airs nightly at 2:05am ET.
