TV Poker Show
Introduction
NBC’s much vaunted ‘Face the Ace’ poker show started last week-end and if the ratings are anything to go by – if you missed it, you didn’t miss much, as it ended up bottom of the ratings. Hosted by Steve ‘The Sopranos’ Schirripa the show had poker players from the audience pitting themselves against poker pros selected from behind a smoked screen. The games were heads-up Texas No Hold ‘em for prizes of $40,000, with the audience contestant continuing to play against another pro, if they win that game, they get to play another one for a prize of $200,000 and then the top prize of $1 million!
The TV stars
Megan Abrigo - the eye-candy on NBC's 'Face the Ace' TV Poker show.
Needless to say if a contestant loses – they walk away empty handed, but the pro gets to donate $10,000 to a charity of their choosing. Any keen poker player must surely be falling over themselves to play in this TV show as when, or where, else are you likely to be able to play poker against 15 of the top professionals like Phil Ivey, Erik Seidel and Patrik Antonius to name but three.
Already well known to TV poker fans is Ali Nejad, from Poker After Dark – who acts as tournament director as well as having some input to the commentary. While Megan Abrigo, previously seen on Deal or No Deal, provides the eye-candy as briefcase model.
Week 2 for the show
Perhaps the ratings will pick up in the second show as one contestant from the opening program will be returning next week-end to play for that $1 million pot. Having beaten Erick Lindgren and then Howard Lederer we won’t know who the lucky contestant will be facing in his final poker game until next Saturday. Although at least the next two shows are already ‘in the can’, NBC is keeping very tight-lipped about any of the details to do with the next show. Let’s hope after pulling in only 1.57 million viewers last week they don’t immediately dump it out onto NBC.com?