Oliver "Ali" Nejad (born 25 February 1978) is an

Iranian-American Iranian-Americans, also known as Persian-Americans, are United States citizens or nationals who are of Iranian ancestry, or who hold Iranian citizenship. Most Iranian-Americans arrived in the United States after 1979, as a result of the Irani ...

television personality Celebrity is a condition of fame and broad public recognition of a person or group due to the attention given to them by mass media. The word is also used to refer to famous individuals. A person may attain celebrity status by having great w ...

, who has hosted several shows including ''Road Trip'' on ESPNU, and has been a fill-in host for ''UNite'', also on ESPNU. In May 2014, Nejad began working at HLN and hosted the network's program ''The Daily Share''. He also executive produced and hosted his own award-nominated show, ''The Social Life''. Though he has worked on-air since age 17 on a variety of projects, he is also known for his work as a poker commentator. Nejad was the off-screen announcer on

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...

's ''

Poker After Dark ''Poker After Dark'' is an hour-long poker television program that originally aired on NBC, premiering on January 1, 2007.

'' and the color commentator on

's ''

National Heads-Up Poker Championship The National Heads-Up Poker Championship was an annual poker tournament held in the United States and produced by the NBC television network. It is a $25,000 "buy-in" invitation-only tournament organized as a series of heads up poker, one-on-one ...

''. He has also been a correspondent for

ESPN ESPN (an initialism of their original name, which was the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by the Walt Disney Company (80% and operational control) and Hearst Commu ...

's World Series of Poker coverage, a commentator for ESPN's '' Pro-Am Poker Equalizer'' series, co-commentator with Chad Brown on the ''

Ultimate Poker Challenge The Ultimate Poker Challenge (UPC) was a series of weekly poker tournaments acting as super-satellites into the series semi-finals. The first and second seasons are available on NTSC DVD. In the United States, it was a syndicated program. Forma ...

'' series and with

Daniel Negreanu Daniel Negreanu (; born July 26, 1974) is a Canadian professional poker player who has won seven World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelets and two World Poker Tour (WPT) championship titles. In 2014, independent poker ranking service Global Poker ...

on the PCA 2009 series. In 2014, he hosted Alpha 8 for WPT. Nejad has made three appearances as a player on commentators' week on ''Poker After Dark''. In his first appearance, he finished sixth after

Gabe Kaplan Gabriel Weston Kaplan (born March 31, 1945) is an American actor, comedian, and professional poker player. He played the title character in the 1970s sitcom '' Welcome Back, Kotter''. He later became a professional poker player and a commentat ...

flopped a set of 10s to his set of 4s. In the second, he finished second to Mark Gregorich and in the third appearance he finished fifth, again being knocked out by Kaplan. He is a former "friend of

Full Tilt Poker Full Tilt Poker is an Irish online poker card room and online casino that opened in June 2004. Formerly privately owned by Tiltware, LLC and later by the Rational Entertainment Group, the site was acquired by The Stars Group (then known as Amaya ...

" and former co-host of the Poker Road Radio podcast on ''pokerroad.com''.

Biography

From high school in Albany, California, through to college at UC Berkeley, Nejad hosted and reported for ''First Cut'', a local NBC affiliate show in the San Francisco Bay area, where he began his television career. Having been a recreational poker player for years, Nejad dropped out of Berkeley in 1998 to pursue playing poker full-time. He worked as a dealer and prop player before eventually becoming a successful high limit cash game player. After 4 years playing poker, he returned to television in 2002, hosting an MTV pilot about video games that despite not getting picked up for a full season, marked his return to TV. In 2003, aboard the PartyPoker Million cruise, he met Mori Eskandani, then the tournament director of

Fox Sports Networks Fox Sports Networks (FSN), formerly known as Fox Sports Net, was the collective name for a group of regional sports channels in the United States. Formed in 1996 by News Corporation, the networks were acquired by the Walt Disney Company on M ...

's ''Poker Superstars'', and the future producer of the ''National Heads-Up Poker Championship'' and ''Poker After Dark''. Eskandani hired Nejad as the master of ceremonies for the Poker Superstars event in 2004, which was the beginning of a long working relationship in televised poker. On 7 February 2008 episode of ''Poker Road Radio'',

Joe Sebok Joe Sebok (born March 25, 1977) is a professional poker player from San Francisco, California. His stepfather, Barry Greenstein, is also a professional poker player. He is known as "the Cub" because he calls Greenstein "Bear." Beginning profes ...

announced that Nejad would be the new host of the Poker Road radio podcast. His tenure began on 26 February 2008 at the WPT Commerce event and ended right before the start of the 2009

WSOP The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is a series of poker tournaments held annually in Paradise, Nevada, and since 2004, sponsored by Eldorado Resorts, Caesars Entertainment. It dates its origins to 1970, when Benny Binion invited seven of the best ...

. GGPoker named Nejad as a brand ambassador.

References

External links

UnknownPoker.com bio
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NBC Sports biographyCard Player profileWPT profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nejad, Ali Poker commentators Iranian poker players American people of Iranian descent 1978 births Living people