ESPN Poker Blog

Posted by Steve Rosenbloom

At this point in his life, he will be describing Jamie Gold's all-in reraise.

And that's OK with the impish poker-player-slash-TV-host.

Nejad and Phil Gordon will be bringing you ESPN's first pay-per-view broadcast of the final table of the World Series of Poker main event Thursday at 5 p.m. ET and continue until one player collects the record $12 million top prize and the most coveted bracelet in the game.

Gordon, you already know. He's a World Poker Tour champion, an original member of FullTiltPoker.net, an author, a columnist for ESPN.com's Poker Club site and erstwhile cohost of "Celebrity Poker Showdown.'' Back in 2000, he made the final table and finished fourth in the event that he will be calling Thursday.

Nejad, not so much. But know this: He brings the goods. Poker people know him as a big-money player in limit hold 'em games on UltimateBet and Interpoker, while some viewers will recognize him as emcee of "Poker Superstars II'' and the "National Heads-Up Championship'' on NBC.

For Nejad and his twin pursuits of high-stakes online poker and high-profile television, it's like hitting the flop hard.

"Here was this new area that I was somewhat of an expert in and I could really shine because poker players were bad on camera and on-camera people didn't know anything about poker,'' Nejad said. "Here I was with a great amount of experience in both.''

Some viewers might know him from hosting a youth-oriented magazine show for NBC in the Bay Area called "First Cut,'' which earned an Emmy nomination. That's really where Nejad's story starts, and it starts with a tragic ending.

While attending UC Berkeley and hosting "First Cut'' and a show called "Hyper Tech,'' Nejad's girlfriend was killed in a car accident in December 1998. Nothing would be the same.

"It was rough,'' Nejad said. "Her mother committed suicide two days after it happened. I was a very big silver-spooner and I wasn't able to synthesize it. I didn't have the tools necessary to handle that situation, sadly. I don't drink alcohol. I've never smoked. I've never done any drugs. I don't drink coffee. I'm really, really straight-edged in those ways. So a lot of the escape routes that many people would've chosen were not really available to me.

"People wanted me on prescription meds to help me deal with it, but I said I'm not going to take one problem and replace it with another. So I turned to poker. I played very small limits recreationally until that point. It was a self-destructive venture.''

At the time of his girlfriend's death, Nejad was in talks with MTV about hosting a pilot called "Total Request Live.''

"When she passed away, I quit working on both my shows on NBC, I dropped out of Cal and I was basically done talking to MTV,'' he said.

Carson Daly got the "TRL'' job. And the fame. And his own late-night talk show.

"You never know for sure, but as a betting man, as a poker player, if I had to put my money on anything, it would've been that I would've been hosting the pilot for 'TRL' and I would've been hired," Nejad said. "I can't tell you the number of people who meet me and say, 'You would've been so much better than Carson Daly.' I just have to grin and bear it.''

There began a wild ride that would give Nejad perspective, experience, humility and a seat next to the final table.

"January, I wash up in a poker room, and I'm depressed and I'm self-destructive and I'm upset,'' he said. "I remember going to a grocery store to pick up a banana and some Yoo-hoo at 3 in the morning when I'm done playing and looking at 'Teen People' and seeing Carson Daly on the cover, and I'm going, 'Oh God, as if it's not bad enough.'

"I just had so much angst and was so focused, I was taking out all my aggressions on every other person at the poker table, not acknowledging the way my world had ended so miserably recently. 'I'm so miserable. Don't you know what happened? You're sitting here laughing and smiling. I'm going to take you down.'''

This was in $2-$4 stud, mind you.

But he happened to meet another young player named Prahlad Friedman, who showed him the ways of hold 'em. Nejad began to build his bankroll around Northern California casinos, and then ran into another young player named Erick Lindgren, who was propping at Casino San Pablo. Nejad also started dating a dealer, an older woman who didn't necessarily like the idea of a boyfriend who only played poker, but it was Nejad's way of escaping December 1998. Eventually, he got a job as a dealer.

"So, here I was, this Emmy nominated-show host with plenty of experience on camera and this whole legitmate career that I'd established dealing poker in a small, swanky card room in Concord, Calif.,'' he said. "It was a very humbling experience to have a degenerate gambler with horrible body odor throw his cards in my face because I put out a bad card. It was like this Zen experience: 'As badly as I want to take a seat next to you and take you for all your chips or pounce on you and beat you to a bloody, merciless pulp, I'm going to smile and put your two cards in the muck, collect the $2 toke from the guy who won the pot and go home to my older girlfriend who no one knows about and live another day of a simple, blue-collar life.'

"It was an experience I'd never had, and it really gave me a lot of perspective.''

Nejad later took Lindgren's prop job at Casino San Pablo because Lindgren had begun playing online with the ferocity of the all-everything high school football and basketball player that he was.

"I remember letting him use my computer and he would play four screens,'' Nejad recalled. "It was unheard of for someone to do something like that.''

Here's where it gets a little twisted. Lindgren was living in a three-bedroom house where his roommates were the son of the man who owned the card room where Nejad was propping and Nejad's girlfriend, who was dealing at the same card room.

"Which made for a very interesting relationship,'' Nejad understated. "So, I was always over there, and Erick and I would play a freeze-out or two every night, sit in the jacuzzi, talk poker, strategize. He was like, 'Ali, I know you're propping, but I want you to play for me.' He began to stake me online. I made a little money for both of us. Then he moved on up to Sacramento. I continued to prop. A few months later, he calls and says, 'Ali, I bought a house in Vegas. Let's go.' I was like, 'Really?'''

Really.

"So, I drive up to Sacramento, park my car there, jump in his Dodge Durango full of his stuff, he's driving a U-Haul, and I'm driving behind him,'' Nejad said. "About 11 p.m., we set out from Sacramento and he opens up a laptop in the passenger seat, plugs in a wireless card and begins to play heads-up $200-$400 hold 'em on UltimateBet against Thomas Keller while driving a U-Haul full of his stuff on a pitch-black road to Vegas from Sacramento.

"He says, 'I'm tired. Let's pull over.' He realizes he doesn't have a padlock for the back of his truck, and he says, 'Power through.' So, here we go. We're driving through, and I have to honk once in a while to make sure he's awake and not just paying attention to the screen because he's drifting back and forth and it's windy.

"We unload the truck at, like, 7 a.m. with two couches, two comforters, a coffee table and big-screen TV. And we spent probably the better part of a month or two living like that in his new house in Vegas. Quizno's wrappers all over the place. McDonald's. The guy, Felipe, at Jack-in-the-Box knew our order every time we'd go in. It was bachelor living at its finest.''

But it wasn't the living Nejad wanted. Like a lot of gamblers, Lindgren, also a huge sports better, was living on the edge. It's a common trait among gamblers. Nejad, though, didn't want to worry about the next loan payment riding on Georgia minus the points.

That conclusion coincided with a call from Suchin Pak, a former co-host on "Hyper Tech'' who was now at MTV News. She had passed along his name when people at MTV were looking for a host of a show about video games.

"I got this fire in me,'' Nejad said. "I said, 'I can still do this. What am I doing with myself?'''

He got an agent, a manager and shot the pilot. But the show wasn't picked up. He began auditioning, looking for random gigs, but in the meantime, he had to make some money, so while every other Hollywood hopeful waits tables, Nejad played poker.

But even that wasn't enough. So he went back to school at Cal.

"I was upon arrival the Van Wilder of UC Berkeley,'' he said. "I was the guy who used to park right next to class, drive onto campus. I was roughly 26 years old, living at the fraternity house all over again. I think I wanted to legitimize my life. Playing poker and pursuing television, particularly in the traditional eyes of my parents, who were academics, was insubstantial. You're kind of a jester. You smile on camera.''

But school never took. Traditional eyes of his parents or no, Nejad was jumping into Hollywood's deep end.

"I moved to L.A., I was living with family there, pursuing gigs and playing poker,'' he said. "I booked some stuff in the video games realm. After the MTV pilot, I worked for a Web site. Most recently I worked for AOL Games, hosting their online games content.

"All of a sudden, televised poker took off. Here was this big arena in which I could function.''

Nejad was playing $75-$150 hold 'em next to Mori Eskandani, who was putting on the "Poker SuperStars'' series. He showed Eskandani his audition tape and got the job as stage announcer for "Poker SuperStars II.'' Nejad later did the same for the "National Heads-up Championship'' on NBC. He also worked as a color commentator on the "Ultimate Poker Challenge'' and is now doing play-by-play for the National Poker League shows on INHD on Comcast Digital Cable.

And now, he'll sit next to Gordon on ESPN's pay-per-view broadcast of the final table Thursday.

"[ESPN coordinating producer for poker] Dave O'Connor said, 'I look at you as the Al Michaels and I look at Phil as the John Madden,''' Nejad said.

It might've been an interesting twist -- and one in keeping with his unusual story -- if Nejad had been playing at the final table, not doing play-by-play of it. He entered the main event for the first time, but was busted on the first day when his kings ran into aces.

Still, he's living la vida poker.

"I'm thankful that poker has allowed me to further my television career, especially after my hiatus,'' Nejad said. "It's been lucrative, but ironically not as lucrative as playing poker is. My worst year in poker eclipses my best year in television, let's put it like that.

"But along with the other people like Daniel [Negreanu] and David Williams, who chose poker at the fork in the road, I chose television. That's one of the reasons I'm not a multimillioniare like they are. I don't follow the trail. It's not my entire life. But I don't know how happy I'd be if poker was my entire life. I want more.''

In poker, though, you can play forever, while in TV, there might come a day where you're not even just another pretty face.

"If I were to finish 10th in the main event, it would be like a no-name finishing first, with all my notoriety among poker players and all my ties,'' Nejad said. "It would be quite a story. It would be like, 'Really?'''

Really.