This is the worst poker show on TV. This over-produced show is 95% filled with players commenting about hands, announcers talking and hokey music playing over all of the "poker." And I think 95% is me being too kind. It's actually 99.9%. This show is Unwatchable. If the show wasn't bad enough just with it's lack of poker content, one has to listen to the annoying background music one time to see what I am talking about. It runs the gamut from something out of a Quentin Tarantino movie to a twangy guitar western-themed I don't know what, to pseudo-surf Dick Dale, to whatever is laying around at the time in someone's donation box. Poker? Where? Not here.

PAD is a very well made and produced high stake poker show with world-class players. Importantly, it shows hand-for-hand play which allows those watching to understand their game better a chance to really see what's going on. I've lost count of the number of coin flips shown on the WSOP, here we get to see the small suited gappers, the small pairs, playing anything from 23o to KJ from the cutoff, the air bluff, the float bets, the trapping etc;I like the pace of PAD a lot - normally tables take a week and the director's cut provides even more insight. This and High Stakes Poker are different from ESPN tournament plays. A tournament is just that: one player will win it all but can go out in a second - it requires a different approach - it's exciting -but many would argue that PAD and HSP show poker in a purer form as every hand is cash at risk, rather than just an initial stake.Ali Nejad adds some commentary but essentially this is a show where the cards speak for themselves and it is fascinating to watch. If you want to improve your game, or closely observe how the world's top players play then this is definitely great viewing.

High Stakes Poker may be the best poker show on television, but Poker After Dark is not far behind it. The format is basically a $20,000 buy-in 6-person No-Limit Holdem tournament. What makes PAD stand out from other shows is 1) its slow blind structure; and 2) the fact that it shows almost every hand played.First, the blind structure. Everyone starts out 100xBB deep, and the blind levels take their time to go up. What this means is that there is plenty of room to play post-flop/turn/river, especially during the early stages. Contrast this to the World Poker Tour final tables, where the short stacks are so short and the blinds rise so fast that the game degenerates into an all-in crapshoot.Second, you get to see almost every hand. This is extremely valuable as a learning tool, since not only do you get to see how each player adjusts their strategy at each stage of play (e.g. loosening up as you get short-handed), but also because you get to experience the same thought processes as the players based on earlier hands (this guy has been raising my blind every time, I'm going to take a stand).The only disadvantage to this is that at times, the show can get slow-paced, especially if the players are really nitty (a lot of raise and take it, no flop) or when they are not that talkative. The best episodes are definitely the ones where most of the players are world-class LAGs and/or chatterboxes.