It has been confirmed that NBC’s late night poker show named ‘Poker After Dark’ will be returning in 2009 for its fifth season. The schedule and line up for season five has been released and will feature several new poker players and more cash game shows, which are receiving excellent feedback than the normal six handed tournament format.

The fifth season will have 13 weeks worth of episodes that will be aired in the later months of 2009. Seven of the weeks will host a high stakes cash game and the remaining weeks will feature the normal six handed no limit Texas Hold’em winner take all Sit and Go tournament.

The cash games will be No Limit Texas Hold’em with $200/$400 blinds with a minimum buy-in of $100,000 and maximum of $250,000. All types of prop bets, flippings, straddles and other sort of weird stuff are allowed.

The new players that will appear on the show are listed below:

* Taylor “GreenPlastic” Caby – High stakes pro and one of the main guys behind CardRunners.com
* Cole “CTS” South – Another CardRunner professional poker player.
* David “Raptor” Benefield – A high stakes pro and is also Tom ‘Durrr’ Dwan’s roommate.
* Bob Safi – amateur player that has appeared on High Stakes Poker
* Arnold Thimons – amateur player that qualified online
* Illari “Ziigmund” Sahamies – High stakes online pro and is very very outspoken, should make for excellent television
* Ivan Demidov – 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event runner up and very good tournament player
* Dario Minieri – Lit up 2008 tournament circuit in the EPT and WSOP, sponsored by PokerStars
* Kenny Tran – Another tournament player that has been very hot
* Orel Hershiser – Former Major League Baseball pitcher
* Jason Alexander – mostly known from acting character George on Seinfeld
* Don Cheadle – very popular actor in Hollywood

Here is a preview of upcoming shows that are taking place in 2009:

Italy vs USA – a six handed sit and go with Americans: Chris Ferguson, Howard Lederer, and Erick Lindgren. The Italian poker players are Marco Traniellow, Max Pescatori and Dario Minieri.

Celebrities and Mentors – another six handed sit and go featuring celebrities Orel Hershiser, Don Cheadle, Jason Alexander along side Gavin Smith, Barry Greenstein and Phil Gordon.

International Week – players and their representing counties as followed: Brad Booth, Canada, Allen Cunningham, USA, David Benyamine, France, John Juanda, Indonesia, John Phan, Vietnam, Ivan Demidov, Russia.

Dream Match – Online qualifier Arnold Thimons chose his dream table that has Daniel Negreanu, Johnny Chan, Jennifer Tilly, Phil Laak and Mike Matusow and he will compete for the winner take all of $120,000.

The show will once again be filming in the Golden Nugget casino that has been completely renovated and is looking fabulous and the service is impeccable, according to Poker After Dark spokesman.