Ali Nejad

Who is Ali Nejad?

Oliver "Ali" Nejad is an Iranian-American television personality, who currently hosts "Road Trip" on ESPNU, and occasionally serves as a fill-in host for "UNite," also on ESPNU.

Though he has worked on-air since age 17 on a variety of projects, he is best known for his work as a poker commentator. Nejad served as the off-screen announcer on NBC's Poker After Dark and the color commentator on NBC's National Heads-Up Poker Championship. He has also served as a correspondent for ESPN.com's World Series of Poker coverage, commentator for ESPN's Pro-Am Poker Equalizer series, co-commentator with Chad Brown on the Ultimate Poker Challenge series, and alongside Daniel Negreanu on the PCA 2009 series.

Nejad has made 3 appearances as a player on commentators week on Poker After Dark. In his first appearance, he finished 6th after Gabe Kaplan flopped a set of 10's to his set of 4's. In the 2nd, he finished 2nd to winner Mark Gregorich; and in the 3rd appearance he finished 5th, again being knocked out by Kaplan. He is a former "friend of Full Tilt Poker" and former co-host of the Poker Road Radio podcast on pokerroad.com.