Kevin Martin Launches Poker Reality Show “Poker Wars”

The first season of the new show

Canadian poker pro and Big Brother winner Kevin Martin has already concluded the first season of his new poker reality show “Poker Wars”. Six contestants battled it out for $50,000 over four episodes in a game that mixes poker with the social competition of reality TV shows.

Kevin Martin is known for two things: poker and reality television. He regularly streams his online poker sessions on Twitch under the handle “KMartPoker” and has nearly $500,000 in live tournament cashes. 

In his home country of Canada, however, he is better known for winning season 5 of the reality show Big Brother Canada. He has also appeared on such other reality shows as “The Traitors” and “The Amazing Race”.

This time, Martin decided to combine two of his passions into one, with the creation of “Poker Wars,” a new poker reality series. Season 1 has already concluded: six contestants battled it out for the $50,000 first prize.

The players in the inaugural season were Abby Merk, Haven Taylor, Hesham “Kiero Loves You” Elkhouly, Jake Straus, Jon Pardy, and “wildcard” (meaning an amateur the show found via a social media contest) Ali Kebritchi. Straus is known from the video game streaming world outside poker under the alias “gernaderjake”; while Pardy, just like Martin, has won a season of Big Brother Canada on top of his poker ventures.

Players got to play both live and online poker matches for immunity. Furthermore, they also had the option to “torch” another player, which would result in 10,000 chips being removed from their live stack. This gives the show the social competition aspect featured in reality shows like “Survivor,” where the contestants are also incentivised to form alliances to stay in the game. 

There is also a so-called “diary room” available for the players, where they can talk directly to a camera to share their thoughts and feelings with the audience.

At the end of the first three episodes, the two contestants who failed to win immunity duelled each other in a heads-up match to stay alive — the loser was eliminated. For the final episode of season one, the last three standing played down to a winner.

Haven Taylor vs. Jake Straus in the First Final at Poker Wars

Haven Taylor and Jake Straus were the two players to stay alive the longest. They faced off against each other in the final winner-take-all heads-up game for the $50,000 first prize. Whoever could win two out of the three 1v1 matches took home the prize.

The two had to play their game standing at a poker table, not sitting down, as poker is usually played. Also, each player was given special power cards that they could deploy once in each game at their discretion. The finalists got different special powers, decided by the eliminated players. For instance, the X-Ray card given to Taylor forced the opponent to reveal one of their hole cards. The Boost card given to Straus gives him a third hole card, then the choice to discard any of his three cards to continue with two.

At the end, Haven Taylor emerged victorious. 

She is an experienced live tournament player based in Calgary, Canada with $569,659 in live tournament earnings. She has now added another $50K to her tally — however, given the special format, it will likely not show up on her Hendon Mob profile.