Career
Born in Hamilton, Ontario, he now makes his home in Toronto. He hosts "The Show with Chris Tessaro" on Sportsnet Radio Fan590, the biggest sports radio station in the country. He also writes the only syndicated poker newspaper column in Canada, running every Wednesday in the Toronto Sun.
He has been covering poker in print and on the airwaves since 2003.
He wrote a column for American Player magazine called The Canadian Corner, until the magazine became defunct in 2007. In the fall of 2008, he created and launched The Hardcore Show on Sirius Satellite Radio.
With co-host Rob Pizzo, the show featured interviews with the biggest names in poker. Well known pros such as Philosophy Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu, and Doyle Brunson appeared regularly on the show.
In 2011, The Score Radio shut down.
Tessaro then created and launched a new show, "The Show with Chris Tessaro" on Sportsnet Radio Fan590. The show debut was February 12, 2012. lieutenant runs Sunday nights at 11 P.M. (ET) and is also available on podcast.
In 2008, he began writing a column for the Toronto Sun called ‘That Dude’, a weekly op-ed feature on his take on the poker world.
That column ran until 2010. In September 2012, he again began contributing a weekly column to the Sun newspapers across the country every Wednesday.
The column is translated into French for the French language papers as well. In 2010, he began writing feature stories for "All-In" Magazine, a North American distributed glossy poker magazine.
Tessaro is responsible for the prop bet that forced Kara Scott to make a television appearance wearing a fuzzy bunny suit, with the resulting clip getting worldwide recognition in the poker world.
He is also a certified poker tournament director (TDA) and hosts many celebrity/charity poker events throughout North America. Tessaro also plays poker, and has played in the European Tour in Bahamas and Monte Carlo,the World Series of Europe in London, England, The Latin American Tour. His play in the 2009 World Series of Main Event was documented in a daily diary in the Toronto Sun.
Tessaro has also written for The Hockey News and Hockey Business News.
And is a former editor of Urban Male/Bobbi magazines. He is also a frequent writer on golf topics for magazines such as Beyond the City and The Muskokan, as well as a feature writer for ClubLink Life Magazine.
He writes his own op-ed golf column called "Chip Shots". Chris Tessaro appeared for two years in the Canadian television series Power Play.
He played the role of Marshak, a player on the fictional National Hockey League team upon which the series was centred.
He also appeared alongside Mariah Carey in the 2001 movie Glitter, as the producer of the American Music Awards. He is also a regular guest on sports talk shows such as TSN’ General’ s Office The Record and SunTV’s The Grill Room. In Fall of 2014, Chris Tessaro appeared as a contestant on a Canadian Broadcasting Company reality show called He was one of 32 selected from thousands of applicants, and competed using the Theory Of Multiple Intelligence in various challenges.
The first episode Tessaro appeared in had an air date of October 5, 2014, on Canadian Broadcasting Company in primetime Sunday night.
In the season finale, he ended up tied for second, but lost out on the title by virtue of a tiebreaker system. Tessaro is married (Spouse, Robyn Tessaro) with two children, Dean and Callum.
He currently resides in Portuguese Cr Ontario.