Reports of new episodes are silent. Filming has frozen and the word on the street is that executives may be ready to drop the popular US television show High Stakes Poker.
High Stakes Poker, originally created by executive producer Henry Orenstein, is a series of televised poker games viewed on GSN. Being only 6 seasons old, viewers are enthusiastically awaiting the arrival of the 7th season’s worth of play, but several websites have reported that the show will be axed after a change in management at GSN.
The attraction of HSP games is the considerable differences of the rules compared to tournament poker. Chips, for example, represent real money, the cash in the pot doesn’t require conversion into chips and for their participation, the players receive $1,250 per hour. Players are able to bring in cash instead of chips, and unlike in tournament poker, the blinds and antes remain constant throughout the game.
Players who wish to be seated at the table are required to enter each game with a minimum bet of $500,000. The option of re-buying with a new minimum of $50,000 if they lose their initial buy-in is also available, making the potential losses of each player increasingly steep compared to that of the traditional poker tournament. The nature of such potential losses as well as gains, alongside GSN’s effective editing of each game, has proved to be an exciting and addictive series for many viewers.
However, after the recent departure of ex-CEO Rich Cronin from GSN, the brains behind televising the cash poker game in 2006, and little reassurance that series 7 will be emerging anytime soon, fears amongst the punters has risen to suspect that High Stakes Poker may cease to exist on their favourite cable channel program.
On being approached about the matter, Co-host AJ Benza has admitted that as “far as Gabe and I know… the show isn’t coming back” and he reported how it seems the channel wishes to head in a different direction and targeting new younger audiences. So, with its older category viewer, and despite being the number one show, High Stakes Poker may be given the boot by the GSN channel. Dennis Oehring at Poker PROductions however, has stated that he has received no official report that the HSP series will be cancelled and will not draw conclusions until GSN makes a decision about the future proceedings and renewal of the contract. GSN are scheduled to make this decision on 27th May.
With top pros such as Daniel Negreanu, Doyle Brunson and Sammy Farha being regular competitors around the HSP table, and play for pot prizes of up to $1,000,000, the high-adrenalin show will be sorely missed if doesn’t return to our screens.
While viewers are already feeling disappointed and Benza disheartened and unappreciated by GSN, thoughts are now turning to the future of additional poker shows with the concern they too will be affected if GSN doesn’t renew the contract.
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