High Stakes Poker: 5th Season Premiere

The fifth season of High Stakes Poker will once again gather best poker players around the world to play for their own money in front of the cameras. Names such as Doyle Brunson, Daniel Negreanu, Patrik Antonius, Tom Dwan and many more will all have to pay at least $200,000 to sit down and play the richest regular cash game on TV.

Vice president of original programming at GSN Mike Bevan remembers how the whole concept of the show was put together during a dinner at Bellagio when Johnny Chan approached them and said he lost a monster-sized pot in a cash game to Phil Ivey.

Those words stuck inside Bevan's head as he realized what an amazing thing it would be to organise a tournament where you could lose much more than your regular buy-in.

More money certainly makes the game more interesting, but one of the cash games towards the end of the last season featured a $500,000 minimum which made the game tighter, thus offering less action.

Due to that problem, the HSP executive producer Mori Eskandani has decided to let the players put in the amount of money they feel comfortable playing with. This should provide both high stakes poker and plenty of action.

The fifth season will feature top pros of all ages and background histories. Legends such as Bronson, Negreanu and Howard Lederer, but also the young stars on the rise such as Dwan and the WSOP 2008 main event champ Peter Eastgate will be featured this season.

More pros are scheduled to join the show, namely Phil Laak, Eli Elezra, Antonio Esfandiari, Dario Minieri, Barry Greenstein, David Benyamine and Josep Hachem.

The fifth season of the High Stakes Poker kicks off today with the archived episodes of the WPT and HSP aired on GSN before the season premiere.