Wednesday, May 16, 2007 | 7:16 a.m.
A sampling of the players who competed in the fourth season of "High Stakes Poker," which was taped Saturday, Sunday and Monday at the South Point and will debut on GSN (Cox cable channel 344) in late September:
Haralabosa Voulgaris
Antonio Esfandiari
Phil Hellmuth
Phil Laak
Mike Matusow
Brian Brandon
Antonio Salorio
Todd Brunson
Eli Elezra
Sam Farha
Jamie Gold
Daniel Negreanu
Jennifer Harman
Mike Baxter
Bob Safai
Patrik Antonius
David Benyamine
Doyle Brunson
Barry Greenstein
Phil Ivey
Guy Laliberte
Jamie Gold, gabby as ever, was up to his old tricks this week in Las Vegas, jawing and jiving and conniving against his opponents in a poker game with literally millions of dollars at stake.
Gold, who became the gambling world's most renowned motormouth on the way to winning the $12 million top prize in the World Series of Poker last summer, calls his incessant jabbering a psychological weapon, fair play at the table.
Don't like it? Shut up and deal with it, Gold says.
This time around, instead of steamrolling the field in poker's most prestigious tournament, Gold was testing his skills in its biggest cash game: the fourth incarnation of "High Stakes Poker," the GSN cable channel's production that portrays a no-limit Texas hold 'em cash game.
"High Stakes Poker," a Monday night fixture on GSN (Cox cable channel 344) and the odds-on favorite to be named as TV's best poker show if you ask any professional player, requires invited players to bring a predetermined minimum buy in to the table.
In previous tapings, the buy in was $100,000. For Monday's game, in a secured part of the convention area at the South Point, the minimum stake was raised to $500,000. Several players bought in for $1 million, so even before any rebuys there was nearly $5 million on the table Monday afternoon - some of it in casino chips, some in $50,000 bricks of U.S. currency.
"Nothing compares to this," said coordinating producer Mori Eskandani, an organizer of the game. "This has got to be the richest cash game in history.
"They have to be careful not to let the stakes affect their decision-making. In a normal game, if you have the second-best flush or the third-best hand, you can usually play it straightforward. Here, it could cost you $500,000. That can make you think."
The game's pace was deliberate at times, though Gold's talking was fast as he mixed it up in a couple of big pots - worth up to $800,000 (again, in real money, not tournament chips) - with pros Patrik Antonius and Sam Farha.
Against the flamboyant Farha, no stranger to psychological skirmishes, Gold engaged in a series of bizarre challenges involving raising or reraising "in the dark" (without seeing the next card) and side bets only tangentially related to the hand in question.
Doyle Brunson, who has seen it all in poker, not-so-subtly encouraged them to move it along.
"You ever hear of 'Dumb and Dumber'?" Brunson growled.
And: "Is this what poker has come to?"
And: "Let's go, we're burning daylight."
Farha, who predicted his exchange with Gold would become a big hit on YouTube later this year, tried to defend himself: "I'm losing here, and this guy (Gold) is crazy!"
Keeping considerably cooler was Guy Laliberte, the founder of Cirque du Soleil, who has found success in poker since taking up the game 1 1/2 years ago.
Laliberte, who placed fourth in the recent World Poker Tour Championship at the Bellagio, said his winnings will benefit his charitable foundation, which will be launched in October and focus on providing sustainable water systems to needy villages in poverty-stricken countries.
"This is not my career, it's just for fun," Laliberte said. "I'm still learning the game, and I find it very challenging.
"Coming here to Vegas a lot, instead of playing blackjack or other casino games where you're not really favored to be a winner over the long run, poker is a great alternative for me."
Laliberte, worth $1.5 billion, according to Forbes magazine, held his own against the pros.
"It's experience versus wealth," Eskandani said. "If you think about it, he's got everyone at the table covered - including all their assets."
The big game has a structure aimed at generating action, with three "blinds," or forced bets, of $300, $600 and $1,200 each hand. Many hands also had a "straddle," an optional fourth blind, of $2,400.
The fourth season of "High Stakes Poker" is scheduled to begin airing in late September on GSN, which also just picked up the rights to the World Poker Tour.
Beyond the posturing, the needling, the wacky side bets that are de rigueur wherever poker players gather, it's easy to see how "High Stakes" became a hit, the centerpiece of GSN's gambling lineup, a destination show among too much mediocre poker TV programming.
As Brunson put it, "I know we're on TV, but this is a serious poker game."
archive
