It's All Or Nothing In High Stakes Poker

What do you get when you have a match set in a posh hotel in Vegas that features players battling it out to win everything and risk going home with nothing? A really good poker television show, that's what. In GSN's show, High Stakes Poker features the card game loved by millions with professionals and amateurs playing against one another.

Hosted by A.J. Benza and Gabe Kaplan, the show is one of the most gripping game shows on cable television. The show allows audiences to watch players risk their own money during a game all for the sake of winning the pot. High Stake Poker uses the no-limit Texas Hold 'Em style of poker, making it really exciting to watch since in one fell swoop, players can lose hundreds of thousands of dollars.

First aired in January 2006, the show is currently on its fifth season. The one-hour show consists of both professional and amateur players playing for the prize. A non-tournament show, High Stakes Poker uses a ring game where rewards are big and losses are devastating. All of its seasons were filmed in various hotels in the world's enterainment capital, Las Vegas. This season, however, the show will be filming in the Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino which was also the location for season one.

The show has several unique features aside from it not being a tournament. High Stakes Poker allows players to use cash as well as casino chips. They are also given the liberty to "Deal It Twice" during a heads-up hand. This means that players can deal two flops instead of just one. By doing so, a participant's chances of winning and losing are doubled. Another interesting thing about the show is that it welcomes participants in both the professional and amateur circuit. The players use their own money in the game and are allowed to buy-in $50,000 when they lose their first buy-in.

This season, the show's fifth one, features the biggest buy-in for a season's entire run. This comes far from season one's $100,000 initial buy-in. However, this was not really followed as players Daniel Negreanu and Brad Booth bought buy-in to games for as much as $1,000,000 in season one and season three respectively.

With intense competition and soaring buy-in costs, it's no wonder that a lot of people have tuned in and have been riveted by this game. This season promises to be bigger and better as hosts A.J. Benza and Gabe Kaplan join audiences again. Aside from a bigger buy-in, producers have also changed the hosts' participation and commentary schedule. Instead of joining the audience and the players in the first segment of the show, they come in on the second.

With such excitement and buzz, indeed, there is no limit to how much a player can win or lose. With this kind of game, High Stakes Poker will surely keep audiences tuned in and drawn. After all, not all television shows offer this kind of excitement and intensity.