ShareImage courtesy of PokerGO.com
There’s only one more week to wait for fans of High Stakes Poker, season 9 of the iconic televised cash game kicking off on February 21st with a stellar line-up including Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan, Patrik Antonius and reigning WSOP Main Event champ, Koray Aldemir...
Poker's most iconic show, your favorite poker legends, the highest stakes, and the voices of Gabe Kaplan and AJ Benza.
— PokerGO (@PokerGO) February 10, 2022
High Stakes Poker Season 9 is almost here!
New episodes weekly starting February 21, only on PokerGO. pic.twitter.com/3UELXeGgTb
High Stakes Poker was perhaps THE show that brought poker into the living room of a new generation of players when it first aired back in 2006 on the back of the poker boom.
Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan, Eli Elezra, Antonio Esfandiari and Sammy Farha became household names as they battled not only each other but rich amateurs such as basketball team owner Jerry Buss and restaurateur, Fred Chamanara.
Millions would tune in to see a young Daniel Negreanu getting hit by every cooler and bad beat possible in season 2, his full house against Gus Hansen costing him $575k as the turn card 5 gave the Great Dane quads.
Negreanu somehow survived what quickly became a High Stakes horror show, though he recently explained: “Because people were watching a show that was on once a week and they’re like, ‘Man, every week this keeps happening.’ All that actually happened in like eight hours. I got brutalized that many times in just one session!”
The show itself has been through as many changes as the players over the years, but when PokerGO revived it last year for season 8, they brought back the original commentary team of Gabe Kaplan and AJ Benza.
As for players, the old-school legends have been given some tough new opposition, with the cash game skills of 2021 WSOP Main Event champ Koray Aldemir, and the hugely popular Garrett Adelstein on display.
Aldemir scooped a monster $8million jackpot last November, and joined the High Stakes Poker line-up the very next month, almost exactly 15 years to the day from when he first played poker, coincidentally (or not) back in 2006!
Garrett Adelstein is another who grew up with the weekly show and described playing and meeting the legends he watched as “incredibly surreal”.
Meeting Patrik Antonius was especially rewarding and not a little surprising, Adelstein revealed: “Patrik comes up to me and he goes, ‘I’m so excited to finally be playing with you. Can we get a bunch of pictures together?’ I was like ‘What are you talking about, man? You’re Patrik Antonius.’”
Surreal week playing on High Stakes Poker, easily my favorite hour of the week as a viewer for years. Even in my most ambitious of fantasies, I never envisioned I could land here. Somehow the stakes only get bigger the rest of the week, so inevitably I will run very very hot ☀️
— Garrett Adelstein (@GmanPoker) December 4, 2021
We don’t yet know which players will feature on which episodes, but we do know that there will be 14 episodes in all, with a new episode released every Monday at 8pm ET on PokerGO, the go-to place for highstakes action these days.
We also know that the “cash bricks” will be back in action, Daniel Negreanu tweeting: “We made it work”, when questioned about the huge wads of dollars that were a regular and quite incredible part of the show’s early years.
One example lineup for you all to see when the shows are released… https://t.co/4XcDidT84Y
— Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker) December 5, 2021
With stakes ranging from $200-$400 up to $500-$1,000, there is sure to be plenty of money flying around the table, the big question being who will be walking off with the lion’s share of it.
Bryn Kenney’s cash game skills will be under the spotlight, having recently regained top spot in the tournament money-winner’s all-time list, while poker amateurs such as maverick Gaming CEO, Eric Persson, will be trying to upset the applecart.
Will the old-school legends still have what it takes to fight off the young guns? Tune in to PokerGO on Monday 21st February to find out!
Full list of players:
- Phil Ivey
- Tom Dwan
- Bryn Kenney
- Jason Koon
- Patrik Antonius
- Jean-Robert Bellande
- Daniel Negreanu
- Doyle Brunson
- Koray Aldemir
- Garrett Adelstein
- Jennifer Tilly
- Xuan Liu
- Stanley Tang
- Krish Menon
- Jonathan Gibbs
- Eric Perrson
