GSN's 'High Stakes Poker' To Start Filming Nov 11

The producer of the popular show ‘High Stakes Poker’ has confirmed they will start filming Season 6 at the Golden Nugget Hotel in Las Vegas on November 11th and hope to air the episodes come February 2010.
Mori Eskandani said they will be putting together a mixture of seasoned professionals, online prodigies and enthusiastic poker amateurs from the business world in a 13 episode long spectacular. “High Stakes is always fun,” the producer said “You mix the money with the emotions and all those characters and it’s going to be good TV.”
In keeping with previous seasons, Gabe Kaplan and AJ Benza will be hosting the high stakes show where blinds are set at $400/$800 and players buy in from between $200k and $500k hard cash. However, in a departure from previous shows prop bets, which have become a regular feature of many high stakes games, will not be making an appearance in the format this time around.
Recently there has been calls for ‘proposition bets’ to be brought under control as they have a tendency to slow down and sometimes overtake the action at the table as was seen on recent episodes of ‘Poker After Dark.’ “It really distracted from the game for the viewers,” Eskandani said.
Barry Greenstein has already confirmed he will be back for the latest game but hinted he would be a lot happier if there was some softer competition about this time round as he has always viewed game selection as an important tactical consideration when sitting down to play. He explained:
“I hope they can get a good line-up…I was happy with the line-up I played in last year, but it wasn’t as good as the line-ups they had in the earlier days when there were more recreational players. At this point I don’t play just to be on television. I play if it’s a good game where I can make some money.”
Season 5 despite remaining popular saw ratings drop of slightly but producers of the show are confident that viewing figures will be up once more for Season 6, especially after the well publicised stories of Tom Dwan’s relentless aggression and outrageous bluffs which produced some of the biggest pots ever seen on live television.