Inside Straight -- News

High Stakes Poker Will Premiere March 1
Fifth Season of Popular Show Attracts Big Names
By Stephen A. Murphy

The fifth season of High Stakes Poker will premiere March 1 on the Game Show Network.

While NBC established that in the fall, Sunday night is "Football Night in America," thanks to its relentless marketing campaign, it appears that as of March, Sunday night will be "Poker Night" on GSN.

The network plans on featuring a poker haven for its audience on Sunday evenings. Starting at 6 p.m., the network will air past episodes of its World Poker Tour events as well as older High Stakes Poker shows, and at 9 p.m., new episodes of the fifth season of HSP will launch.

The season premiere will air on March 1, with new episodes debuting on each subsequent Sunday, said Heidi Diamond, the executive vice president of GSN.

"I like it when the young online guys play against the old-timers," said John Charles, GSN's on-air promo producer. "I love to see that generational difference."

That contrast was evident when 75-year-old Doyle Brunson, with his classic cowboy hat, rubbed elbows with 23-year-old Italian Dario Minieri, and his patented scarf.

High Stakes Poker has been a staple of GSN since the first season aired in January 2006.

"For me, this program is a signature of the network," said Mike Bevan, vice president of original programming at GSN.

In the fifth season, all players must put up a minimum of $200,000 of their own money to play in the game.

According to HSP Executive Producer Mori Eskandani, players are awarded a "nominal" fee for appearing on the show, somewhere around $10,000. But that pales in comparison to the amount of their own money they risk on each hand. Eskandani also said that according to GSN policy, no player is allowed to wear logos during the filming.

"This is the real thing," said Eskandani. "This is what poker is all about."

The fifth season of HSP will feature World Series of Poker main-event champions, Internet prodigies, established cash-game pros, and part-time players with a lot of cash to throw around.

Besides Brunson and Minieri, one game featured Phil Laak, Tom "durrrr" Dwan, Eli Elezra, Mike Baxter, Alan Maltzer, and David Peat.

A second game welcomed Daniel Negreanu, Joe Hachem, Howard Lederer, Patrik Antonius, Antonio Esfandiari, Sam Simon, and Nick Cassavetes.

A third table included Peter Eastgate, Doyle Brunson, Ivan Demidov, Phil Ivey, Barry Greenstein, David Benyamine, and Ilari Sahamies.

First Colorado Casino Town Approves Higher Limits
Only 13 Cripple Creek Residents Said No to Referendum
By Bob Pajich

Higher limits are coming to at least one Colorado casino town.

Residents of Cripple Creek overwhelmingly voted in favor of increasing the amount that can be wagered in its casinos from a $5 maximum to $100, and also of erasing a law that forced casinos to close from 2 a.m. to 8 a.m.

A statewide referendum that was passed in November gave the residents of Colorado's three casino towns the right to decide if loss limits and restrictive hours of operation should be lifted.

Cripple Creek residents voted 267-13 in favor of the referendum, hoping to attract more tourists to the town of about 1,200 inhabitants. Cripple Creek is home to 17 casinos.

The other two major Colorado casino towns are Black Hawk and Central City, which had not yet held their voting at press time for this issue.

Casinos were allowed to return to Colorado in 1991 with a set of strict rules on loss limits. Players could not lose more than $5 on a bet, and that included poker games.

Colorado collected $112 million in gambling taxes in 2007, and state officials estimate that amount will increase to around $300 million in each of the next five years if all towns approve the referendum.

Ten percent of the new taxes generated will go to the hometowns of the casinos, 12 percent will go to the home counties, and the other 78 percent will help fund the state's community college system.

UltimateBet Software Error Mistakenly Awards Pot to Hellmuth
Error Took Place Dec. 20
By Bob Pajich

Tokwiro's new CEREUS network experienced a glitch on Dec. 20 that awarded a player with the losing hand the pot on UltimateBet. That player with the losing hand happened to be Phil Hellmuth, the face of the poker site.

This software snafu comes at a time when Tokwiro is doing its best to prove that its new CEREUS poker network, which combined the player pools of UltimateBet and Absolute Poker, is safe and secure, since both sites were hit with massive cheating schemes during the last few years.

On Dec. 20, Phil Hellmuth, playing under his real name, got involved in a hand with a player named DOUBLEBALLER on a $200-$400 table. Hellmuth held one pair while DOUBLEBALLER hit trips, but the new software shipped the pot to Hellmuth.

Tokwiro, which owns both Absolute Poker and UltimateBet, released a statement explaining the software error this way: "We have concluded that the malfunction occurred because the winning player disconnected from the table at the precise millisecond when the software was awarding the pot, in conjunction with the 'player's state' data being cleared from the memory cache."

Hellmuth also was included in this release. "The only time in my life where I've had one pair beat three of a kind is when I made a big bluff in a poker tournament, and now because of a software malfunction in online poker," he said. "I am one of the most watched players on the Internet, and all I can say is that it is pretty obvious that there was no malicious intent and even more obvious that UB handled this problem well. Sometimes these things happen on the Internet. The important thing here is that I continue to have a ton of trust in UB's software and new management team."

Also, Tokwiro said that while fixing this software error, "we introduced a new defect that caused 36 hands to award incorrect payouts. All players have been reimbursed for these hands, as well."

PokerStars Sets Guinness World Record
35,000 Players Participate in the $10 Tournament
By Julio Rodriguez

PokerStars is now home to the largest tournament in world history, thanks to the Sunday, Dec. 28, record-breaking no-limit hold'em contest. The tournament was the culmination of its World Record Weekend promotion, and it saw an astounding 35,000 entrants put up the $10 + $1 buy-in to be a part of history. If that wasn't enough, PokerStars was kind enough to offer up a $150,000 overlay to reward its loyal players.

The record itself was never in question. Registration had been open for weeks, and every seat was sold out days before the action even began. The increased traffic spread through all areas of the site, and PokerStars was able to boast a high of 250,540 players, occupying 33,582 tables, setting another record for the most players logged on at one time.

Although many were disappointed to be left out of the historic tournament, that didn't stop them from flooding other tournaments and cash games, creating what many reported as a slight lag in the site's processing. Order was quickly restored, but there were little hiccups throughout the night as the servers stayed busy.

The top prize of the event was $30,000, won by a player named stan34powa.