Gold Wins (Most Of) Record-Breaking HSP Pot

Date: 2007.11.19 | Category: Hand Of The Week | By: Phil Hellmuth   

Last Monday night, I was watching an episode of “High Stakes Poker” on the Game Show Network. This was a special session where the buy-in was $500,000, and they encouraged the players to bring pounds of cash to the table. Can you imagine the $50,000 “bricks of cash” (five $10,000 packets of $100 bills, all wrapped together) piled high in front of each player? It was quite a sight to behold. And can you imagine the size of some of the pots? After all, more than one player bought in for $1 million.

Let’s just say this: It was a good day to get lucky.

We shot “HSP” over three days, filming three eight-hour sessions. Each session was turned into four one-hour television shows, and three days of filming turned into 12 episodes of “High Stakes Poker.” Personally, I played the first two days — when the buy-in was $100,000 — but I skipped the $500,000 buy-in, even though I was up $300,000 after the first two days of play. Risking $500,000 in one hand seems a little bit crazy — even to a guy like me.