High Stakes Poker was the answer they came up with. HSP was unique amongst all televised shows by virtue of the fact that it no longer featured games in a tournament structure, but rather a plain old ring-game played with some fabulously high blinds by some of the world’s best and wealthiest players.

People like Mike Matusow, Gus Hansen, Daniel Negreanu, Johnny Chan, Phil Laak, Phil Hellmuth, Phil Ivey and others took part in the game to which the minimum buy-in was set to $100,000 only to be raised in later seasons to $500,000. Players who busted out were given the chance to rebuy for a minimum of $50,000 and keep playing.

Whether it was the novelty of the whole idea or the fact that people could relate much better to chips that actually represented real money (players were allowed to use stacks of banknotes too in addition to their chips) the show become a resounding success further amplifying the poker-hysteria slowly encompassing the world.

Make no mistake, the play itself was as spectacular as highstakes poker could ever be, the outrageousness of some calls only surpassed by the out-of-this-world sums of money changing owners after each hand.

Some very peculiar modifications of the rules also led to some spectacular developments. Such an addendum was the rule about a person winning a hand on a 7,2o, which is the worst possible pocket hand in Holdem. Anyone who managed to pull off a win on one such hand would earn $500 form each of the other players around the table, together with the appreciation of his/her opponents and millions of viewers around the world.

Enough of the small-talk though. Download some of these High Stakes Poker torrents and get a first-hand taste of the action yourself.