Hail and farewell, High Stakes

Happened to catch a couple episodes of GSN's High Stakes Poker last night. What a good show! Even without host Gabe Kaplan in the seventh (and almost certainly final) season, the poker was entertaining and sometimes downright absorbing.

But as that phrase in the parenthesis shows, I don't have any illusions about the show's prospects. The numbers have turned awful. High Stakes Poker averaged a measly 71K viewers on its latest published day. Even by GSN's not titanic standards, that's really bad.

GSN has squeezed the show to four not-ready-for-prime-time hours, and will no doubt soon drop it completely. The GSN Internet boards have long resounded with outrage over the show soiling the network's sacred game show precincts. Of course, High Stakes Poker is almost all gameplay, and a very interesting game it is.

So farewell to the show that brought poker's big-money cash games to TV with a good dose of realism. The show also featured intelligent commentary from AJ Benza (honest!), Gabe Kaplan and even the much maligned Norm Macdonald. Once upon a time, the show was GSN's highest-rated with the best demos. But that was then and this is now, and it's time to move on.