Best Of Gabe Kaplan High Stakes Poker
- Gabe Kaplan High Stakes Poker
- Best Of Gabe Kaplan High Stakes Poker Season 7
- Best Of Gabe Kaplan High Stakes Poker Tournaments
With great personalities comes a great responsibly…for action! This week’s clash on Poker After Dark is a battle of wills between two players with vastly different personalities, but the same huge amount of entertainment to offer. Tom Dwan and Gabe Kaplan may come from different generations, but as the classic Poker After Dark hand shows, they’ve got the same instinct for a big pot and will do anything to drag it in.
KAPLAN THE CLOWN PRINCE
Later during the “boom” Kaplan proved a perfect color commentator for the much-loved High Stakes Poker series, with A.J. Benza complementing him well as a play-by-play straight man. An all-time favorite Kaplan line was his description of Hellmuth’s poker face: “Phil has a look on his face like a shy ostrich trying to mate.”. The first season of High Stakes Poker, taped at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas, was first broadcast on January 16, 2006, at 9:00 p.m. And consisted of 13 episodes until April 10, 2006, hosted by A. Benza and comedian/actor-turned-poker pro Gabe Kaplan. High Stakes Poker was a hugely successful series, and it was brought to life by A.J. Benza and Kaplan, where big stacks of cash went over the line with regularity. There are so many examples of Gabe Kaplan being a boss at the table then laughing about the game behind the microphone that the game feels like it owes him a lot. High Stakes Poker is back for a brand-new series. With original hosts Gabe Kaplan and AJ Benza, HSP is back, back, back in a big way and we watched the first episode of the returning series with a mile-wide grin on our faces here at Calvin Ayre.
Watching Poker After Dark and knowing that Gabe Kaplan has long been seen as an authority on the game might lead you to believe that he’s always been around in poker. He talks a fantastic game, is incredibly dangerous in any pot and often comes out on top, but did you know that he made his name cracking jokes and putting out novelty records?
Kaplan co-created and starred in the popular TV show Welcome Back, Kotter, in which he played the class teacher of a group called the Sweathogs, who were diverse students. It was during the show that he released the hit novelty record Up Your Nose (With a Rubber Hose), so if anyone knows humor, it’s Kaplan. But does he figure out Tom Dwan’s body language in this hand, or does the student take a pot from the teacher?
THE VALUE OF DWAN’S HAND
One of the best ways to enjoy any hand involving Tom Dwan is to put yourself in the place of his opponent, in this case, Gabe Kaplan. Working out the strength of Dwan’s hole cards is akin to trying to juggle cats, but post-flop, Kaplan can start basing his judgment on the information.
Gabe Kaplan High Stakes Poker
Dwan’s play is fascinating not just because he is an aggressive, uncompromising player, but also because, especially in looking back at these archive clips, we’re watching a very young man holding his own alongside players with huge personalities.
The value of Dwan’s hand is something Kaplan has to figure out based on two key criteria – what is Dwan trying to get me to do, and how often can I be correct in working out what he has?
TEACHER MEET STUDENT
Kaplan’s career had taken him from New York stand-up circuit to a major television series before he entered the world of poker, but it was in 1980 that he started to make a name for himself in a big way. Kaplan won the Amarillo Slim Superbowl Of Poker in Las Vegas for $190,000 (the tournament cost $10,000 to enter) and Kaplan entered poker legend as well as starring on television.
Welcome Back, Kotter had ended the year before, but far from a conventional path into poker, Kaplan’s journey would take him to the poker commentary booth as much as it would the table. He became one of the most famous voices in the World Series of Poker, long before he starred in this 2010 season of Poker After Dark. Following the series, he would only cash once in the nine following years, in 2014 at a Super High Roller tournament in Las Vegas, for just over $250,000.
DWAN’S PARALLEL PATH
Although the two men are a generation apart, there are strong parallels between the pair. Dwan has cashed for just over $3 million in live tournaments, Kaplan raking in just under $2 million.
Dwan had his own extended period away from the live circuit, not cashing once between February 2014 and February 2017, before returning to action in, you’ve guessed it, a Super High Roller for just over $250,000.
Were both men suited more to the high stakes – and high-pressure world of TV stardom – that made their names? You bet they were, and you can watch them in action across all seven original seasons of Poker After Dark exclusively on PokerGO. Subscribe today for 24/7 access to The Vault, as well as live streams of the latest action and mindblowing poker documentaries such as Phil Hellmuth’s Poker Story. Just like Kaplan and Dwan, it’s unmissable drama.
It’s the most welcome return to poker since Phil Ivey ended his self-imposed exile to rejoin the World Series circus a couple of years ago.
High Stakes Poker is back for a brand-new series.
With original hosts Gabe Kaplan and AJ Benza, HSP is back, back, back in a big way and we watched the first episode of the returning series with a mile-wide grin on our faces here at Calvin Ayre.
The cash game, with players sitting down with a minimum of $200,000 and a maximum of “a biscuit short of half a million dollars”, features some terrific action, great banter between a perfectly cast pick of players.
Casting the professionals and guest stars is everything in televised poker and PokerGO get it spot on in this opening episode. There are some great hands, too, and while we won’t spoil them for you, players are more than happy to risk plenty for the rewards and bragging rights that come in equal measure for winning a really big High Stakes Poker pot. It’s the ultimate poker credibility brag and plenty get to make it after the first episode of the show.
Best Of Gabe Kaplan High Stakes Poker Season 7
PokerGO have hit a home run with this one, and we have been saying it for years; there was no reason for this show to ever go away in the first place. Of course, we all loved the old episodes, featuring the biggest names in the game, but some new players have just as much showmanship and it hasn’t even taken one 45-minute long show to prove that opinion to be spot on.
Two of the stars of the show are predictable in Tom Dwan and Jean-Robert Bellande, with the latter chastising Major League Baseball pitcher Michael Schwimer for value-betting Dwan on the river by telling him “You wouldn’t have got away with that seven years go; he’d have emptied the clip on you.”
Dwan is an amazing player to watch, but he’s in great company, with Bellande and Schwimer both seeking plenty of action and Rick Salomon living up to his reputation, too.
Best Of Gabe Kaplan High Stakes Poker Tournaments
Overall, it’s an overwhelmingly positive restart to a brand that never really went away. With a terrific set, some fantastic players such as Phils Ivey and Hellmuth still to come, and some whip-smart lines from Gape Kaplan in every minute of the commentary, there’s everything to play for.
The stakes could hardly be any higher.
You can watch the Premiere Episode of the 8th Series of High Stakes Poker right here on PokerGO (subscription required).