An Interview With Kevin Belinkoff

By Justin West

When the World Poker Tour first aired it gave the Travel Channel a much-needed ratings boost, simultaneously heralding poker's emergence as a pop culture phenomenon. After the unmistakable success of the WPT, networks all across the dial leaped forth to cash in on poker's rising popularity. The clones began to spawn. This isn't surprising, really. Television - aside, perhaps, from HBO - is not known for its ingenuity. To wit: "Dancing With the Stars", "Shimmying With The Celebrities," and the ever-popular "Gettin' Down With The Has-Beens."

I must admit that when poker first flooded the airwaves I was enamored, rarely missing an episode of the WPT or the WSOP. But after years of redundancy I became seriously bored with it all. There were simply too many shows offering far too little in the way of innovation. I found myself flipping right on past the WPT, the WSOP, and all the copycats. "Gettin' Down With The Has-Beens" became palatable at that point.

When I heard of High Stakes Poker, now entering its second season on GSN, I was dubious to say the least. The show promised a new take on televised poker, to give both experienced and beginning viewers an exciting alternative to the stagnancy. I swallowed my stubborn nature and sat down to watch the show, a huge grain of salt doing nothing to help the sore my tongue was wearing in my cheek. Upon examination, however, I found myself extremely and pleasantly surprised.

High Stakes Poker is a breath of fresh air in an otherwise bombastic and overcrowded genre.

What's so inventive about this show, you ask? High Stakes Poker is a no-limit hold'em cash game, featuring the top dogs of the poker world buying in with their own money. Get that? It's a cash game, not a tournament. And as the title suggests, they're not playing penny-ante Watching these powerhouse players duking it out for hundreds of thousands of dollars in real money is something I can get behind. Finally we can enjoy watching poker on television again.

Kevin Belinkoff, VP of programming for GSN (formerly the Game Show Network), has been with the cable network for close to five years. He has worked in the game show arena for even longer, having been a producer for Family Feud, Match Game, and a number of other shows. But Kevin's experience with poker isn't limited to television production. While he was making a name for himself in the business Kevin actually supported himself by playing poker and blackjack.

"Most people in the business have had periods of unemployment during their career," says Belinkoff. "And that's how I was able to support myself. So for me it's been a terrific and easy transition just because of my background in that world."

I had a chance to speak with the gambler-turned-exec on High Stakes Poker, its evolution, and the upcoming second season.

Justin West: Are there any similarities between producing a show like High Stakes Poker and a traditional game show?

Kevin Belinkoff: Sure! Well, all game shows have similarities in that they're very dramatic. It's about people winning. There's drama and tension and competitiveness and game play that kind of finds its way throughout. Whether you're watching Jeopardy! or High Stakes Poker, you're still watching somebody making decisions and reacting to things that are going to be determining their fate, which is why our audience has accepted a lot of our gaming programming as well.

Justin West: What was the genesis of High Stakes Poker?

Kevin Belinkoff: We had actually stayed away from poker for a while, but when we made the transition from "The Game Show Network" to "GSN" we wanted to do casino gaming. We started with our World Series of Blackjack, which has done really well. We quickly became the home of blackjack on television, and then we were able to expand to poker.

Because there was so much poker out there we wanted to be really careful with how we moved into that space. And we were for a while. We had a big poker tournament with the WPPA, then we had some 'designed-for-television' poker, but our research showed us over and over again that people want to watch the best poker, they want to watch the best players, and they want to watch something different.

Tournament poker has been on TV for a while now. Obviously the WSOP has done really well, as has the WPT. Looking to be the third entry into the poker space, we wanted to make sure we were doing something entirely different. We had spoken internally, coming up with a number of ideas, one of which was: "Well, what if we put the players in a real poker game that's not designed for television?" Well, it's designed for television but it's the kind of poker that's going on out there all the time.

We went into development on a show with Henry Orenstein. He's the gentleman that has the patents on the cameras in the poker table, and he knows every poker player there is. He's also played at the high stakes level, so when we decided to do this he was the logical person to talk to. He can get any poker player on the phone.

This is what these guys are doing anyway, and that's how it all came about. We were a little unsure whether or not players would actually show up with their money, but we're actually having to turn players away. Everybody wants to get into this game.

Justin West: So these players actually enter with their own money, then?

Kevin Belinkoff: It's their money. The minimum buy-in is $100,000, and they can re-buy for $50,000. The first time we came out Daniel Negreanu showed up with $1,000,000 cash on the table. Doyle Brunson, I think, brought $1,000,000 as well. Most players bring a few hundred thousand. And that's how they play in these games! It's the biggest game in town. They're very anxious for us to come back and do more because of the notoriety surrounding it. And the good players? They're gonna make a lot of money. Some folks lose a lot of money, but it's there to win back, too.

Justin West: What's makes High Stakes Poker stand out from the other shows?

Kevin Belinkoff: Well, it's not a tournament, and that's the biggest difference. In the WSOP the most you can lose is $10,000. We'll see players betting ten or twenty times that in a single hand. It changes the way the game is played because your risk is so much greater. You're not going to see players doing the same things, playing the same way as in a tournament. We had a number of really quality tournament players in the game, and most of them lost a lot of money because it's just a different type of game.

In addition to that, from a television perspective, there's no 'winner.' There's no 'big champion' at the end of the run. The game just continues, and it goes on and on. Some players are going to lose money and start chasing after it, trying to catch up. Other players - they can get up at any time! If they win a nice big pot they can leave. It's not considered good etiquette, but when you win $100,000 or $200,000 as some of these players do, they really don't care! They can come and go as they please.

Justin West: Typically a cash game like that is going to have a very considerable rake. Does GSN rake the game?

Kevin Belinkoff: No, the game isn't raked. That's one of the advantages that the players get in playing on television and showing up with their own money. So there is no rake on the game.

Justin West: So they're showing up with their own money, but aren't the players are compensated for their appearance on the show?

Kevin Belinkoff: There is a fee we pay them. We don't disclose what that is but it does not in any way cover the $100,000. We don't pay that kind of money. Players are paid an hourly rate that compensates them just for appearing on the show.

Justin West: Does GSN place any restrictions on players displaying logos on their apparel?

Kevin Belinkoff: We do, actually, because there are sponsors that pay us a significant amount of money to buy ad-time on the show, and we don't want to have a conflict with other companies. And we don't wanna give that away for free, either. So we do restrict the logos.

Justin West: When you're watching the WPT you'll notice there are really large gaps in the continuity sometimes. You might see the big blind stay on the same person for multiple hands in a row. What do you do to maintain the continuity of this show, given that it's a cash game?

Kevin Belinkoff: We do edit out hands. I mean, there's no question about that. We edit out fewer hands than you'll see edited out in a lot of the tournaments, and that's because often you're just not gonna get the action in the tournaments that you do in a cash game. You'll see, particularly early in the tournaments, that players are just gonna play really tight.

We showed the very first hand we ever shot: Daniel Negreanu has like a 2-3 off suit and makes a huge bet and wins the pot because nobody was willing to go after him. You're not gonna see that in a tournament very often. Or, if you do, it's gonna be an obvious play like that.

The general situation is that it's tougher for us to find the hands we want to take out... we just don't have time to show every hand. But there's always something good going on. And Gabe Kaplan, who's one of our commentators, is excellent. Because he's played in cash games like this, he can point out things that the average poker viewer like myself won't really recognize. So a hand that might seem otherwise ordinary may have a whole kind of subtext going on. So, as I say, it's more difficult for us to choose the hands that come out than the ones that go in.

High Stakes Poker airs Monday nights at 9:00pm (8:00 central) on GSN, with the new season kicking off on June 5.

Catch the second half of this interview next week! In closing, however, I'd just like to say that Mr. Belinkoff strikes me as a man that truly loves his job - very nice guy. The interview was a hell of a lot of fun! I must admit, however, that I found myself aching the entire time to bolt from my office chair and dart home to watch the episodes of High Stakes Poker I've recorded on Tivo.

Actually... now that this is done, that sounds like a good idea.

Part I | Part II

More Interviews

Justin West played poker since the age of 17, he spent more than a year earning a living on the green felt; a modest living, to be sure, but a living nonetheless. His aim was at one point to win the WSOP main event, thus causing Hell to freeze over. However, given his penchant for sin and his extreme dislike of cold weather, Justin has put that dream to rest.