KEY TAKEAWAYS
Few televised cash-game hands have been replayed as often as the one Daniel Negreanu and Gus Hansen played on High Stakes Poker in 2006. Both men flopped a set, the turn gave Hansen four of a kind, and by the river the two had built a pot of $575,700 — the largest the show had seen at that point, according to Card Player. The hand aired in Season 2, episode 11, taped at the Palms in Las Vegas, and it was played with the players’ own money rather than tournament chips. The Las Vegas Sun called it likely the largest single cash-game hand ever captured on tape at the time. Twenty years later, PokerGO sat both players down to watch it again for a series called That Poker Hand. This article explains what High Stakes Poker was, retells the hand street by street using published accounts, looks at why it became so famous, and sets out what it cost the losing player — along with the details that sources record differently.
High Stakes Poker in 2006: Real Money on Television
High Stakes Poker premiered on GSN on January 16, 2006, as Card Player reported on the day of its debut. The first season was filmed at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas, the minimum buy-in was $100,000, and the hosts were Gabe Kaplan and A.J. Benza. The players included Doyle Brunson, Daniel Negreanu, Barry Greenstein, Jennifer Harman and Johnny Chan, alongside wealthy amateurs willing to put up the buy-in.
What set the show apart was the format. It televised a cash game, not a tournament: what players won, they kept, and what they lost was their own money. A PokerTV.com feature from January 2006 reported that GSN developed the idea with Henry Orenstein, the inventor of the in-table hole-card camera, because a high-stakes cash game had not yet been put on television in that way. Players could come and go and rebuy at any time.
The second season moved to the Palms. Episode 11 first aired in August 2006 — Card Player dates it to August 16 — with a lineup that included Negreanu, Hansen, Doyle Brunson, Antonio Esfandiari, Barry Greenstein and Eli Elezra. The blinds were $300 and $600. The Las Vegas Sun added a detail that explains how a single pot could grow so large: many of the biggest cash games on the Las Vegas Strip capped pot sizes, but the High Stakes Poker no-limit game had no cap. According to the Sun, the hand was the 114th dealt on the second of two days of taping. Hansen, the Sun noted, is a native of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Daniel Negreanu vs Gus Hansen, Street by Street
The details below follow Card Player’s 2026 recap of the hand and the Las Vegas Sun’s 2006 account, with the pot sizes cross-checked against Club Poker’s transcription of the broadcast. Where the sources disagree, the difference is noted.
Preflop: A Small Three-Bet With Sixes
Hansen opened to $2,100 holding 5♦ 5♣. Negreanu, in middle position, three-bet to $5,000 with 6♠ 6♥. Antonio Esfandiari folded A♦ Q♣ from the big blind, and Hansen called. Looking back on the hand for PokerGO in 2026, Negreanu described the small three-bet with a middle pair as unusual for the time — the kind of play, he said, that “wasn’t a thing” back then.
The Flop: Set Over Set
The flop came 9♣ 6♦ 5♥ in Card Player’s account, giving both players three of a kind: Negreanu a set of sixes, Hansen a set of fives. Hansen checked, Negreanu bet $8,000, and Hansen check-raised to $26,000. Negreanu just called. According to the Las Vegas Sun, Negreanu was a 94 percent favorite at that point, with Hansen at 4 percent and the remaining 2 percent accounting for split-pot outcomes. Hansen needed one of the two remaining cards to be the last five in the deck.
The Turn: The Case Five
The turn was the 5♠. It gave Hansen four of a kind and gave Negreanu a full house, sixes full of fives — a hand that would beat almost anything except what Hansen actually held. Hansen bet $24,000, and Negreanu called again rather than raising. Club Poker’s transcription of the broadcast puts the pot at $111,700 going to the river. Hansen later described his own thinking at that moment plainly: “I have quads. I’m not going to lose this hand.”
The River: Check, Bet, All In
The river was the 8♠. Hansen checked, and Negreanu bet $65,000. Hansen then moved all in, raising $167,000 more, which brought the pot to $408,700, according to the Las Vegas Sun. Negreanu stood up, asked for a count and took his time; the broadcast captured him talking through the hands that could beat him. He called, Hansen turned over the fives, and the pot of $575,700 was pushed to Hansen in a mix of chips and cash.
The table below summarizes the action as reported by the sources.
| Street | Board | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Preflop | — | Hansen opens to $2,100; Negreanu three-bets to $5,000; Hansen calls |
| Flop | 9♣ 6♦ 5♥ | Hansen checks; Negreanu bets $8,000; Hansen raises to $26,000; Negreanu calls |
| Turn | 5♠ | Hansen bets $24,000; Negreanu calls |
| River | 8♠ | Hansen checks; Negreanu bets $65,000; Hansen moves all in for $167,000 more; Negreanu calls |
Read together, the four streets show how a hand with two strong holdings can build a huge pot quickly: neither player had a reason to slow down until the river, and by then most of the money was already in the middle.
Why the Hand Became High Stakes Poker’s Biggest Pot Story
The first reason is size. At $575,700, it was the biggest pot in High Stakes Poker history at the time, according to Card Player, and the Las Vegas Sun wrote that a pot of more than half a million dollars was rarely contested anywhere in Las Vegas. Unlike a tournament broadcast, every dollar in that pot was real money changing hands.
The second reason is the shape of the hand. Set over set, followed by a one-outer on the turn, is the textbook definition of a cooler — a situation where both players hold hands too strong to fold. Viewers did not need to understand advanced strategy to grasp what had happened: one player was far ahead, and then the deck turned the hand around.
The third reason is that the story kept being retold. In 2013, Card Player reported that Hansen revived the hand on Twitter, years after it aired. In 2026, PokerGO, which now holds the full High Stakes Poker archive, filmed both players reliving it, and Negreanu said: “This is one hand that sort of exemplifies my High Stakes Poker career.” The show itself also returned: PokerGO revived High Stakes Poker in December 2020, with Kaplan and Benza back as hosts, according to PokerNews, and TheWrap reported that PokerGO also acquired the original GSN library.
The Cost of a Cooler
The hand is usually replayed as entertainment, but the numbers are worth stating plainly. Based on the bets reported by the sources, Negreanu put about $287,000 of his own money into a single pot and lost all of it on the turn of one card. On a cash-game show there was no prize pool and no consolation pay jump; the money simply moved across the table.
Even the winner did not describe the hand as a masterpiece. In the 2026 PokerGO revisit, Hansen said he thought he could have played it better and should have chosen his turn and river bet sizes more carefully, so that Negreanu had less chance to get away. Card Player’s 2013 report noted that losing big pots on the show had been a familiar experience for Negreanu, who had a difficult time winning on High Stakes Poker over the years.
For most viewers, the lesson is about variance. A hand where one player is a 94 percent favorite can still be lost, and a game with no pot cap means one card can decide hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Common Myths About the Hand
Myth: it was the biggest pot in poker history. It was the biggest pot in High Stakes Poker history at the time, and the Las Vegas Sun called it likely the largest cash-game hand ever captured on tape in 2006. It is not the show’s record today: Card Player reports that record is a $1,412,500 pot won by Alan Keating in an episode aired in spring 2025.
Myth: it was a tournament hand. It was played in a cash game with a $100,000 minimum buy-in format, where the chips and cash on the table were real money.
Myth: every account of the hand matches. Card Player gives the flop as 9♣ 6♦ 5♥, while a French account published by RMC Sport lists the suits of the nine and the six the other way around. The ranks, the hole cards and the betting agree across sources.
Related Stories From the Felt
Several other FeltTales stories connect to this one. High Stakes Poker was built on the same technology described in how the hole-card camera turned poker into TV, and one of the players at the table that night is the subject of our profile of Doyle Brunson’s career and legacy. For another story about enormous cash-game stakes, read Andy Beal’s heads-up battles with The Corporation, and for a televised hand that changed the game in a different way, revisit the Moneymaker bluff that sparked the poker boom.
Frequently Asked Questions
Sources & References
- Card Player — Daniel Negreanu, Gus Hansen Break Down Iconic HSP Hand (2026)
- Las Vegas Sun — Quads beat out 6s over 5s to claim a $575,700 pot (2006)
- Club Poker — High Stakes Poker: Gus Hansen vs Daniel Negreanu in $575K Pot
- Card Player — High-Stakes Poker, A $100,000 Cash Game, Premiers on TV Tonight (2006)
- PokerTV.com — Game Show Network’s “High Stakes Poker” (2006)
- Card Player — Gus Hansen Needles Daniel Negreanu About $575,000 Monster Cooler From 2006 (2013)
- PokerNews — High Stakes Poker Season 8 Debuts; Gabe Kaplan & AJ Benza Are Back (2020)
- TheWrap — Former GSN Series ‘High Stakes Poker’ to Return on PokerGO (2020)
- RMC Sport — Pot gigantesque: Negreanu vs Hansen, full vs carré (2012)
