Grab a tissue because you are entering the nose-bleed zone. If you’re looking
for the best online poker sites offering high stakes action you’ve come to the
right place. As you surely already know, the high stakes action has a tendency
to jump around from site to site as big money players attempt to chase the
bigger fish.

For this reason, we constantly monitor and update our list of sites offering
high stakes action. By ‘offering high stakes action’ we don’t just mean they
have tables ready for action. We mean that they actually have players actively
playing at the higher stakes. If you’re looking for high stakes poker action on
the web, click one of the sites we have listed below and enter the nose-bleed
zone.

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1. Polk returns to live poker after huge win against Negreanu. High Stakes Poker features Polk getting back to live play for the first time since the initial session against Negreanu. That took place in November and was also on PokerGO. The streaming service brought back the iconic poker show in 2020.The eight season features some of the biggest names in poker at the PokerGO Studio at Aria in.
2. High stakes poker games online revolve around the fish. If there are no fish in the game, then the game usually breaks. Sometimes the game will start back up, or it may move to another site where there are more fish. Because the fish are so important, other factors that we would normally look at when evaluating a site become less important.

Keep in mind that high stakes games don’t typically run around the clock like
low to mid stakes. You may need to check back at peak times or sit to get a game
started and filled. It’s also possible that the sites running high stakes might
not be based out of your country. This isn’t an issue but just means that peak
times will vary.

What Makes a Great High Stakes Poker Site

There’s always a reason that certain sites have the high stakes action and
others don’t. Below we’ve outlined some of the criteria we think makes a site a
great place for high stakes action.

Poker Videos High Stakes Poker

Action

Action! Action! Action! The number one thing that makes a high stakes poker
site great is the amount of action it offers. If the site just has a bunch of
empty tables with one shark sitting and waiting for fish, it’s not that great of
a site. In fact, it’s downright terrible. You want to be playing at a site with
full tables filled with fish ready to donate their stacks to you.

You want to be at sites where several tables are running at all different
levels of high stakes. When this happens, not only do you get the action you
want but you can get multiple games going or game select. Both of these options
are great depending on what you’re looking for with your high stakes action.

User Interface Is Less Important

High stakes poker games online revolve around the fish. If there are no fish
in the game, then the game usually breaks. Sometimes the game will start back
up, or it may move to another site where there are more fish. Because the fish
are so important, other factors that we would normally look at when evaluating a
site become less important.

High Stakes Poker Free

One of the biggest is the user interface.

You bet you would. Ideally, we would hope the fish would gravitate
to the sites with better features but they usually aimlessly wander the poker
landscape. It’s not uncommon to find them gravitating to a site with a less than
ideal interface because they like a slot machine the site also offers or
something else silly like that.

Fish are all about entertainment and usually couldn’t care less about what
the interface of the site looks like. As long as they are having fun, they are
happy. Thankfully the industry has been around for long enough that even the
sites with subpar interfaces are bearable.

Deposit and Withdrawal Limits

Most online poker sites have deposit and withdrawal limits that are plenty
high enough for the casual and even low to mid stakes pros. The problem when you
get to the higher stakes is that you need the ability to move large sums of
money around. Your deposits are going to be larger, and hopefully, your
withdrawals will be even bigger.

Often, sites will offer special methods of
depositing and withdrawing for higher stakes players. They’ll also raise the
caps on limits to be more accommodating. These will not be posted on the site
and can only be accessed by contacting customer support and requesting some
special considerations.

While we said that chasing fish trumps everything, it does not trump this.
Winning a large sum of money is great but becomes a lot less great when you find
out you can only get it off a little bit at a time. Make sure that when you talk
to support about raising your deposit limits that you get a clear answer on what
they can do for you with withdrawals. A lot of times they will open up special
bank wire and check options for their higher stakes players. You have to ask,
though.

Trust and Reliability

These are last on our list but are the most important. It does not matter if
you find a site with the biggest fish and the biggest deposit and withdrawal
limits if you can’t trust them. You will be dealing with large sums of money.
You need to know without a shadow of a doubt that the site you are dealing with
can be trusted.

Thankfully, our team does the heavy lifting here and vets every site before
we let them onto our recommended list. We don’t allow sites to pay us for better
recommendations or better reviews. This ensures that a shady site can’t find its
way onto that list. If you’re very in tune with the industry, you will notice
that we don’t list some sites that are currently offering high stakes action.
This is because we refuse to put a site on here that we don’t trust ourselves.

As a high stakes player, you deserve to know that your money you’re playing
with online is safe and protected.

Getting Started

If you’re ready to get to the felt and start crushing the high stakes, check
out one (or all) of the sites we recommended above. As the games move often, you
may want to check out each of the sites to try and find the one that offers the
limits you desire as well as the player pools you’re looking for. You may also
want to check back often as we do update when we find sites offering high stakes
poker action. There’s nothing wrong with looking for the softest games. Why make
things harder on yourself?

Table Of Contents

'High Stakes Poker' was back last night on PokerGO, but in a departure from the past few episodes, it featured a mostly new crew of players.

Gone were the likes of Tom Dwan and Jason Koon, who were at the center of much of the prior action, and in their places were Phil Ivey and Doug Polk, making a rare appearance outside his favored online battleground. A few holdovers like Phil Hellmuth and Jake Daniels were back, though.

Action started off at $200/$400 and pretty much without a straddle the entire time.

Here's how stacks looked early on:

Hellmuth Bluffed Off of Kings

Hellmuth opened the action with a limp from early position holding . He opted not to spring the trap preflop, though, just calling when James Bord popped it to $2,000 a couple of seats over in the cutoff with .

Everyone else folded, and the flop came . Bord continued with a decent-sized bet of $3,000 and Hellmuth stuck around for the turn. Hellmuth checked again and Bord barreled big with $15,000, more than the $11K pot.

'I'm just gonna bluff it off now,' he declared.

'This kinda doesn't feel fair,' Hellmuth griped. 'Man. I almost stuck the whole hundred [thousand] in before the flop.'

'I wish you did.'

'I don't have anything at all,' Hellmuth said, flashing the kings and mucking.

'Good fold,' Bord said, casually tossing in his rags, much to the delight of the rest of the players.

'Good play Bordy,' Hellmuth allowed.

Bluffing into a Straight Flush

Hellmuth limped in late position with , Brandon Steven made it $2,100 in the small blind with , and Bord called with in the big.

Hellmuth let them go heads up to . Steven bet $3,000 and Bord called. Steven nailed the on the turn and bet again with $5,000. Bord responded with a sizable raise to $17,000. Steven stuck around with a slowplay but Bord didn't put any more money in on the river, so Steven cursed and showed his nutted hand with a smile to win the $45K pot.

'Didn't have another barrel in ya, huh?' he asked.

'I had value,' Bord replied.

Old-Fashioned Three-Barrel from Dwan

Steven opened to $1,100 early with and faced a three-bet to $4,000 from Dwan, who had recently sat with what looked like $100K, on the button with .

He peeled and they went to a flop of . Dwan flicked in a $5,000 chip and they continued to the . Steven check-called another barrel of $14,000, and the river bricked off with the . Dwan had $62K left, a bit over the pot, but he opted for a smaller bet of $30,000.

Steven snapped it off and Dwan could only shake his head and show his bricked combo draw, with Steven winning a pot worth $107,000, the biggest of the session thus far.

Aces Cracked?

John Andress took Phil Ivey's seat and hadn't been down long before he looked at the dream: on the button. Bord already had opened to $1,100 with , so Andress made it $3,500.

They went heads up to . Andress bet small with $2,500 and Bord check-raised to $10,000. Andress peeled and the turn was a . Bord fired a pot-sized bet of $30,000 and Andress continued to the river, which brought the .

Andress had only about $57K left with almost $90K in the pot, and he snap-called it off when Bord shoved. Bord knew immediately something had gone wrong.

'A cooler then?' he asked as he tossed his sevens in. 'Yeah.'

Ship the $203,200 pot to Andress for the dreamiest start possible.

Massive Cooler

Hellmuth opened in the hijack to $1,100 with the , Bord called on the button with , and Polk tagged along out of the big blind with .

The flop arrived to give Polk and Hellmuth straights. But it was Bord putting in money with $2,000 after they checked to him. Polk made it $7,000 and Hellmuth moved all in, splashing a pile of $5,000 chips casually in there.

'How much is that?' Polk said with a smile. 'I'm almost certainly calling but let's just see how much it is first.

'This is insane. It's just such a monster raise. Phil, whaddya got over there?'

It was $97,200 and Polk winced as he continued thinking.

'Phil, I'm considering making a very big laydown here,' Polk said. 'Very, very big laydown.'

'I mean, I could easily have...' Hellmuth trailed off.

'What could you easily have?' Polk asked skeptically. 'You just bet a lot into very, very little.'

'I could have a set.'

'Could you have a set? I don't think you could have a set here. Come on Phil, you're better than that.'

'I could have the blockers, the tens.'

'God, now you're busting out blockers. If I fold this and I'm wrong, oh my f****** lord.'

'I mean I think I'm either dead — and I think I'm dead a lot, given this — or like, you just have a ton of equity against me. This is gonna look so dumb if this is...this is completely absurd. He has to get through him then he has to get through me. Nah, this is just a fold.'

He tossed his hand in, much to the shock of some of the other players. Steven in particular wondered how he could let it go.

'If he's got queen-ten, he's got queen-ten. Pay the man and let's go on to the next hand.'

Commentator Gabe Kaplan called it the greatest laydown in the history of the show.

Relive the hand here:

Stacks to End the Episode

Remember, High Stakes Poker will air every Wednesday but is only available to PokerGO subscribers. If you’re not currently subscribed, you can get a monthly subscription for $14.99, a three-month plan for $29.99, and an annual subscription for $99.99.

_{*Images courtesy of PokerGO.}

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  Doug PolkGabe KaplanHigh Stakes PokerPhil HellmuthPokerGOCash Poker

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  Phil HellmuthGabe KaplanDoug Polk