With the benefit of hindsight, think of the worst time in poker history to create a television show based around the best card game in the world.

If you answered June 2010 to July 2011, then congratulations. Sadly for this week’s Poker on Screen show, the PokerStars Big Game came along exactly between those dates and was virtuakly destined to fail from the very first deal.

When the Big Game came along, High Stakes Poker was already a hugely successful show format. The idea of the biggest names in poker sitting down with six-figure stacks, playing for huge pots was a thrilling one to an already captive audience. Why wouldn’t the biggest poker brand in the world try to capitalize on that by creating a show that was very nearly the same but with one exciting new twist?

The PokerStars Big Game was tied to the ‘Stars NAPT (North American Poker Tour), which in the end damned the whole premise. More on that later, but it was a show that deserved a lot longer than it got on air.