I just noticed this was on and they were showing the first match. I didn't find a complete list of those participating but I did find a few names:

<table class="bdy" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="770"><tbody><tr valign="top"><td width="440"> 10-time World Series of Poker champion and Poker Superstars 2 winner Johnny Chan
Nine-time WSOP bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth
Five-time bracelet winner Ted Forres
Four-time bracelet winner and two-time FSN live-event champion Phil Ivey
Five of the last six WSOP main event champions — Chris "Jesus" Ferguson (2000), Carlos Mortensen (2001), Chris Moneymaker (2003), Greg Raymer (2004) and Joseph Hachem (2005), plus 2005 WSOP Tournament of Champions winner Mike Matusow and PSIT 1 champion Gus HansenAlso, multiple WSOP bracelet winners Daniel Negreanu, Barry Greenstein and Jennifer Harman and 10 other top-flight players fill up an unparalleled field.
</td></tr></tbody></table>

Looks like an interesting field.

I think of all the poker broadcasts I've seen, the Poker Superstars format has never seemed to work. Isn't it made-for-TV, in the sense that the players are competing for prizes, but not playing their own money?

It certainly feels that way, since the play seems erratic and uneven -- basically like they don't really care that much. Plus the format where the players play a few rounds and earn points for finishes leads to tables where someone suffers a big hit early and then phones in the tournament by going all-in with K7o.

Maybe they'll tweak the format for the new season and spice it up a bit.

Poker Superstars 2 was basicallly push all your chips in preflop and win a coinflip, there was no postflop play, it was a joke. I didn't see the first episode of season 3, but I heard the starting chips were 300k and the blinds started at 10k and 20k so if that's true it'll be much of the same as last year. This definitely wouldn't favor players like Hellmuth and Ferguson. Also, there is no live crowd in poker superstars 2 to add some excitement so I hope they added some kind of crowd to give it a better feel.