While poker players may spend a lot of mental resources calculating their optimal plays, some of them seem to lose that level of judgment when they start betting away from the poker table.
Here’s our collection of the dumbest poker prop bets on record.
1) Mike Noori will eat $1,000 worth of McDonald’s in 36 hours
Emerging on social media just a few days ago, our first story involves ingesting an insane amount of McDonald’s food. Only time will tell if this crazy bet makes poker player Mike Noori any richer, but we can bet that you won’t be seeing him close to any fast food restaurants when it’s over.
It seems impossible that anyone could eat $1,000 worth of McDonald’s in 36 hours. Who would even want to attempt it? Well, apparently, professional poker player Mike Noori is ready to give it a shot.
The man behind the idea is World Poker Tour (WPT) Executive Tour Director, Matt Savage. The specific stipulations are as follows:
- Salads can constitute only $200 of the total $1,000.
- Hot food must constitute at least $300 (at least $50 of this must be burgers).
- Drinks are not included.
- Everything that comes with an order must be eaten (minus the Happy Meal toy), and no items can be removed from orders.
- Additions to meals can be requested and counted (such as extra cheese, bacon, etc.)
- Everything must be eaten as is; it cannot be blended.
- Vomiting is accepted, but it cannot be forced or happen repeatedly.
- Food cannot come from locations with inflated prices, such as airport McDonald’s.
While it’s too early to tell how much this bet will net, the word on social media suggests that over $200k in bets have already been booked.
Whatever the ultimate outcome, Mike Noori is sure to beat out the following players who’ve made the news in previous years thanks to their prop bets.
2) Brian Zembic gets paid $100k for breast implants
Brian Zembic, usually known as a poker and backgammon player, got together with a group of friends. After some talking, there was a $100k pot on the table saying he would not get breast implants sized 36C or more.
With the money on the table, Zembic, never one to back down from a challenge, consulted a doctor and actually went under the knife to realise his rack and take off with his payoff. He reportedly still wears his pair. Women find it attractive, or so he says. In any case, $100k cannot be unattractive.
2) Choosing battles with ping-pong paddles
Amarillo Slim once bet that he could defeat the well-known table tennis champ, Bobby Riggs, using anything for a paddle. To Riggs’ surprise, Slim showed up with two cast-iron skillets. Riggs ended up losing the match, but once word got out, people kept their eyes on his hustle.
Afterwards, a man named Lefty figured that, if he brought a ringer while Slim was still practicing with skillets, Slim wouldn’t have a chance. Lefty’s bet to Slim was, basically “If I bring a player, will you play against him?”
His mistake, though, was thinking that Slim would continue simply continue practicing with cooking equipment. On game day, Slim walked into the room and headed straight to the vending machine. He bought two bottles of Coke (this was when you drank Coke out of glass bottles). After finishing the delicious beverage, he walked over and handed the other bottle to his opponent. Little did Lefty know that Slim was wise to his game. It just so happened that he had been practicing with glass bottles the entire time. And so went down Slim’s little hustle.
3) Johnny Moss vs the bar room brawler
As legend has it, one of Johnny Moss’s friends made a bet with him in a bar that he would not start a ruckus with a well-known bar room brawler. The pride of the amateur fighter was that he had never lost a fight in his life. Others were also skeptical of Johnny’s friend’s chances, attesting to the fact that the large man had never been hurt, but had hurt many others. Being a small, but gambling, man, Moss took on the bet, especially since there was a $15,000 pot at stake, to his $1,000. Of course the big bar fighter had no idea he was part of a game. Moss tried to take him on from behind. Although Moss was good at betting, he was not so good at jabs and uppercuts. He went down and spent the next two weeks in the hospital with broken bones and other injuries. Friends said that the beating could have killed him.
Amazingly Moss did not show any regret for his decision. He remained proud of having taken on the 15 to 1 odds, along with the chance of losing his life. “I had to take that bet,” he said, when his gambling buddy visited him at hospital. One wonders how many flowers he received.
4) Swimming with the sharks
A couple weeks ago, Fredy Torres jumped into a pool full of sharks for $1,000. After he came out unscathed, it seemed that the sharks were not too menacing, but we’ll see if anyone has the coconuts to repeat that.
Actually, this was not the first incident of a poker player to go swimming with sharks. At the PCA in 2008, Tom Dwan paid another player $5,000 to jump into a shark tank. Arguably, however, that bet was more daring, as he had to touch the bottom of the pool before coming back. It seems that one should be very careful about the terms of the bet before jumping in.
5) Gross $550k pot at the end of the rainbow
Poker pro Jeff Gross has answered the age-old question of exactly how much money it would take to have someone else design a major feature on one’s body. According to Dan Bilzerian, Gross accepted a bet to have a permanent tattoo placed on his back… of his friends’ choosing. The friends made the gay choice of a large rainbow across his back (but they might have decided on a swastika for all he knew) and Gross went in to have it done. He wears it to this day. In any case, Gross’ bright back earned him $550,000.
As you can see in the picture, Gross went all out. However, the terms of the bet stipulated that he could not ever have it removed. Anyone might hesitate at the price of a $550k tattoo removal bill, no matter what his grandchildren might think. Nobody who bet against him is afraid of Gross skipping out on payment if he does not keep up his part of the deal, as he has accrued a ridiculously large fortune as the manager of the Skylar Capital hedge fund.
Article by Craig Bradshaw
