Prop Bets, and Fight to the End!

Recently, The New York Times featured an article about professional poker players and their crazy side bets, often referred to as "prop bets." The article discussed Mike "The Mouth" Matusow's recent side bet with Ted Forrest, which saw Matusow betting $100,000 that he would hit his high-school weight of 181 pounds. Even though Matusow weighed 241 pounds when he made the bet, he managed to weigh in at 180.8 pounds in late May to win the bet. What do we poker players see in prop bets? These bets are a lot of fun to make, because they challenge our wits and perception. They give us a chance to win some cash, and in some cases, they provide a real challenge in a field outside of poker.

One famous prop bet was made by Doyle "Texas Dolly" Brunson against Gabe Kaplan (a fine poker player who's best known for being the star of Welcome Back, Kotter). The bet was that Kaplan, who had never golfed a day in his life, couldn't break 90 at La Costa Resort (in the San Diego area) from the blue tees within one year. The bet gave Kaplan five official attempts to succeed and win $100,000. Kaplan didn't make it, but when Brunson gave the same bet to World Champion of Poker Huck Seed for $100,000 in 1997, Seed shot an 89 on his second attempt to win the cash, and did it after only eight months of practice.

Right now, I have a three-year prop bet with Seed, in which he has to weigh less than 185 pounds each time I call him, twice a month, for a weigh-in. So far, Seed has made his weight every month for three months straight, to the tune of $10,000 a month ($30,000!) out of my pocket. Am I an idiot to make that bet? Understand that Seed is 6 feet 7 inches tall and almost 40 years old, and that he weighed 211 pounds when I made the bet with him. He already had looked thin to me at 211. What I failed to factor in was this: Seed would kill himself to win a bet against me!

Traditionally, many of these prop bets are made right at the poker table, by players who essentially say, "I don't believe you can do that!" Or, "I can do that better than you can." At the 2008 World Series of Poker, many prop bets were made in the VIP lounge during the tournament breaks. When we top pro poker players are on a 20-minute break, or a 90-minute dinner break, we congregate in the VIP room (you have to be invited to join, and then you pay $3,000 for six weeks for the privilege). Oftentimes we play Chinese poker for $500 a point or $1,000 a point, sometimes winning or losing $25,000 in 20 minutes. (My biggest win so far this year, at the time of writing this, was $55,000, and my biggest loss was $30,000.)

But let's get back to poker. There is a reason that the champions keep fighting until the bitter end: It's because they never stop believing that they can turn things around late in the game. We've seen great comebacks elsewhere in the sports world in the last few months. For example, the Kansas Jayhawks came back from an 11-point deficit in the last three minutes of the NCAA championship game against the Memphis Tigers. And the Boston Celtics came back from a huge deficit late in one of the games of the NBA finals to win the game and the title.

Just recently in this column, I was writing about the fact that I was struggling at the WSOP, but I also wrote that I would keep on fighting until the last card was dealt. I did keep on fighting, and lo and behold, in one of the last tournaments -- $1,500 H.O.R.S.E., which consists of hold'em, Omaha eight-or-better, razz, seven-card stud, and seven-card stud eight-or-better -- I took the lead at the end of day one with 46,400 in chips (we had started with 3,000 in chips). Then, I had the chip lead after day two with 287,500, and there were a mere 20 players remaining. Reasonably enough, at 6 a.m. Wisconsin time (Tuesday), I called my mom and dad and asked them to hop on a plane that day for the afternoon finale. They flew out, hoping to see me win my record 12th bracelet.



Play began at 3 p.m., and by 7:15 p.m., we were down to the final table, which in a H.O.R.S.E. tournament is the final eight players. I ran my chips up to more than 500,000, but at about 1:15 a.m. on Wednesday, I was eliminated in third place. Normally, I would be devastated, even though there were 800 players in the tournament and I had won $93,000 for my third-place finish. I've said in the past -- on ESPN, no less -- after a third-place finish, "Third place is unacceptable!"

Did I fail to win my 12th bracelet? Yes. Did my WSOP results seem like a failure to me in many ways? Yes. But at least I gave the poker world a jolt! I know that the poker world was at home watching my progress on the Internet as I went for a late WSOP victory. In fact, I'm happy that I finally made a good run at winning a bracelet in 2008. I'm happy to have had my parents and six of my best friends fly in for the occasion. With the main event yet to be played as I write this, I have four finishes in the money and two final tables, which is below my expectations of winning one bracelet. Of course, the main event would be the bracelet to win. I am a believer; now, if I can only beat about 6,900 entrants!