You Wanna Bet?

You would be surprised – somewhat, anyway – at all of the crazy bets that are made amongst high-stakes poker players. I've decided to write this "Hand of the Week" about some of these fun bets.

"Chip" Reese bet Yosh Nakano $5,000 on whose bag would come up first on the baggage claim belt in Australia – Chip won.

Russ Hamilton bet me $400 a hole at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club in Portland. He must love my action, because he made the bet with me over the phone from his home in Las Vegas the day before we were to play in Portland. We were playing double on birdies and I had him down $1,200 with four holes to play. He birdied three of the last four holes ($2,400) to "flip me" and win $1,200. At least I can say that Pumpkin Ridge was awesome!

Mike Matusow bet me $10,000 on the position of Robert Varkonyi when he played a huge pot with John Shipley, in which Varkonyi's J-J was up against Shipley's A-J at the 2002 World Series of Poker (WSOP) final table; Matusow bet they were on the button and in the small blind, respectively, and Mike was right for $10,000 of my money!

Huck Seed bet me $10,000 that he could float in any "body of water" for 24 hours; he was allowed to wear a wet suit. Huck lost, but he may have won the bet had he tried to do it in the Dead Sea. Also, Huck flew to Madison, Wisconsin, to play 9-ball against me for $2,000 a game in my basement on my beautiful Italian cloth pool table; I lost $24,000 in one night.

I bet Yosh Nakano on the Academy Awards in 1992 or so (the year that Marissa Tomei won best supporting actress for My Cousin Vinny), and lost $12,000 in the process – although I did win the first $2,000 bet of the night when Tomei won!

A group of players, who shall remain nameless, bet $10,000 a "prop" while they played $80-$160 hold'em at UltimateBet! A "prop" occurs when someone's three or more preselected cards hit the board. For example, my prop cards might be J-9-4. If three of them hit the board (J-9-9, J-9-4, J-J-4, and so on) at any point in a hold'em hand, I collect $10,000. If four hit the board, I collect $25,000. And if five hit the board, I collect $50,000. The key to the game, however, is that sometimes players "sleep" their props, missing them altogether, thus costing themselves a lot of money. Therein lies the skill of the game.

Doyle Brunson and Mike Sexton played an $80,000 nassau (five ways) scramble against Huck Seed and Howard Lederer at TPC Summerlin; Brunson and Sexton played the red tees and Lederer and Seed played the blue tees.

According to Doyle, he and Sexton were huge favorites in the match, hitting second-shot irons into every par 5 and flip wedges into every par 4. In spite of this, Doyle said Huck and Howard played like "supermen" and were ahead on the 16th green and were staring at a short birdie putt to lock up a big win when Doyle knocked in a 50-footer for a birdie for his team. To their credit, Howard (Bub) and Huck still made their putt. However, the Bub/Huck team then proceeded to implode with bogies on the 17th and 18th holes to lose $160,000, when pars on those two last holes would have won them at least $160,000.

In August 1999, I bet Tiger Woods to win at 6-to-1 odds against Bill Gazes for $1,000 a bet. Luckily, I bet it three weeks in a row and won $18,000 – go, Tiger, go!

A couple of years back, I bet Curtis Bibb that David Duval would win at 12-to-1 odds after Duval was 10 strokes back going into the weekend. I checked the scores on Saturday night and gave up all hope, only to find out that Duval shot 59 on Sunday to win!

Mike Matusow and I bet $5,000 on the position I was in during a hand at the 2003 WSOP with 27 players left. The only thing was, we bet one week after the fact, and I hadn't slept all week because the hand had haunted me – not to mention that I had just finished writing a column about it. Of course, Mike lost that one, but he figured it out just in time not to lose $10,000, as I was in the process of kicking up the bet when it dawned on him that he'd lost!

I lost $1,000 to Matusow after betting that A-K offsuit was a favorite over A-K suited. I hear you laughing over that one, and it does seem counterintuitive, but I was going on a "fact" I'd heard a few months earlier. The "fact" was wrong and I lost.

David Grey bet Doyle $10,000 a tournament in last-longer bets at the WSOP a couple of years back; Doyle won the first eight bets.

Then, there's Amarillo Slim's classic bet. He bet several gentleman $38,000 (a ton of money at the time) that he could hit a golf ball at least one mile. By the way, Slim's book, Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People, is really excellent! The ground rules were set: The ball had to go one mile, and not downhill; he couldn't hit it off a mountain; he couldn't hit it out of an airplane; he couldn't hit it into a moving boxcar; in fact, there were three pages of legal paper filled with conditions. So, Slim went out to a frozen lake in the dead of winter, and teed it up downwind! Two of the chagrined gentleman followed the bright-orange golf ball on snowmobiles for about a mile and a half. But this ball, under these conditions, was like the energizer bunny – still going, and going, and going!

Finally, I want to mention Doyle Brunson's weight bet (getting laid some odds), in which he won $1 million from Lyle Berman, Chip Reese, and Bobby Baldwin, that ended at the 2003 WSOP! Congrats, Doyle; you're looking great with all that weight off, an extra million dollars in the bank, and a 2003 WSOP bracelet on your wrist.

I hope you enjoyed this Hand of the Week. Good luck playing your hands this week.Editor's note: Phil's new book, Play Poker Like the Pros, is now available through Card Player. Phil can often be found playing poker at UltimateBet.com, table "philhellmuth."