All Posts Tagged: Prop Bets and Challenges

Judging by the amount of time railbirds spend begging for $5 we assume there are some low-stakes players out there desperate for a bit of that online cake.

We've decided to do something about it by putting up not $5 but $20, just for picking the top three WSOP Main Event finishers in the correct order.

There's not much more to it. Pick the 2009 November Nine trifecta and you've got yourself $20 to do with what you will.

I will personally ship it to you online. The thing is, I'm putting up my own monies and if through some freak occurrence like 100 people pick it right I'm not putting myself on the hook for $2k. The $20 will be split between everyone who picks correctly.

The Rules:

• You may only vote once.
• You MUST leave a valid email on the comment form. To claim the cash you will have to respond to an email sent to that address.
• You must leave your picks in this format:
  
  1-Ivey,2-Shulman,3-Buchman

Good luck and be sure to tell your friends to come and give it a shot.

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Don't blame Matt Marafioti if he looks a little under the weather today - blame durrrr.

Late Monday night at the Main Event of the 2009 World Series of Poker, Marafioti and Tom Dwan got into a little bit of the old propbetaments.

durrrr bet Marafioti (he's "ADZ" online) $5,000 that Marafioti couldn't drink ten shots of Patron tequila in fifteen minutes.

Marafioti took up the challenge, and with Dwan's assurance to the tournament director of a $5k charitable donation should ADZ happen to spew in the tournament area, the shots were delivered and the game was afoot.

ADZ downed the shots in ample time and durrrr paid his debt with a $5k Bellagio marker.

But it didn't end there.

The shots made Marafioti a bit drunk and thus a bit rowdy and within a few minutes he'd incurred a penalty for swearing. It was enough to convince him to call it a night.

He left his 56k on the table in the Miranda Room and headed off into the night, his safety assured by Dwan, who'd paid the tournament director a couple bills to ensure his rival got home alright.

Rumor has it, however, that ADZ spent the night in a bathtub at Bellagio, puking up his ever-loving guts.

But he's back for Day 2b and so is durrrr. Both players have been seated near each other in the Brasilia Room for the early levels, so stay tuned for a potential rematch.

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For some poker players, gambling is as essential for their survival as food is. You'll see players gambling on nearly anything.

The other day Tim Phan and Roland de Wolfe were in the middle of a table redraw and saw the perfect opportunity to sneak in some extra-curricular activities.

First it was a heads up Baccarat hand for $5,000. The cards were scrambled in front of the dealer and both players reached in and picked two cards.

Phan turned over J 8 while Rollie turned up T 6. Roland tried to draw another card but Phan stopped him and apprised him of the fact that J 8 is a natural. Game over, Tim Phan up $5,000.

The floorman was trying to get the guys moving.

"Alright guys, come on let's go," he said.

"Ok double or nothing red or black," de Wolfe blurted.

"Fine, pick a card quick," Phan said.

Roland picked a card.

"Red or black?" Phan asked frantically.

"Red!" de Wolfe said and rolled over the 3 to win.

"Damn, I was just up $5,000," Phan said as he gathered his chips and headed to his new table.

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Erick Lindgren may have won his first bracelet and the Player of the Year race at the 2008 WSOP, but he still lost a bundle of money betting on the Lakers in the NBA finals.

The Boston Celtics beat Los Angeles in six games last year and Lindgren joined several players who took a bath on that one, including Phil Ivey.

This year, however, the Lakers are back in The Finals and are the clear favorite over the Orlando Magic.

At the break of the $10k Mixed Championship, where he's nursing a short stack, Lindgren told PokerListings.com he's betting on the Lakers again.

They have a 1-0 lead and Lindgren is feeling quite confident the series is theirs for the taking.

But when PL.com suggested the Lakers are the kind of team that often has a letdown after a big win, Lindgren agreed, saying Kobe Bryant's boys may even lose two in Orlando.

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Mike Matusow is busy right now signing copies of his book, Check-raising the Devil, just outside the Amazon Room.

His bid to shift all his stock has been spiced up by a prop bet Matusow made that he would get rid of the lot.

He's hustling hard to win the bet, telling dawdling passer-bys, "Look either buy a book...or f**k off!"

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Jean-Robert Bellande has been tweeting his bankroll swings after going broke sometime last month. To save you non-twitterers the time of digging through his archive we're bringing you the highlights right here.

When we last left off Bellande was on a downswing that had knocked his roll down to $3,900 from its highest point of $11,000. That was on May 4th and since then he's had a few ups and downs before bottoming out at $200.

Broke and living like a millionaire is Bellande's credo and so far he's lived up to it.

It's still a mystery how much of this whole thing is on the level. It seems hard to believe he would be able to maintain the lifestyle with a legitimate "bankroll" of $200.

Bellande's Twitter account has 700 followers at the moment but given the way things can blow up that could change pretty quick. We'll just have to wait and see if anyone really cares.

Here are the noteworthy tweets from the last two weeks.

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Jean-Robert Bellande is a gambler, whether it be poker, pit games, prop bets or television game shows. He went bust a few weeks ago and now you can follow his bankroll rebuilding on Twitter.

Twitter's explosion in the poker world isn't exactly noteworthy, given that every subculture in the world seems to be jumping on the bandwagon.

Twitter's real strength though, its versatility, has lent itself to poker pros and media who spend their lives on the road.

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Prize for winning the 2008 WSOP Main Event: $9,119,517. Prize for winning the PL.com WSOP Final-Table Fantasy Challenge: your very own PokerListings chip set. Difference in excitement between the two however? Negligible. Very negligible.

The inaugural PokerListings Final-Table Fantasy Challenge is now officially open, and to say the gauntlet has been thrown down by the first few entries would be pure speculation, as we have yet to receive any.

We certainly expect them to be gauntlet-throwing-down worthy however. Kelly Kim ftw?

How the challenge works:

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The rage in Vegas has nothing to do with poker at all this summer. It's all about the prop bets. At the start of the series, we saw two much slimmer people than usual, Sorrel Mizzi and Roland De Wolfe had a $25k weight loss bet, though it seemed Mizzi was the one taking it the more seriously, and he easily won.

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Sports betting and poker have quite a symbiotic relationship. Poker players love action and they can always find it in the major American sports - football, baseball and basketball.

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The first two WSOP events have been quite disappointing. In the $10k Pot-Limit Hold'em event I got off to a really good start by winning big pots in situations where I had my opponents drawing to very few outs.

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During the first part of our roundtable discussion with Sorel Mizzi we spoke about his transition from tournaments to high-stakes cash as well as the importance of a balanced life when it comes to being an online professional. In the second and final segment we'll find out what Imper1um's up to for the World Series of Poker and hear about a few recent prop bets he's had with other big-name players.

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Prop betting and poker go hand in hand like Canadians and hockey, and poker players are renowned for their gamble. Here are, arguably, the top five prop bets of all time.

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A couple weeks after Copenhagen my friend Roland De Wolfe invited me out for a one-week skiing trip with him and his parents in Zermatt, Switzerland.

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Seven-Card Stud is a weird game, don't you think?

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The cash games are still hot and heavy and I'm still avoiding the smaller tournaments at the LAPC.

But today I wanted to talk about a subject many people may not understand: Crossbooking!

Crossbooking is a bet between two players that raises the stakes between them. In tournaments, it's a payment of the difference between what each player cashes for.

In cash games, the two players add their total chips together to determine what is on the table. At the end of the session, they calculate the difference between the two stacks of chips.

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I sat back on Monday night, after all the good college basketball games were over, and prepared for the premiere of the newest poker program on the air: Annie Duke and Phil Hellmuth's Best Damn Poker Show on the Fox Sports Network.

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