Silly Season in The Prop Bet Stakes?

(Photo: Brianrast.com)

The crazy wagers which poker pros make with each other to pass the time usually die off after the WSOP – which is a good thing as we can concentrate on the actual poker a bit more - but a couple of new prop bets have just come to our attention and it would be churlish not to share them with you!

First up is a charity table-tennis match-up with £10,000 on the line. That’s about $12,000 US, but with the speed at which the pound is dropping who knows what it will be worth when Alex Goulder and Rob Yong face-off at the World Poker Tour UK Festival at the end of the month.

Goulder, a poker pro from England who has over $1million to his name in tournament cashes, has already written off his chances of winning the pong-pong battle it seems, tweeting this earlier:

Preparing for the big charity match vs Rob Yong. Let's just say I've already written the cheque. pic.twitter.com/ZRUUCvJ3zv

— Alex Goulder (cambridgealex) October 11, 2016

The reason? Well Dusk Til Dawn Casino owner Rob Yong was apparently a five-time Nottingham table tennis champion in his youth, while Goulder might struggle to find the right end of the bat to hold! He doesn’t seem too perturbed at the prospect ofm losing however, posting a status on Facebook which reads:

"I’ll be lucky to get a single point against a former five-time champion, but at least it’s going to a good cause. Simon Deadman, let’s never drink together OK?”

Blame it on the whisky

The demon drink to blame for yet another prop bet – Vanessa Selbst’s bet with Jason Mercier before the WSOP this year being one of the most high-profile alcohol-induced bets of recent times.

With Yong being a huge favorite, he has at least given Goulder a sporting chance – agreeing to a 10-point head start for the younger man, the first player to 21 winning the match and the bet. The match will take place in a specially-erected marquee which will host the WPT UK Festival at the Dusk Till Dawn Casino in Nottingham.

Over on Blonde Poker one less-than-optimistic forumite was quite forthcoming about Goulder’s chances.

"I've played squash against someone of County level and as a reasonable club player there's just nothing you can do," ‘EvilPie’ stated. "No matter what you throw at them, they just flick it back like they're still warming up. F**kers don't even move. Unless Alex is keeping something up his sleeve, he's going to get destroyed.”

Rast’s drug-induced cycle ride

On the other side of the Atlantic, high-stakes pro Brian Rast has revealed details of his amazing bike ride prop bets with Dan Bilzerian – his blog explaining he had to use all manner of prescription drugs to get through the pain-barrier on the 280km run.

Rast took up the same challenge that Bilzerian completed against Bill Perkins, only this time there would be no 5-week training regime beforehand as the King of Instagram had. Instead Rast would have to cobble together support crews and battle against strong winds in his effort to get from ‘Vegas sign to Bilzerian’s house in Beverly Hills.’

Despite Rast being a bit miffed that Bilzerian had changed the rules a bit from his own prop bet win, he accepted beacsue, as he states in his blog:

"Dan had upped his offer all the way to 6:1 (whereas his bet with Bill was even money). I also had the knowledge that Dan crushed his bet in about 32 hours of riding. So, arguments aside, the man had laid an interesting offer on the table.”

How do YOU measure up?

What followed was a road-trip which would almost finish him off physically and mentally. As he relates, not even half-way into his journey:

"…now it was becoming a struggle. I was tucking to lower wind resistance and my upper back would start shooting pain. Despite padded bike shorts, my ass was killing me. These were the two worst pains. I was exhausted and battling this wind was hard. During one break I broke down crying super hard in the RV with my wife because I was being stretched to my limit. I didn't know if I could do this. My pace had gotten frightfully slow. If this wind kept up like this, I didn't think I'd be able to physically do it. I took solace in the fact that the wind was supposed to die during the night…”

Drugs, drugs and more drugs

The pain got so bad that he took “hydrocodone and ibuprofen” during one of his breaks, followed by “an adderall” to keep him awake and on the go, and eventually had a doctor meet up with him “for a Cort-Aid shot (type of cortisone for joint/muscle pain), which happened a little later on the way through Soledad Canyon.”

As he neared his goal in LA, Rast explained: the temperature was high and taking its toll along with everything else. I had slept for only two hours in the last 50 hours, biked 280 miles, was on Hydrocodone, Ibuprofen, Adderall, Cort-Aid, Beta-Alanine, a lot of caffeine.

"About 20 miles away from Dan's house at around 3PM (so with 4.5 hours to go), I started to feel incredibly hot and exhausted. So I pulled over to the side of the road feeling very out of it, and I could feel my fingers tingling along with feeling super hot - and I started thinking I was having a heart attack. This caused me to have a panic attack. I was freaking out.”

So why put himself through all this torture? As he posted afterwards on Facebook, having barely made it to Bilzerian’s door:

"I wanted to show my son what it means to commit to something and follow it through, no matter what. I am dedicating that ride to my son, Krishna Borges, in order to teach him an important lesson about being a man and human being. Fundamentally those things did not rest on whether or not I won the bet, although winning was important. It's possible to have very favorable or impossible situations. In life when you commit to do something, you need to commit completely. No matter how difficult it gets you need to see things through and never quit. You will be surprised at the strength that exists inside you when your mind commits to the task at hand wholeheartedly."

All’s well that ends well, but I wouldn’t advise anyone out there to risk life and limb for the sake of money! Rast did and lived to tell the tale – and reading about it should be excitement enough for the rest of us!