Dan Bilzerian Survives the Poker World’s Craziest Prop Bet

As far as prop bets go, this one was already enough to grab the attention of the poker world and beyond, but Dan Bilzerian’s $600,000 bike ride bet from LA to Vegas almost took a deadly turn.

The original bet, with well-known poker player and prop-better Bill Perkins, stirred up interest from fellow high-stakes pro Rick Salomon, who was not content with wagering on whether Bilzerian could complete the 300-mile challenge in 48 hours.

Salomon decided that betting on whether Bilzerian would die – or suffer brain damage in the attempt – would make for a much more exciting affair! The size of the life-or-death wager? A cool $250,000!

Well, that was Saloman's half. Should the unthinkable happened, Salomon would fly off in Bilzerian’s G4 Jet!

Bilzerian had posted on Facebook that: “If I have a heart attack and live, or don’t make it, bet is a wash. This is getting interesting, almost a million on the line now.”

As you may have realised by now, Bilzerian didn’t die, nor did he suffer brain damage (at least no more than the Instagram King ever has, having been charged in the past with being ‘in possession of bomb-making ingredients’ and facing a $million lawsuit after allegedly kicking model Vanessa Castano in the face in a night-club brawl.)

The multi-millionaire playboy managed to complete the grueling bike-ride in just 33 hours, some 15 inside the allotted 48 of the prop bet, tweeting to his 16.5 million followers, “Biked Vegas to LA in under 33 hours, shoutout to LV Metro PD, Palmdale Sheriffs and LAPD for the motorcade, also Wild bp2269 for being rich enough to make me do crazy shit and my coach Natural Nate @loyalbiker”

Salomon, the former husband of Baywatch babe Pamela Anderson, was presumably quite happy to stump up the quarter mill upon hearing of Bilzerian’s survival. Bill Perkins certainly seemed ok with things, already planning future challenges for Bilzerian.

Q:Follow bets considered late night w/@DanBilzerian sailing to England, skydive from space, 21 days supermax , swim GW shark SA, and others,” tweeted the serial prop-better."

Perkins, a hedge fund manager and film producer from Texas, has plenty of previous experience in the prop-betting world. As Pokertube writer Florian Gheorghe shared recently, “At the PCA, Perkins made a bet with the Magician, Antonio Esfandiari, and challenged him to lunge wherever he went for 48 hours straight.”

This crazy prop bet saw Esfandiari disqualified from the PCA Main Event after he decided to urinate in a bottle at the table, blaming his inability to go to the bathroom on the pain from the lunges. He did win the lunges challenge though, and donated the $50,000 to charity.

As Gheorghe also relates, “Perkins also accepted some very interesting prop bets from poker pro Jeff Gross, bets that involved booze abstination, no flour for a whole year, jumping from the stratosphere, and yes, even a back tattoo worth over half a million dollars. The Texan lost most of them, but that surely didn’t stop him from pushing the edge over and over.”

For Bilzerian, the latest challenge proved remarkably easy, despite being disallowed from “riding behind a van, protected from the wind, with a police motorbike escort and wearing a pink bike helmet,” all of which would have resulted in his private jet going to Salomon had he died.