The poker world is constantly treated to a stream of crazy prop bets. This has been the case ever since the poker boom took off two decades ago.
We’ve had Antonio Esfandiari getting disqualified from the PCA Main Event for urinating at the table after he bet he could lunge everywhere he went for 48 hours with Bill Perkins.
And then there was Brian Zembic who bet $100,000 he would get breast implants and keep them in for a year.
This year hasn’t been that mad, but we’ve still had a few prop bets of note. Here are our top 5 prop bets of 2023.
Here are the craziest poker prop bets:
#1: Markus Gonsalves Beats Dan Smith at Tennis Using a Frying Pan
The most interesting prop bet of the year has to go to Markus Gonsalves and Dan Smith. The pair made a wager over a one-set tennis match with the former using a frying pan instead of a racket.
Incredibly, Gonsalves took the match 6-2 with Smith having to pay out at eyewatering odds of +150.
#2: Shaun Deeb Bets Bill Perkins He Can Reach 17% Bodyfat
The poker world has seen a fair few weight-loss bets in the past few years, but we never thought we’d see Shaun Deeb sticking his neck out for a piece of this action.
Deeb and Bill Perkins put a wager together where Deeb is risking $100,000 to win $1 million if he can reach 17% bodyfat before the 2024 WSOP.
Not an easy feat, and we’re sure Deeb won’t mind us saying so. He has struggled with managing his weight all his life, coming in at 306lbs and 5ft 11 to start.
We’re looking forward to seeing if Deeb can pull this one off.
#3: Jungleman Says he Can Learn Fluent Chinese in 3 Months
Jungleman is probably the most “out there” poker star of today, but even he might have gone too far this time with one of his recent prop bets.
Anyone want to bet the poker savant that he can’t learn Chinese fluently in three months?
— Daniel Cates (@junglemandan) October 29, 2023
When he tweeted out that he was taking bets against him learning fluent Chinese in just three months we thought he’d totally lost the plot.
Andy Stacks put him squarely in his place, saying it would be three years, not three months, and only if he lived in China.
#4: Albert Daher and Gha Iakobishvili Bet Six Figures to Predict Flop Cards Every Hand
A couple of months ago, two players were obviously a little bored at the action and so started betting five-figure sums on trying to predict what cards would come down on the flop.
Albert Daher and Gha Iakobishvili were wagering as much as $20,000 on every flop that came down.
Daher reckoned he was down $152,000 by the time Iakobishvili busted form the event.
#5: Doug Polk Bets $200,000 to Lose 50% of His Bodyfat
Doug Polk is no stranger to making prop bets, but he came up short this time. As we mentioned above, the poker world has a lot of weight-loss bets, but this was never going to be easy.
Shaun Deeb made his bet with plenty of additional real estate to get rid of and he obviously though it was game on. Polk, however, wasn’t particularly overweight to begin with.
He bet Bill Perkins that he could lose half of his bodyfat in a year — 27.7% down to 13.85%.
But it wasn’t to be as he weighed in one year later only managing to get down to 15.1%, 1.3% away from his goal.
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