Would you lock yourself in a dark bathroom for a month for $100,000?
Nov 30, 2018, 2:51 PM
(AP)
Do you think you could go completely vegetarian for a year for $1 million dollars? What about running 70 miles in 24 hours for $285,000? Or could you play four rounds of golf on a 120 degree day for $340,000?
If you’re wondering what the heck is going on here, I’ve just introduced you the bizarre and also bizarrely entertaining world of prop bets. The aforementioned prop bets are some of the most famous in the poker world, and there’s a new one that was just booked. More on that later — first, let me bring you up to speed on what the heck we’re talking about here.
For those of you that aren’t big gamblers, there’s a class of people that just can’t get enough action. Most of the time they are called high rollers, or sometimes they are referred to as “whales.” These are people that wager huge sums of money on everything from sporting events to table games like blackjack.
A famous example of this would be boxer Floyd Mayweather betting $13 million dollars on the Broncos to win the Super Bowl against the Seahawks a few years ago. How’d that one work out for you?
If you need another example, check out one of my favorite Phillip Seymour Hoffman performances in a great movie called “Owning Mahowny.”
When you get a bunch of high rollers together, they start to place bets on just about anything. That’s where the prop bet was invented. It can be a wager on anything that two people can define and agree on. Most of the time, it’s done after everyone has had a few drinks, and there’s a typically a good deal of peer pressure in the room.
Now that the background is out of the way, here’s the latest big prop bet. Do you think you could do it?
Poker pros Rory Young and Rich Alati made a bet that Rich could not stay locked in complete darkness inside a bathroom for 30 days. The wager awarded $100,000 to the winner.
The rules are:
- No communication with the outside world
- No electronics or light-emitting devices of any kind
- Food will be delivered at random intervals but Rich is allowed any food he wants
- There will be five night-vision cameras installed for monitoring and safety
Rich could have backed out of the bet for $5,000 prior to going in, but chose not to. He is currently locked inside a bathroom somewhere in Nevada with $100,000 on the line.
There is no way I could complete this particular prop bet.
I’ll monitor the situation and see who wins this latest crazy prop bet.