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In the enclosed world of professional poker players, there are some bets that can bring in a lot...an awful lot. While France is scandalised by the billion euros that the BNP is putting aside to pay its traders' bonuses this year, poker players are involved in bets that can bring in millions of dollars. In fact, these bets are called « prop bets » (short for Proposition Bets, editor's note) and these are bets that players place amongst themselves before tournaments or even in the middle of a game. This was the case in the off the wall bet which took place in the middle of a poker game between Tom Dwan and Matthew Marafioti during which the former gave Marafioti a « Prop Bet » which consisted of drinking ten glasses of tequila in less than a quarter of an hour while remaining calm. Marafioti took up the challenge and swallowed the shots but the minutes which followed were a nightmare. After a warning for insulting behaviour, he was taken out of the Rio Casino in a wheelchair by security staff.

But this absurd bet is just one bet among many. The poker player who is in the limelight and who could amass about 10 million dollars just in bets is Phil Ivey, a finalist for the next Main Event which will take place in November in Las Vegas and in the presence of the frenchman Antoine Saout. Phil Ivey made the mad bet with Andy Bloch that he would win the 2009 WSOP even though 2400 players were still in the running. His bet with Bloch is for  $20,000 not forgetting the same bet but for a million dollars with Dwan or $200,000 with Daniel Negreanu and other players also. The poker player Howard Lederer didn't take the easy way out by putting 5 million dollars on the table to defy Ivey if the latter wins the Main Event and if he wins two bracelets ( this bet took place before Ivey won one of them, editor's note).

These extraodinary amount of bets aren't all known and millions of dollars are involved. In the middle of an economic crisis where daily media reports are interspersed with topics such as company closures or threats of factory redundancies it seems almost indecent of the world of poker not only dealing with astronomical amounts but also for having bets that could be considered absurd. When one sees that poker players win several million dollars in  the big tournaments like the WSOP without forgetting the many tournaments throughout the year, the Wall Street or City traders had better watch out..... even those in the BNP.

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