Landon Tice has booked a $100,000 prop bet with his friend Patrick Leonard. The terms are still being hashed out, but the basic premise is that Tice will have to live for 12 months without stepping off the Bally's/Paris property.
"The stipulation would be Bally’s/Paris for the hotel bet," Tice wrote. "I can have pool access but I don’t get to go in the pool. Would be open to offers/talks about it regarding price/structure/guidelines but I’d need to be able to put a significant amount of action on myself to do it."
They don't make prop bets like they used to.
Huck Seed once took a bet to stand up to his shoulders in the ocean for 18 hours. That's a prop bet.
Back in 2008, Matt Giannetti did a similar bet on a had a bet to spend 12 hours in a hotel pool. Later that same year Jay Kwik got 2-1 on a bet to spend 30 days in a hotel bathroom. Those are prop bets.
In 2019, Richard Alati raised the stakes on bathroom bets with a $100,000 bet to spend 30 days in a windowless, soundproof bathroom, with all the lights off. His meals were delivered irregularly and all he had for company were some basic snacks, a yoga mat, and an exercise ball. He started hallucinating on day three or four, but made it to the end.
Now that is a real prop bet.
Even the array of weight loss bets that the poker community use for motivation in place of a personal trainer are prop bets with some crunch to them.
A banker's salary for living in a four-star hotel for a year, doesn't have quite the same sense of either privation or showmanship that a good prop bet needs to really sell some tickets.
What are Landon Tice's odds?
Unlike his prop bet with Bill Perkins, Tice has an excellent chance of completing this one.
The biggest loss to Tice, and the thing that justifies the six-figure cheque is that he is giving up his freedom for a year. No holidays abroad, no trips to the pub, and a deeply limited dating pool.
Mind you, the last three years have given us all plenty of training in that regard.
Against that, one weighs a few facts.
The Bally's/Paris wifi will probably allow him to grind online and study solver outputs. So he can continue to grind out his usual bread and salt without disruption. Plus two months of the bet are a freeroll; he was presumably going to be at Bally's for the 2023 WSOP either way.
He will have access to a gym, spa, and various restaurants and is allowed to visit balconies. The pool is still under negotiation though it looks like Leonard and Tice might be closing on a deal. Tice can visit the pool area but not use the pool.
Admittedly Tice will be paying his accommodation for the year, but with discounts for long-term stay and a $100k supplement that isn't going to be too onerous. In fact, it seems so oddly doable as a prop bet that one wonders if the $100k is coming out of their podcasting marketing budget. It's certainly garnered some headlines (including this one).
My money's on Tice, and if he doesn't make it, at least he probably won't end up hallucinating.
Featured image source: WPT, used under CC license.
