Whatever happened to poker prop bets?
Are crazy challenges and proposition bets a thing of the past in poker?
Do you remember when Lex had a kickboxing match against ElkY? Or when Erik Lindgren did a round of golf in the Las Vegas heat with no caddy? Or when Joe Ingram played 50,000 hands in a day? Or when the Staples brothers got to the exact same weight in a year? Or when players like Phil Ivey booked bracelet bets?
Many of you will, but maybe even more won't.
This week, 888poker Pro Aaron Barone pulled off an impressive prop bet to play 150 MTTs in a day and end in profit. Ahead of doing it, he shared that he was from the 2+2 era, where things like this were commonplace, but are no longer so.
And he is right. We used to see outlandish prop bets all the time in poker. What happened?
Motivational bets
One of the things that set out the prop bets of the modern era was that they were rarely motivated by an edge; they tended to be motivated by a challenge.
It wasn't that an MMA bet or a weight loss bet was sparked because that person was an expert in that area; it's because they really wanted it to happen, and they were using the pain of losing money as a boost of motivation.
Of course, once in a while, they were edge-related. I am pretty certain Shaun Deeb had done his homework on his own weight loss bet, for example. Other times, they were just plain stupid, like when Jay Kwik lived in a bathroom for a month.
An old man's game
It's hard to pinpoint what changed, but my hunch is that we see fewer of them now because of demographics.
There needs to be a degree of energy and hubris when somebody makes a crazy prop bet. It tends to be young guys full of testosterone (and for some reason, not wearing a shirt).
Sadly, poker is no longer a young man's game, which is probably why we see fewer of them.
The young people we do have in the game are going towards the influencer route, which is where they can get out their urge to do stupid things and potentially make money from them. Betting the poker community that you can do X has been replaced by doing X on your YouTube channel for clicks instead. I am pretty certain Jungleman's recent boxing match, for example, was mostly for clicks.
It's probably a good thing we don't see as many bonkers prop bets anymore, as many of them did not seem healthy, mentally or physically. But that doesn't mean they were not fun to rail. I certainly do miss them.
