Jason Mercier Bet 10k On Himself To Win 3 Bracelets This Summer at 180:1 Odds...Has Won 2 Bracelets With Half The WSOP Left To Go To Win $1.8 Million

If there’s one thing I really enjoy blogging about it’s extreme prop bets in the poker world. There’s always fun bets going on, and usually for a ton of money. There’s the two high stakes players who had an MMA match with 100k on the line, there’s Antonio Esfandiari having to lunge everywhere, and of course Bilzerian biking from LA to Vegas for $600,000. But as I touched on in the WSOP preview blog, poker players also make what are called “bracelet bets” to keep them motivated on the long WSOP grind, where they can stand to win and lose a lot of money on if they win a bracelet during the Summer. The big bet that came out before the series started was Vanessa Selbst bet Polish player Dzmitry Urbanovich 10k that he wouldn’t win 3 bracelets at 200:1 odds. Meaning if he won 3 events at the WSOP this Summer, she would owe him 2 million dollars. She then got drunk and bet 10k at 180:1 with Jason Mercier, a very good poker player who already had multiple bracelets before this Summer, that he wouldn’t win 3 this summer. So if he won 3, she’d owe him 1.8 million. (She then claimed that she was black out drunk when she made that bet and tried to buy out for 100k, but Mercier declined.)

Well, flash forward to this last week. Mercier channeled his inner Kevin Malone at won the 10k 2-7 event for bracelet number 1. He then made the final table of the 10k Razz event, but came up short and finished 2nd. Right after that, he registered for the 10k HORSE event, and shipped that one for his 2nd bracelet in 5 days.

Pokerlistings - Mercier booked lots of bets with lots of different people. When he won his first bracelet of the summer he told media that he had made “way, way more than first-place money in side bets.” To put that in perspective, first place was $273,335. “Now I’m kind of freerolling the next year or so,” said Mercier.

But Selbst isn’t the only person to bet against Mercier. He made many other side bets on himself, including with German boss Fedor Holz, who now owes Jason $200,000 for betting against him to win just 1 bracelet. Oops.

Apparently Selbst has hedged her bet by selling off her action to different people, so now there is this sub-prime bracelet bet economic system where a ton of people are either rooting for or against him to win number 3. I’m rooting for him because it’s such a boss move to make a bet where you can win 1.8 million dollars and then collect on it. Also, winning 3 in one World Series is extremely rare- since 1973, only 5 people have done it, and it’s hard to even count 1973 because there were only like 8 people playing back then.

PS: Someone emailed me offering to stake me to play Davey Pageviews heads up. I emailed Davey trying to set it up and he has yet to respond. I don’t know why he’s scared to play me, but it is what it is I guess.