Phil Ivey And Lederer In $5 Million WSOP Prop Bet
April 21, 2010 7:03 amHaving won 7 WSOP titles since 2000, it would be a brave man to bet against Phil Ivey collecting at least another two bracelets over the next couple of years.
In this case, that brave man is none other than Howard Lederer, who is so convinced Ivey won’t be able to accomplish the feat that he has placed a $5 million prop bet with Ivey that the 2010 and 2011 World Series of Poker tournaments will stay relatively dry for the poker champ.
With the WSOP getting underway next month, Howard Lederer, known as “the Poker Professor” because of his analytical skills, must have done his calculations and reasoned that with increasingly larger and tougher fields at the event, he would be getting the better end of the enormous wager.
However, Lederer cannot feel totally comfortable with the bet, though. Ivey is widely considered the best poker player in the world today and at last year’s WSOP event picked up another 2 WSOP bracelets, even making the final table of the Main Event, to become the youngest person to win 7 bracelets at just 33 years old.
In addition, Ivey is expected to enter at least 80 WSOP tournaments over the next two years and although many of them will be well attended, others will be smaller more specialised tournaments where Ivey will have an even greater chance of winning. What’s more, the extra $5 million juice might be all Ivey needs to motivate and spur him on through the long tournament grind.
Whatever the outcome of the $5 million prop bet, the pros always like to cover the angles and one beneficiary of the wager will surely be Full Tilt Poker, the site which the two business partners are inexorably linked with. The poker forums have been buzzing as the WSOP draws ever closer and with a larger volume of members now debating who has got the better end of the deal, it must all prove to be excellent publicity for the poker site.