One of the things that I’ve really begun to dislike about the WSOP is the constant barrage of silly prop bets. To me it seems as if people are saying, “Hey, I haven’t done anything noteworthy at the tables and I know the poker media are starving for a story so let me make a silly prop bet that everyone can write about.” That seems to be the only rationale behind Mike Matusow betting Ted Forrest $2 million that he couldn’t get down to 140 lbs before the end of the WSOP. Especially when Matusow doesn’t have $2 million to lose.
Mike seems to have come clean that he’s short and suggested that he could pay it off monthly at $5000 a month.
“I don’t have the $2 million to pay out. I made that bet because I didn’t think it was feasibly possible. I could pay him a big lump, but I’m going to wait six months to see if he dies first. I think he’s 50-50 to die. He starved himself for 11 days and ran 16 miles a day. He’s lost all of the muscle around his heart. He could have a heart attack. All that for $5,000 a month.”
And even though he’s trying to make a joke, he allowed Forrest to put his health and possibly his life at risk trying to drop the weight knowing the whole time that he would never be able to pay up if Forrest was successful.
Normally I kind of like Matusow and sort of think he gets an underserved bad rap but that sort of sounds like a dick move to me.
And from the sound of things, Forrest might agree.
“He beat me [last year], and I paid him off. I think he should try to pay me as much as he can in the next two months and then work out a satisfactory, reasonable, agreeable payment arrangement.”
Ted, that sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
But the point I’m trying to make is, would Matusow have bet the same amount if the bet occurred in a vacuum? If there was no PR upside would he be promising $2 million payoffs? Or was this done in the hopes of generating publicity that would hopefully drive traffic to other business ventures Matusow is involved in?
It’s one thing when Howard Lederer makes a prop bet with Phil Ivey that he can’t win X number of WSOP bracelets in an effort to give him the motivation to win WSOP bracelets. Even if he wins the bet the PR for Full Tilt is worth more than the cost of the bet.
But if Matusow is broke or close to broke what’s he doing making bets like this in the first place? Mike really needs to step up to the plate and make good on this.
Well, if you read the quote from Mike Matusow he says: “I don’t have the $2 million to pay out. ” Pretty cut and dry.
Maybe he’s joking but it would be a pretty sick joke considering what Ted went through.
Ted thought his comment was serious enough to comment about it.
A couple of things here Bill.
1.) Do we really know Mike can’t pay? Have we actually heard that from his mouth? Have we actually heard from Ted directly? I have the feeling that Mike has access to more money than people give him credit for.
2.) I don’t know Ted but I know people who do and have heard from their mouths that he is a pretty savvy gambler. I think a lot of people might agree with that. Okay, all that being said should we really feel sorry for Ted for not getting paid here if indeed that’s the case, which I don’t think it is. Can we really believe Ted went through what he went through without an iron clad payment arrangement set up so that Mike was going to pay.
Lets get real here. Ted is going to get paid and if he doesn’t everything we in the poker community have every written or thought about Ted is wrong.
I would agree with that if he hadn’t chosen the profession of gambling as his career.
Not defending Matusow, mind you, but the other side of the coin is that accepting $2 million bets from someone known to suffer from severe bipolar disorder is a major-league dick move in its own right.