Below are the five craziest wagers of all time as chosen by the World Series of Poker’s website, WSOP.com.
The list, with bets from name changes to royalty rights, was spurred by the now legendary Stu Ungar wager, in which the player was bet he could not correctly count the last three decks of a six-deck shoe (312 cards!) Ungar, a three-time World Series of Poker winner, identified all 156 cards without missing a beat, earning the man $100,000.
1. A New Zealand man wagered his name in a poker bet and lost. His friends were able to decide his new name and selected the 99-character moniker, Full Metal Havok More Sexy N Intelligent Than Spock And All The Superheroes Combined With Frostnova, meeting the country’s character limit of 100.
2. A man by the name of Ashley Revell sold his possessions for $135,000. He brought the money to Vegas and bet all of it on red at the roulette table. Lucky for Revell, the ball landed on red, doubling the man’s fortune.
3. U.K. professor, Rob Price, bet $1,600 that golfer, Rory McIlroy, would win the Masters after swearing he saw the athlete’s face in a sweet roll.
4. One of the top five most popular children’s books of all time, Green Eggs and Ham, was written by Theodor Suess Geisal, aka Dr. Seuss, on a $50 bet that he couldn’t publish a book using only 50 unique words.
5. In the 80’s, George Lucas bet fellow director Steven Spielberg that if Star Wars made more money than his own film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Spielberg would get 2.5 percent of Lucas’ movie’s profits until death. Spielberg is still getting checks in the mail from his buddy.
