Wicked Chops Poker is reporting that, with 2400 players left in the main event, Phil Ivey accepted a $20K wager from Andy Bloch at 99:1 that he would win the main event. Now that he’s made the final table, Bloch’s got to be sweating the $2 million loss.
My first reaction was that, this close call notwithstanding, this was a pretty good spot for Bloch. Granted everything I’ve heard about Ivey is that he’s both incredibly good at poker and insanely intimidating in person, but is he really 24 times more likely than the average player to take it down? The one thing I don’t know, which would make a big difference, is what his chip stack was like at the time. I guess if he was already at like three times the average when he took the bet, it might not be so unreasonable to think he’d close out eight times as often as anyone else sitting on a stack that big.
Even against bad players in a great structure, that’s an awfully huge edge. Then again, if Ivey does make it to the final four with a decent stack, I imagine he takes it down a large percentage of the time.
What do you think? Was Ivey getting the best of Bloch when he took 99:1?
Bloch definitely getting the best of it there. I think Ivey is about an 8:1 dog to win right now:
http://spritpot.blogspot.com/2009/07/handicapping-main-event-final-table.html
I heard that Ivey had about a 3x average stack at the time he made that bet. He also made similar bets (smaller amount, same odds) with other people too (I know I heard he had one with Durrr).
I do agree that Ivey had the worst of it in this bet, however.