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Poker fans around the world will rejoice over the news that the Cash Game Festival is back. This means that once again, players will be coming to London on September 20-24; this time at the Aspers Casino in Stratford. Will the next edition of the festival provide some more interesting proposition bets (prop bets) as we have already seen before?
Proposition bets are a special kind of betting in which the occurrence or non-occurrence of an action doesn’t directly affect the final outcome of an event. It usually happens in sports (but not necessarily), and applies to a variety of things such as the number of innings in baseball, whether the defender scores a goal in soccer, and even much wilder instances as long as all interested parties agree to the terms. Over the years, prop bets seemed to take on a mind of their own, evolving into dares for money as participants dare each other to perform certain actions. It may sometimes take on a pretty elaborate form and play out over a long period of time like running a marathon under six hours, an attempt to live in a hotel bathroom for a month, or a challenge to lose a certain amount of weight in one year.
Undoubtedly, proposition bets can be great fun, which is, undoubtedly, why many contestants are drawn to the Cash Game Festival. This poker event started in 2014 as a series of local games in the small country of Estonia, which is located by the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland. In 2016, the team behind the project went on a successful international tour and since then has been to places like Malta (Casino Malta), Bulgaria (Platinum Casino, Sunny Beach), London (Aspers Casino), and back in Estonia (Olympic Park Casino in Tallinn). The festival’s founder himself —Martin "Franke" von Zweigbergk —even participated in numerous bets that would definitely interest one of the casino innovators, Francis White, back in the day. In fact, White, who famously founded the London private club that operated in the 18th and early 19th centuries, was known to host members that would bet on the most unusual things, and he kept a record of it.
Von Zweigbergk, however, enjoyed engaging in disputes with his friends over who was the better player among them. He managed to get the better of Polish poker ambassador Monika Zukowicz, who had to make an approximately 8,500 km trip across Europe, driving an old car from Sunny Beach (Bulgaria) to Faro (Portugal) and then Tallinn (Estonia) to deliver some extra spicy chicken dish. Another famous occasion also involved a small town in Poland in which Estonian player Janar Kokk remained during a month-long isolation. His stay created a lot of media interest and turned out to be a rather positive experience for him.
Besides increasing involvement in the game itself, prop bets have become an important part of big poker events over the centuries. They help to consolidate the poker community and give supporters extra entertainment, especially when they are discussed on social media as they are today. With a rich history of this betting action on the side and keeping in mind the fact that poker players’ imagination tends to run wild, we can be sure to expect some excitement from the London event again this year.
