Some people might have heard about the poker player who bet he could beat a chess master provided the master started down a piece.  Professional poker player Tom "durr" Dwan made a 60 thousand dollar prop bet that he could beat a chess master with rook odds.  He could not.  Here is game one of the bet.

Never bet more than you can stand to lose.

I'll bet I can beat the poker player if he's not allowed to have aces.

That's what arrogance brings you :D.

I heard that it was called a sign that he dares to make big gambles blablabla. It isn't, it's just plain stupitidy with arrogance.

There seems to be a lot of interest recently in chess from professional poker players.  I would not really expect that to spur any kind of major public boom, at least not until Matt Damon and Ed Norton make a movie about chess, and ESPN invents the "kibitz cam".   Nonetheless, it's gratifying to see that the best of them recognize the appeal of our game.

I would of taken that bet...the poker player must be <1000 to lose a rook up in the opening...A pawn up can in some instances be converted into a win, a minor piece definitely, but a major piece? C'mon! 60K easy and I haven't even played Chess for that long...

It would appear to me that white loses the second game... why then does it say 1-0?

Your right cffndncr.... My mistake.

Know this is old but stumbled upon it.  To give a little background Tom is every bit as much a hustling gambler as a poker player.  It's likely he made the bet at least in part to set up larger future bets in which he would expect to have a large edge.  $60,000 is not a very large bet in the circles he runs and it is always good for a gambler to get a reputation as a guy who will give action without having a great chance to win.  To give some perspective Tom made a seven figure bet over whether or not another guy would not eat meat products for a year. 

Just figured it might be worth trying to give a little perspective to anyone who views it as pure arrogance.  A guy like this may be a terrific shooter in basketball.  He'll make a $60K bet on the golf course and lose, bet $200K he can throw a football 70 yards and come up well short, bet another $100K he can run a marathon in a good time, and then clean up betting half a million on a seamingly difficult shooting bet that he can't lose.  At least something like this almost certainly came into play with this bet or at least the mindset that goes into making bets like this for Tom.  It's more a case where he was probably happy to lose and get some reputation than a thing where a typical person bet their year's salary on a chess match because they were so full of themselves and then came short.  That's not to say he's not a confident guy who likes taking on challenges just to say the emphasis is a bit different in his circumstances.

I fully agree. He could be setting up his "table image" right now.

Too bad it wasn't Dan Harrington who made the bet. 

The first game, he hung 3 pieces.  Of course, Greg played pretty sharply and got him nervous, I bet.  Practically forced him into hanging them.  Dwan got 'Shahade fever'!