Cash Game Festival Co-Founder Wins Unique Prop Bet Against Janar Kokk

Some of the top poker players in the world are known for engaging in unique and strange prop bets as it gives them the added excitement of winning and losing both money and their reputation, depending on the nature of the prop bet. During the Cash Game Festival Bulgaria, poker player Janar Kokk and Martin “Franke” von Zweigbergk, co-founder of the cash game festival entered into a unique prop bet.
Janar Kokk and Franke got together at a café in Bulgaria during their off-time and became friends in the process. They both realized that one thing they had in common was the fact that both of them were looking for a place to live. Kokk who is from Estonia had been living in Malta while Franke had been traveling in living in a number of different countries. The two decided to get into a prop bet where they would play ten different variants of poker and agreed to switch up after every six hands.
The winner of the prop bet would get to decide which country the loser would get to live in for the next 12 months. The two wrote down a number of terms and conditions for the prop bet on napkins from the café and finally agreed to go ahead with the prop bet. Some of those conditions included choosing a country from the European Union (E.U), living in the country for a minimum of one year and getting a buffer of six months to make the move to the new country. If the loser decided to back out of the prop bet and not re-locate to the chosen country, then they would have to pay out €5 each day – but the condition was that the payments could not be made via bank transfer or through a personal assistant, it had to be made manually.
When Kokk and Franke decided to playoff, the game drew a lot of attention and many believed that Kokk had the advantage going into the game. However it was Franke who came in strong and won the first game even though Kokk put up a good fight, he would also go on to win the second game and in the process clinch the prop bet. Franke decided to get Poker News viewers involved in the selection process as he wanted viewers to help decide the location to send Kokk. The end result was that Italy was finalized as the country that Kokk and his wife had relocate to.
Kokk appeared to be happy with the decision as apparently he had already discussed the possibility of moving to Italy with his wife and Franke’s decision appeared to work in their favor. After the bet, Kokk bought a house in the United Kingdom and appeared to have settled in as the six months buffer had passed but Kokk had not moved to Italy. Franke reminded Kokk of the prop bet and Poker News also interviewed him to find out what was going on.
In a statement, Kokk told Poker News “I was indeed excited about moving to Italy. We were already looking for houses, but it turned out that getting a nice rental in Italy is far more difficult than I had initially thought due to stupidly high minimum contract terms, most places unfurnished, etc. Instead of signing a long-term rental agreement for a place that I won’t be keeping for long, I decided I’ll probably want to buy instead. But this will have to be a little later, and it’s also a fairly long and tedious process.”
Kokk and Franke remain good friends and it appears that Kokk will make the move to Italy in the coming months. Kokk went on to say that if he won the bet, he would have most likely sent Franke to the Czech Republic because Franke has not spent a lot of time in the country or maybe even the UK, so that the two friends could be in the same country.
This prop bet may not be as extreme as some of the prop bets that high stakes poker player and investor Bill Perkins has issued in the past to the likes of Dan Bilzerian and Antonio Esfandiari but it goes to show that poker players are indeed a unique breed willing to allow another person to decide where they will live their lives – even if for a year.