Most bizarre bets in history 

When you hear the word bet you associate it with gambling in casinos or sports betting. But people are making bets all the time and for most bizarre things. Novelty bets are no new thing in the world of gambling, William Hill started taking unusual bets before betting went online. Placing bets for the actor who will play the next James Bond, the sex of the royal child or the winners of the Oscars may raise some eyebrows but to majority of people seems quite normal nowadays. But the moment we are talking about a bet for getting a breast implants...when you are a man or changing your name to the new one with 99 characters, things get really bizarre. In this article we will tell you about the most bizarre bets and strangest stakes in the history of gambling. 

A man with breast implants 

First example in our article is probably the most famous ‘strange bet’ in the history. In 1996, professional gambler Brian Zembic made a bet with another poker player to get a breast implants and keep them at least for a year. The prize for such feat was $100,000. Zembic took up the bet and even found a surgeon who was coincidentally also a gambler. He won quite a lot in the backgammon game with the doctor and later on agreed to spend his winnings on the breast augmentation procedure. He got 38C breast implants and after a year, he won the bet. He became a celebrity and was a major sensation in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. What is more, he grew so accustomed to his new breasts that he decided to keep them.  

Losing your wife in a poker game 

Andrei Karpov run out of money in a poker game so he decided to put his wife, Tatiana, on the table. He lost and his fellow opponent Sergey Brodov ‘took’ his wife and later on even married her. This may be shocking to some people, but this was not the first, and only time that such bargain was made. 

The man with a 99 character name 

Another interesting example shows that you should not make bets if you are drunk. A young man from New Zealand lost a bet during a poker game with his friend. The result was that the man had to legally switch his name to the new one, created by this friend. From that moment, in all his documents he was known as ‘Full Metal Havok More Sexy N Intelligent Than Spock And All The Other Superheroes Combined With Frostnova’. He should be glad that there is a 100 character limit for the names imposed by the New Zealand’s Department of Internal Affairs.  

Dr. Seuss very short book 

There are also examples of famous people making bets with each other. In 1960, Bennett Cerf, the publisher of the Random House, bet his friend, Theodore Geisel, also known as the Dr. Seuss, that he would not be able to write a book with 50 or less different words. As we all know, Geisel won the bet by writing Green Eggs and Ham, which till this day is one of the most popular and best-selling children’s book in history.

Branson the air stewardess

Another interesting example comes from the most popular motor sport both among punters and bookmakers such as Ladbrokes or Coral, F1 racing. Richard Branson, known for being the founder and owner of the Virgin Group corporation used to own a team, Virgin Racing, which competed in the F1. In 2010, Branson made a bet with the owner of the Lotus F1 Racing owner, Tony Fernandes, that the person whose team would be  lower in the final standings of that F1 season, will have to shave his legs, wear makeup and dress and act as a stewardess during one of the flights of the opponents airlines. Branson team was last that season and he have to dress up and act as a stewardess during an AirAsia flight. Branson had no problems with doing that, even inviting tv cameras to record the funny banter.