Top 10 Stories of 2016, #3: The Mercier Bracelet Bets That Shook the Poker World

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It was a classic case of “he said, she said” except he won WSOP Player of the Year and came out “ahead.”

Jason Mercier was the talk of the WSOP this summer after creating a stir with Vanessa Selbst in a supposedly drunken bracelet bet.

Here’s the story from Selbst: She got blackout drunk with Dzmitry Urbanovich at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure and ended up laying 180:1 on $10,000 for Mercier to win three WSOP bracelets this summer. She attests that many could speak to her condition at the time, but the next morning, she was reminded of the bet and immediately tried to cancel it.

Instead, she offered Mercier up to $1,000 and what she said was her sincerest apologies for the whole situation. Mercier said no.

When Mercier had almost secured the victory of three bracelets, he maintained that he didn’t know Selbst was as intoxicated as she claimed when the bet was made. He also said she offered only a couple hundred dollars for her mistake and suggested she could hedge the bet later as he was unlikely to win three times.

Selbst took to Twitter and questioned Mercier’s compassion in buyout negotiations. Even so, she ended up buying out of the bet, finding a way to hedge or buy out before Mercier missed his opportunity for his third bracelet.

After his loss, Mercier said he didn’t want to comment publicly on what happened between him and Selbst and only wanted to say that they have different views on prop betting and what exactly happens between friends.

“It’s pretty much squashed, she pretty much bought out, hedged it off, sold the bet, so if I end up winning three, I guess I’ll get paid from someone else,” Mercier said about the status of the bet after the $10K Razz.

This much-publicized wager had poker professionals choosing sides.

It’s pretty much squashed, she pretty much bought out, hedged it off, sold the bet…

Mercier bet $10,000 at 180:1 odds that he could win three bracelets in the 2016 World Series of Poker and the world watched as he followed through on two of them. He stood to win $1.8 million if he made good on the bet.

Whisperings suggested that those weren’t the only bets he had out there; he had a number of bets on winning two bracelets at 18:1 and 19:1. Even with all the side bets, Mercier seems good under pressure.

“It is a little daunting when the difference between first and second is like a 100,000, but for me, it’s like 5-or-600,000, or whatever it is,” he said after the Razz. “But I think it helps me be even more focused.”

In the course of seven days, Mercier got first place, …

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