Phil Ivey Reportedly Loses $2 Million Super Bowl Bet
February 8th, 2010
Phil Ivey is not among the New Orleans Saints’ fans this morning.
If rumors that were floating around before the game are correct, last night’s 31-17 Super Bowl victory by the New Orleans Saints over the Indianapolis Colts was not a good result for Phil Ivey.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Matt Youmans reported over the weekend that Ivey collaborated with legendary Las Vegas sports gambler Billy Walters to place a $2 million money line bet on the Colts. What probably seemed like a great bet at the time – after all, everyone seemed to be picking Peyton Manning and the Colts – fell apart last night when Drew Brees and the Saints shocked the world with their win, costing Ivey more than the combined amount he won for his seventh-place finish in the 2009 WSOP Main Event and a runner-up performance in last month’s Aussie Millions $100,000 Challenge.
Ivey’s habit of dropping six- and seven-figure sums on sports betting is well known. He lost $2 million on the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers during the 2008 WSOP and then lost another $800,000 on the Arizona Cardinals in the first half of last year’s Super Bowl. So, rule number one for beginning sports bettors: you can do a lot worse than fading Phil Ivey’s picks.
If I ever lost that kind of money on anything at all I don’t know what I’d do, but Mr. Ivey obviously doesn’t have the same regard for the green stuff that I do. Having so much of it probably has a little to do with that: he supposedly owns an online poker room somewhere on the net (more rumors, I’m sure), and he also tops the all-time tournament poker money list.
