Props

The purest form of gambling is the proposition bet. Habitual gamblers will bet on anything that comes up, with stakes hammered out on the spot.

Alex warned me ahead of time to be careful about saying anything on the trip I wasn't sure of, because someone would be quick to jump on it and propose a bet. On the last trip he made $10,000 betting on who sang some 80s tune (no one can remember the song now).

"Can't I just say, no, I don't want to bet?" I asked.

The answer is no, or not without consequences. In this world money stands for everything, but especially integrity. If you're willing to say it, the thinking goes, you should be willing to bet on it. To do otherwise is to admit you are full of shit.

Falafel thought one of the other guys, Henrik, had shorted him some money a few months ago. Henrik offered to bet $5000 that he had not. The original sum they were arguing about was less than a thousand.

Mostly the prop bets tend to be light-hearted though, even when they are for a lot of money. Falafel is currently paying Peter five dollars a day. The bet was over whether Falafel would be married by 40. If he was, Peter would owe him five dollars for the number of days before he turned 40 that Falafel got hitched. If he wasn't, he would pay Peter five every day after forty until he got married. He's a few years past 40 now, and it looks like Peter can count on getting his daily five for some time. Falafel has been pestering Koonie to set him up with an Indonesian girl - not the marrying kind.

Koonie likes to accept a prop by pointing at the person who offered it and shouting, "Down!" He just won a thousand betting on a documentary about Falafel. The film maker had Falafel pretend to read a Kafka novel because he thought a line in it resonated with his life, or something. Naturally Falafel had no interest in the book, and some of the guys were saying he was actually holding it upside-down in one scene. Koonie didn't buy it and even gave them three-to-one on it. It turned out it was right side up the whole time, although the Israeli lettering kind of looks upside-down. The weird thing was that everyone betting on the wrong side was in the movie, whereas Koonie had never even seen it.