Kane Kalas on High Stakes Poker and Big Tennis Prop Bets!

Kane Kalas joined Run it Back last night to watch two episodes of High Stakes Poker from Season 5 featuring stars such as Patrik Antonius, Antonio Esfandiari, Phil Laak, Daniel Negreanu, and a late arrival from Tom Dwan. On the show, we broke down some interesting hands most notably an awesome hero-call by Antonius versus Laak, and Dwan seeing his five-bet bluff turned into a mere pair of eights but that was enough to beat Howard Lederer in a big pot.

As it is a custom on Run it Back, we dove into Kane’s life as a poker player and you’re not going to want to miss this episode as he breaks down the monstrous pot he won against Jason Koon during the Triton Poker Series in 2018. Back then, Kalas won the biggest ever televised hand of poker worth roughly $2.8 million when he made a set of tens into which Koon shoved with a pair of aces on the river.

Prop Betting

On the episodes of High Stakes Poker we watched, Antonio Esfandiari got into a prop bet versus Hollywood producer Nick Cassavetes on how many push-ups he could do. The number they settled on for a hefty amount was 34 and you’re gonna have to watch the episode to see whether Esfandiari pulled it off. While on the subject of prop betting, the viewers in the chat asked Kalas what kind of prop bets he’s been involved in and he brought up an interesting one over a game of tennis.

Kalas bet two of his friends, one with tennis experience and one without, $60,000 and $50,000 respectively with one year to train!

“I had some tennis experience, perhaps about 250 hours in my life, and my friend Clayton was using this bet as a motivation to lose weight but he’d never played tennis before,” Kalas explained. Clayton, however, was a good table tennis player, while his other friend Joshua Tiemann, had similar tennis experience to Kane and each bet was made at even odds.

A year went by and in the Puerto Rico heat, Kalas played a three-setter against his buddy Josh, of which he took the first set before losing the next two in a 3 hour and 50-minute match in the heat. The bet versus Clayton was structured differently as they played five best of three matches across five days for $12,000 a pop.

“So, Josh also had a separate bet with Clayton and they played the next day. I went to go and watch, and Josh didn’t win a single game!” Kalas cried out.

Ultimately, Kane lost all five matches never winning more than three games in one set costing him a total of $110,000 across six days of tennis!

Want more Run it Back poker analysis, storytelling, and asking your favorite players all your burning questions? Tune in for live action on Tuesday at 9am PT/12pm ET as Fedor Holz joins the show to watch the Big One for One Drop final table in which he went heads up against Justin Bonomo for the $10 million top prize. Check out all 64 Run it Back episodes right here in our playlist.