Russian Man Loses Wife in Poker Game

So, some U.S. legislators think online poker is a dangerous game and a blight on society. As many anti-online gaming crusaders spouted this past fall, “Click your mouse, lose your house!”

Well, it appears that, for some, it is possible to lose more than one’s house in a poker game. A LIVE poker game.

Andrei Karpov from Murmansk, a city in northwest Russia, had run out of money in a poker game. And, like something straight out of the 1992 film Honeymoon in Vegas, he decided that it would be a good idea to gamble his wife so that he could stay in the game.

And he lost.

The kicker: not only did the winner of this unusual pot, Sergey Brodov, attempt to collect his bounty, but Karpov’s wife, Tatiana, also decided that if Karpov was going to wager his own wife, he didn’t deserve her, anyway. So she divorced him and went with Brodov. The two have since married and Tatiana is apparently quite happy.

"Sergey was a very handsome, charming man and I am very happy with him, even if he did 'win' me in a poker game," she said.

Originally published 8:33 AM Wednesday, January 31, 2007