High-stakes sports bettor ‘Mattress Mack’ to have open-heart surgery

McIngvale, 73, announced the news this week on X (@MattressMack).

“You know (former Houston TV reporter) Marvin Zindler said it well. He said, ‘It’s hell getting old.’ I am getting a little older,” McIngvale said. “Now I’ve got a leaky mitral valve in my heart, so on Tuesday the 10th I’m going in for a four-hour open-heart surgery … to cure that problem.

“The best thing you could do for me is pray obviously. … I will be in the hospital after the surgery for at least a week and then recovering at home for two or three weeks.”

McIngvale’s bets have been a source of fascination in the sports betting world in recent years. He won a record $72.6 million in wagers on the Houston Astros to win the 2022 World Series.

The bets were part of a series of multimillion-dollar wagers placed by McIngvale to reduce risk on promotions at his Gallery Furniture stores. Typically, he offers customers who buy $3,000 or more of furniture their money back if the Astros win the World Series or another Texas team wins a title. He has also placed multiple multimillion-dollar wagers on the Kentucky Derby.

He joked with the Review-Journal on Friday about betting on the results of his open-heart surgery.

“With all the prayers I got, I’m betting on the surgery to be under four hours, and I’m betting on a speedy recovery,” he said. “The over-under on me being in the hospital is seven days, and I think I’ll be out in five.

“My over-under on recovering at home is 1½ days because I’ll be back here (at Gallery Furniture) real quick.”

McIngvale has described himself as “just a huckster retailer,” but he’s also a humanitarian and philanthropist who has donated tens of millions of dollars to the community and most notably acted as a first responder and turned his stores into shelters for refugees during hurricanes Harvey and Katrina and other natural disasters.

Contact reporter Todd Dewey at tdewey@reviewjournal.com. Follow @tdewey33 on X.