Gawker Media boss Nick Denton just made a small side bet on the success of his redesign for Gawker's sites.

He's wagering ~$1,000 with New York tech scenester Rex Sorgatz that Gawker's pageviews will go up this year despite the radical change in design.

If you haven't seen it yet, Gawker boss Nick Denton killed the traditional look of a blog, which has a reverse chronological feed of stories. Instead, he has one massive story front and center, and a column of running stories on the right.

Sorgatz recently snarked that there's no way the design will work, and Denton will revert to the traditional style in no time flat.

Sorgatz went so far as to say he'll bet anyone that Gawker's pageviews will be flat to down by the end of the year because of the new design.

Denton took up Sorgatz on his offer. Here's the terms of the bet, which Sorgatz put on his blog:

Official terms of the bet with Denton: We will check Quantcast on October 1, 2011. The goal is 510M pageviews/month. It’s $10 for every million over/under. [So $600 to me if it’s 450M.] If the design reverts to the old format, he forfeits and pays out $1000. (Lockhart is the arbiter of what constitutes “design change.”) New or acquired sites do not count in the numbers. And finally, the money handover is to be done in public and photographed. So bring pies.

Denton is betting his whole company with the redesign. So, adding an extra $1,000 or so isn't much.