As I sit here eating a boring-ass bowl of canned lentil soup 'cause I still have a few more days to wait for my food stamps to get replenished for the month, I finally hit ONE BILLION!
Alas, it's not real, of course, it's only "chips" and the cash equivalent value of them is absolutely zilch. As you can see by the pic above, I'm talking about my winnings in WSOP Poker, an online "for fun" gaming site. The primary game, and the one I play the most, is No-Limit Texas Holdem.
Now, I have improved my skills in this game over the years but I can't take credit for all the winnings shown above...the site has lots of "giveaways." For instance, last week I was in probably my third week or so of consistently losing. I'd win a hand, lose two others, get a little ahead, then a lot behind. That's poker, baby! A rollercoaster ride. Especially a site like this where all participants (yes, you play with real other people) are playing with funny money so many just don't really care and make all kinds of loose bets. My balance was just barely over 400 million but after some heavy losses, I dropped down to the low 300s. (For years I'd played with my bankroll always under 100 million but then about a month or two ago, I won some big giveaway and I was suddenly above 200 million. I crawled up to almost 500 million over the course of a month or so but then kept hitting mediocre luck and drifted down to the 400s then lower as of a week ago, or so.)
But I took some chances, usually while drunk when I let my hair down, and bet really big on some high stake tables...and won. My biggest single pot so far, won just last weekend was 322.14 Million.
Other big boosts came in the form of a couple more giveaways of about 100 mil each. Then two Masters level players who must have been drunk 'cause in one game they were betting like 40 and 50 million chip hands, and folding right away! So they were giving it away! With only three other players at the time this went down, it made the chances of winning a huge pot all that much better if you had a hefty enough stack and dared to call their outrageous bets.
And just now, I won some sweepstakes giveaway for over 70 million, then 24 million in cashing out some duplicate cards in the WSOP Legends collectibles side game, and a Mega Spin (Wheel of Fortune) win of about a million and before I knew it I went from in the 800 millions to just over one billion.
"Ah, if only it were real." I dreamily ponder as I sip the last spoonful of my lukewarm brown broth, listening to the pitter patter of lazy raindrops on the tin roof of my little rundown trailer. "Wouldn't it be loverly?"