My brother and I got a call for a freelance job that came in last minute. The job was going to be a piece of cake. We’d be watching over some video games, playing them, and teaching adults how to play them. The pay was great and the job was only going to be 4 hours long…amazing right? There was one hitch; they only needed one of us.
Neither of us wanted to give in to the other and offer the shift. I’m sure we could have made some kind of deal, but instead, we had a better idea.
We would play each other heads up in poker online, and the winner would get the job. This may sound a bit ridiculous, challenging each other to a competition where the winner gets to go to work, but things have been slow and even one day of work had become enviable.
Instead of setting up the chips and shuffling every hand like at the casino, we decided to play online poker instead, for play money. We found some play-money heads up tournaments and decided that the winner of a best-out-of three match would get the job and, in turn, would essentially be winning a pay check. The game was No Limit Texas Hold’em. The tournaments were a little annoying to register for, because there was no way to create a private table for the two of us. We had to find an available table in the lobby, notify the other of the exact one (by table number) and try to get in it before anyone else did. With a few unsuccessful attempts, we both managed to get into the same one.
In game one I got off to a bad start. I called him down with bottom pair or something ridiculous because I put him on a flush draw that didn’t complete. He actually flopped a set of 10s and checked it. When the draw showed on the turn I figured he was going for it….he wasn’t. Then I had to tighten up, I was now down a few hundred chips. I had been limping a lot, even with KK one hand where I made a good little pot by slow playing it. I knew he liked to raise from the button a lot, so I’d let him and then I would shove on his raise. His worked a couple of times. Then I had AQ and he raised on the button again and I shoved all in again. The raise was ridiculous, and he eventually called. He had A 7 off suit and he hit a 7. I lost the first game.
The 2nd match was not very memorable. I played pretty strong poker and got him to call me when I turned a straight for a large pot. I won that one and we were eve at one game apiece.