Winning $2.6 billion in this poker videogame has completely ruined fake poker for me

I like playing poker. Let me rephrase that: I like playing fake poker, in videogames, so I'm always on the lookout for a new fake poker game. The tricky bit, maybe the impossible bit, is that I want to find a fake poker game that feels real.

I don't like playing real poker because it means risking actual money, which I don't like, and spending time with poker players, which I also don't like (the sound of chips constantly being shuffled by fidgety players is unbearable).

But the problem with playing fake poker, even if it's with real people online, is that it's hard to capture the tension of real poker when the money is fake and anyone can just go all-in all the time with zero consequences. It's like playing Counter-Strike but instead of someone killing you when they shoot you, literally nothing happens.

So here's my solution: I play in the lowest stakes poker tournaments the poker game has. All the other players in a low-stakes game in a free-to-play poker app have probably lost almost all their fake money and are trying to avoid having to buy more fake money with real money.

Let it ride

Being on the verge of fake bankruptcy gives fake poker more of a real feeling. It's weird, but it's way more exciting to bet $2,000 on a hand of poker than $2,000,000 because I can imagine the feeling of risking two grand. I can't imagine risking two million because I can't imagine having two million to risk.

But here's my next problem: in the free poker game I've been playing on Steam Deck this week, Texas Hold'em Poker: Pokerist, I'm finding it really, really hard to be broke enough to have fun. (I'm also finding the word "Pokerist" kind of funny. Is that an anthropologist, but when they dig up a skeleton they say things like "10,000 years ago this primitive man flopped the nut straight.")

Pokerist does two things constantly: blankets the screen with pop-ups suggesting I spend $2.99 on thousands of chips, and gives me thousands of chips for free anyway. There are "quests" that give you tons of chips, but they're so easy to complete, like "place a bet" or "win chips in any game." Pokerist also awards you card packs for playing, and collecting enough cards gives you more chips.

The game even rewards you for just showing up: log in two days in a row and it throws like 30 grand at you.

So pretty much every time I even open the app I wind up with a few extra hundred thousand fake dollars, but I don't want to play poker with that much fake money or it'll just feel super fake. My solution was to try losing all that unearned money before I played poker.

There are tons of different casino games in Pokerist: several kinds of poker, blackjack, slots, keno, roulette, baccarat, craps, and even sports betting. Yes, you can buy fake money with real money and bet on real sporting events to win fake money. That seems crazy and should maybe be illegal or something? On the plus side, there are so many ways to lose money in Pokerist I figured I'd be back to playing lowest-stakes poker in no time.

Next problem? I kept winning. I kept winning and winning and winning. It's so annoying.

All-win

I figured a quick way to get rid of a few hundred grand would be to play a slot machine with a $50,000 bet per spin. That money went fast, right up until I scored a "Super Win" for $750,000. I burned through that as quickly as I could, but when I got down to nearly nothing I won again on a different slot machine, this time hitting so many red 7's that I won two million dollars in one spin. Two million! I can't play poker with that much money! I need Rounders stakes, not Casino Royale stakes.

I switched slot machines, again, but this slot had a special bonus: if you get three wheel icons on three reels, you spin another damn wheel for a prize that starts at a million and goes up from up from there. In this case, it went up to $250,000,000. Which I won. Why do I have such bad luck at having bad luck?

I know this should be fun: even though it's fake money, who doesn't love seeing big numbers going up and seeing gold coins flying across the screen? But I just wanted to play some scrub poker and feel the thrill of going all-in with five grand on three of a kind. I started spending $2 million per spin, but it wasn't long before I hit that special prize wheel again and this time I won $500,000,000. My quest to lose it all had now netted me a half billion dollars.

Cursing my incredible luck, I quit. The next day I logged back in, collected a few hundred grand in quests and bonuses, opened all my card packs (including the card packs I got as a reward for opening card packs), and jumped into a new slot machine game. I set my bet at $10 million per spin, turned on a TV show with subtitles so I couldn't even look down at my Steam Deck most of the time, and turned off my brain.

I won a jackpot of $1,920,659,710. Trying to lose half a billion dollars netted me almost $2 billion dollars. Is this why rich people always get richer? Are they just dumbasses with good luck?

The next day I tried to lose at least one of my billions, and at one point I even put my Steam Deck down and went to the kitchen for a snack. When I came back the screen showed me that I'd won $21 million in a tournament. First question: there are slot machine tournaments? Second question: I was in a slot machine tournament? Third question: this isn't a question, but if you want to win a slot machine tournament just bet $50 million dollars per spin and watch half an episode of Ace of Diamond on Crunchyroll.

My current balance is $2.6 billion. I haven't played poker in about a week. Thanks to this poker app, I may never play poker again.