Poker Room Payment Methods
A friend asked me what the strangest payment of a bet I had ever heard about. He had a reason for asking; he owed the owner of a local poker room some money and wondered if there were every any strange Poker Room Payment Methods that he might be able to use as an alternative. I guess he was on hard times, and the question immediately made me think of the Seinfeld episode where the judge made Jerry become the Butler of a man he had wronged.
There are a lot of prop bets with strange outcomes that were agreed about before hand, I told him, but I didn’t know of too many poker room payment methods that didn’t involve just forking over the debt in cash. Sure, you could figure out a payment plan, and the man he owed was quite reasonable and always seemed to be understanding, to a point, when players fell on hard times. However, I had never heard of anybody offering any alternative poker room payment methods other than cold hard cash.
My friend said he was thinking about offering to be a valet to the man. I pictured him as a Butler and that made me laugh. When he explained that our friend like to throw back some beers on a weekend and relied on cabs to get him everywhere it started to make sense to me. Yeah, maybe you could offer to be a driver and work it off giving him rides. I pictured him in a driver’s outfit and laughed some more especially as I envisioned him standing next to his almost broken down Volkswagen van.
What’s so funny, he asked. I didn’t have the heart to tell him he was, so I sidestepped the question.
He then asked me if I played online because he was thinking about trying to rebuild his bankroll there. I couldn’t help but remind him that poker room payment methods online consist of credit card, debit card, bank draft, and other reasonable money transactions, and that it would be pretty hard to chauffeur around a website. I got him to laugh a little bit.
Of course then he asked me for a loan, and when I said no, that became a staking agreement—which I agreed to. I like my friend, and know he’s a good poker player, he’s just really bad with money. As much as he wins on the table, he’s ready to spend it off of the table. As he says why be in a cash business if you aren’t ready to spend the cash. Next time he talks about the freedom of being a poker player I’ll remind him about having to be a driver and how much freedom that entails.
And yes, the poker room owner took him up on his offer, but no he wasn’t driving his 1970s Volkswagen van. The deal had some interesting caveats that worked out quite well for me friend. Essentially Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights he’d have to be on call. So he wasn’t allowed to drink, as it would kind of defeat the purpose of having a designated driver who had been drinking. He’d also have to be ready to pull up from a game at a moment’s notice.
Incredibly, this did wonders for his already solid poker game. He started to view poker with the correct mentality, it’s one long poker game, not a serious of short games. His leak was trying to beat every game he played in, now he knew he’d have a series of short sessions because the poker room owner liked to bar hop, and my friend would never try to win at every one because at any moment he might be required to drive the guy clear across town.
As a result he stopped forcing things. Of course, not being able to drink, for a guy that liked to drink, only improved his late night play immeasurably too. Best staking arrangement I ever had. He also ended up being able to pay off the rest of the debt after only two months of being a designated driver. We are still waiting to see a little box next to poker room payment options that says “Services Rendered as a Driver” when we play online. I know it’s only a matter of time before all the big sites offer it.
So make sure to play poker at a safe poker site with legit deposit options, such as: https://www.bwin.com/texas-holdem-poker. See you there!