This week, Bill Gates interrupted a poker game in a rural mining town in Wyoming, creating a bizarre scene for the locals.
The billionaire, 68, played a $600 game of Texas hold ’em, a well-liked variant of the classic game of poker, with a group of regular employees at Wyoming Fossils in Kemmerer on Monday.
He was there as work on a next-generation nuclear power plant, which Gates hopes will “revolutionize” the way power is produced, began at his energy company, TerraPower LLC.
Posing for pictures with TerraPower officials and Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon was not the billionaire’s only plan, though.
Following his participation in the project’s groundbreaking ceremony, Gates went to Wyoming Fossils and sat down to play poker with five locals.
The group featured cattle rancher Steve Peternali, owner of Wyoming Fossils Robert Bowen, food service director Joyce Chadwick, owner of a wholesale fossils company Tony Lindgren, and retired maintenance manager Larry Shoemaker. The inventor of Microsoft drank Diet Coke while exchanging hands with the others.
Each party member contributed $100, and during the roughly 30-minute game, they each bought a pre-mixed margarita and a Gold Peak Iced Tea.
Although there are differing reports, Gates is said to have played a hard game even though it is unclear who prevailed.
According to Bowen, the billionaire confronted Peternali and attempted to call his bluff. He said that the creator of Microsoft had two fives and was still calling Peternali out because “every card out there would have beat him.” “Bill smelled the bulls*** on the cattle rancher,” he stated.
