Bill Gates Hops Into Wyoming Poker Game After Ribbon Cutting

Billionaire Bill Gates landed in a small town in Wyoming on Monday for a ribbon cutting ceremony and then dropped in on a private poker game.

The Microsoft co-founder is one of the investors in a $4 billion nuclear reactor project planned for Kemmerer, a town of just over 2,400 people in the southwest portion of the state.

“After all the groundbreaking-with-a-shovel poses with dignitaries from the billionaire Warren Buffett-owned PacifiCorp, with Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon and TerraPower LLC, one of the richest men in the world headed over to a local fossil store to play a private game of Texas hold’em poker with a few ‘regular people,’” the Cowboy State Daily reported.

Poker And Power Plants

Gates, who owns TerraPower, said the project has been a dream of his since 2005 and he was pleased to see it finally come to fruition.

“It’s important for the future of this country that projects like this succeed,” Gates said. “This is a big step toward safe, abundant, zero-carbon energy.”

About 300 people attended the ceremony. After, Gates hit the card table with some locals as part of the itinerary, buying in with everyone else at the table for $30.

“To have someone of his stature sit down with local people and talk with us shows that he really cares about us,” Wyoming Fossils co-owner Robert Bowen said. “We’re honored he considered to be part of our community, and sit down with us. He’s a very down-to-earth man.”

Gates has been known to play poker on occasion through the years. In a 2002 Harvard Crimson article, friends commented on his time at the university including some regular card games. According to friends, “his mathematical ability did not always translate into winning hands,” the Crimson noted.

The game usually featured six players all buying in for about $100. Friends reported that he finished in the red often and was an average player.

“He was known to be an aggressive player,” friend C. Greg Nelson told the Crimson. “But in the crowd at Currier House where we played, he was about the median — definitely not in the top quartile.”

Photo: Wikipedia/Lukasz Kobus

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