2 Months. 2 Million: House Wars

Our fearless foursome encountered some serious distractions on this week's episode of 2 Months, 2 Million, which found them challenging another quartet of poker players to a three-pronged prop bet. Dubbed the "House Wars" and conceived by Dani "Ansky" Stern and Aaron "aejones" Jones over a game of pickup basketball, the challenge pitted Stern, Jay Rosenkrantz, Brian Roberts and Emil Patel against Jones, Andrew "luckychewy" Lichtenberger, Daniel "Starkey" Starkey, and Steve "Zugwat" Silverman in three categories -- football, nightlife, and poker. The losing team would have to clean the winning team's house.

The football challenge unfolded first in the searing Las Vegas heat. The first team to seven touchdowns would win. With both Roberts and Stern displaying some surprising athletic ability, team 2M2MM cruised to a 7-4 victory. Later that night in the war room, Steve "Zugwat" Silverman sat down to play Krantz heads-up online. Krantz got off to a bad start when his pocket eights lost to Silverman's pocket tens on an all-undercard board, then lost another huge pot with A-K vs. Silverman's Q-Q. By the time he decided to quit, Krantz had lost $40,000.

Brian's long-time girlfriend, Cassie, was in town and dropped by the house for a visit. The two live together in Texas and have been together for four and a half years. Over dinner at Nove, Cassie asked Brian why the guys were wasting their time with all the House Wars shenanigans rather than concentrating on poker. She brought up what seems to be a big question mark in their relationship -- whether Brian was going to buy a house back home in Texas. Altough Brian reasoned that he didn't want to buy property right now because of the market, Cassie couldn't help but sense that Brian's deeper fear of settling down was really behind it.

After another brutal session in which he dropped $55,000, Jay headed out to the Palms to meet up with the guys for the nightlife challenge. The teams agreed on three tasks that at least one member must perform. Both teams succeeded at the first two tasks -- getting a girl to drop to the floor and knock out five push-ups and getting a girl to buy them a drink. Only Andrew "luckychewy" Lichtenberger was able to complete the third task by getting a woman to give him her panties.

Back at the house, Jay was down $64,000 and playing pot-limit Omaha, a deadly combination. Lucky for him he was able to get out of the war room to play the third tie-breaking challenge. Each player paired up with a player from the opposite team in best-of-three heads-up sit-n-go matches. Krantz and Silverman were the first to play, Zugwat finishing off Krantz 2-1. Brian took on Lichtenberger and lost 2-0, leaving Dani to go up against Jones who won the first match. Stern came back and tied it up in the second, and in the third, Stern caught a lucky river card to finish him off. Finally, Starkey and Emil duked it out, Starkey coming out ahead to force a tiebreaker. After drawing one name from each team, Brian played Jones and won to give the House Wars title to Team 2M2MM.

With all the prop betting over with, the guys gathered in the war room to add up their earnings for the week. They all agreed that they lost focus on poker and needed to turn around and step it up if they had any hope of reaching their goal. Krantz was the team's biggest loser and thus earned the penalty stunt. As the other three discussed potential punishments for him (we liked the idea of him going door-to-door to inform their neighbors he's a sex offender), Krantz went on a wave of mega-tilt and stormed out of the room. In a sympathetic gesture, Dani, Emil and Brian ended up letting Krantz off the hook, deciding that the pain of losing $80,000 in one week was punishment enough.

The aejones crew came over as the credits rolled and began awkwardly cleaning up the 2M2MM mansion. Clearly some of these kids had never held a broom in their lives.

Week 3 results:

Brian Roberts (-$4,000)
Emil Patel +$32,800
Dani Stern (-$33,000)
Jay Rosenkrantz (-$80,000)

Week 3 total: -$84,200
Total to date +$114,400

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