From: "ADB Bingo" Subject: Bingo Goes To Barge Day 1 Wow. BARGE is one of the absolute highlights of the year for me. No matter what the results, I always end up having fun. I had no idea how much MORE fun it is when you both play well, and have lady luck whack you right upside the head in a big way at the same time :) I'll start at the beginning, but this is more or less an impressions report than a chronological list of everything. I wake up WAY too early (2:00 am Vegas Time) for my 8:00 (Chicago time) flight. Airplane fails to explode, and we make it on-time after one of the smoothest decents I've ever had into McCarran. Maybe I'll fly in early in the morning more often. I've sent last minute emails to Gary Carson and Steve Daniels who I noted were landing about the same time as me. Gary replies, and I walk around for about 10 minutes before finding him. We hang around another 10 or 15 minutes waiting for Crunch, but since I never heard from him I have no idea if he's actually looking for us or not. We bail, and get in the monstrous, but quick-moving taxi line. Just as we get assigned a cab I see Crunch's hat, and we flag him down and share the cab to Binions. Crunch hands the badges to the girl behind the desk, and I fish mine out. Very nice job Crunch - they look awesome. Just another reminder of how hard people work to pull this thing off. We check in, and Gary dumps his stuff in my room since his isn't ready, and we walk the LONG way (via the bus station - got a little lost) Street Station for lunch. Hmmmm - yummy brewpub. Back to Binions, and I hook up with Mich Firestone and Tiger123, and they graciosuly give me a lift to the Bellagio. I get in a new 9-18 HE game, and play for about an hour making $20 before getting called to the 15-30. This is by far the best 15-30 going, lots of action, multiway pots, and actual conversation going on. The one hand I noted has me three betting it with AK, and getting run down by some doofus calling all the way with A-6 who hits runner runner flush to take a monster pot. I cash out 3 hours later down $65. I also note that Ernst Dieter Martin is CRUSHING this game, up something like 2.5 racks in the first 1.5 hours. I hear one of the rocks at my end of the table ask another as he was moved into the game 'Is that guy any good or just on some sort of rush' ? The answer 'I haven't figured it out yet, and I've been watching for an hour !'. heh. Well done Jupiler ! I cab it back alone from the Bellagio, and then immeditately get put into a cab by a bunch of folks going to the Saharra $60-40 NLHE tourney. Foldem and I decide to kill the hour before the tourney at the dice table, where he does a nice job winning our buy in by rolling the dice for 15 minutes or so. I play well in this tourney, and make the final table with decent but about 7th place chips. They pay 7 out of the 9, and I unfortunately go down when the following hand develops. I'm UTG, and jam with QQ. A cocky young local kid who is running over the table thinks and then CALLS the bet. An idiot local older guy in the 9 seat thinks and thinks and calls all in. The flop is all low cards, and I jam. What on earth can he have ? They both have me covered, and my QQ goes down when the old guy spiked a king with his KQ offsuit. Two away from the money. Aiyah. Nice hand sir. Calling an all in early position bet from two players with KQ off ? I hang around for a while, and catch a ride with Kevin Un (who ended up winning the tourney I think) back to Binions. Time to start drinking, and I play dice for a long while, getting back to even when Ken Kubey makes some MONSTER roll very late at night. I've been up 24 hours now, and crash hard, virtually dead even for BARGE after day one. Not too bad, but as most of you know, it got MUCH better :) Don 'Bingo' Rieck From: "ADB Bingo" Subject: Bingo Goes to Barge Day 2 (Thursday) I apologize if the formatting of this is all screwed up. Somehow Pegasus mail sporked on me, and I'm using Outlook, which I hate, and which apparently doesn't handle inserting CRs in plaintext very well. I Microsoft Fish. I wake up Thursday morning at the anti-r00ling hour of 6:30am, my hindbrain not listening to my liver, and stuck on Central Time. I head downstairs, and eventually learn to do the 'Melody - PokerCage - Buffet' shuffle to get my breakfast comp. I happily find out that I can order from the menu, and sit down with some BARGERS to feast. I apologize, but for some reason I can't at all remember who I ate with, but the conversation was great, and is usually the case at BARGE, it didn't matter who you sat with, it was gonna be a good time. I wander around, and kill time until the HOP tourney. My table is not exactly fishy, as I have 1983 world champ Tom McEvoy at my right, Paul Phillips across from me, and Roy Cooke in Seat 9. My intimidation quickly turns to laughter, as our table is easily one of the best, conversation wise, I've ever been at. Tom is initially a little worried because the tourney didn't start out perfectly on time, and I assure him that we really didn't know what we were doing with this one last year either, and that it's all OK. He quickly perks up, and at one point when someone called for a ruling he said that 'This is BARGE, we just make the rules up as we go along' :) I think he 'gets it'. Meanwhile Roy is melting chips, and Tom starts giving him good natured hell about the column he'll be writing in Card Player if he's the first one out of the tournament. He even gets up, and puts an extra 'Tex Sheean' book bounty on Roy and has him sign it telling him to put it into the pot anytime he's all in :) Roy takes it all in stride, and he is a pleasure to have at the table. Getting a chance to get three people I consider to be poker celebrities at the same tourney table was a blast. The table continues to just be great, even though I make numerous mistakes and I end up busting rather toothlessly at about 2:45. I buy into a 10-20 game about 30 minutes later, and end up leaving it shortly thereafter as they start up the 2-5 PL game. I know I'm outclassed in this game. Melissa Hayden is in the 1 seat, and Quick is at the table, as are (I think) Mike Osbourne, and several other tough BARGERS. I play fairly conservatively, and the following hand developed. I've asked several BARGERS who I really respect how badly I played this, and they all agreed 'pretty badly', but I'll post it anyway as I found it interesting. [ I hope I got this right. I meant to write it down, and thought I did, but I can't find the notes. I blame demon rum, which I was NOT drinking at the game, but was later on at BARGE when I had the notebook out] I've got about $600 in front of me. The other players in this hand, a local guy has about $400 or so, and I believe Melissa has me covered, although I couldn't tell exactly because she had mostly bills. I'm in the BB, and the old guy makes it $20 to go. Melissa raises (I think) $75, and I look down and see QQ. I just call. The flop is K-rag-rag, I check, and it's checked around. It ends up getting checked all the way down, and my QQ holds up. Melissa told me at the table I should have re-popped her, and the other big bet experts I've asked agree. My reasoning at the time is that if I repopped her and she reraised me, I couldn't call, and I didn't want to risk $250 or so on a hand I couldn't call if reraised. I have basically been told I had no business playing if I wasn't willing to commit, but perhaps I was just intimidated by Melissa ? Well, I was, and I think she knew it. Well, she certainly did after that :) I don't know - regardless I ended up playing for a couple hours, and won exactly $1. Given the field, and my inexperience in PL, I felt this was a moral victory. I head to the Mirage Buffet for the first time, and pay $25 to get in. This is officially more than I've paid for food at any BARGE for the entire weekend, but it is yummy, and I get some pretty healthy stuff to eat in between bites of prime rib and cheesecake. I play in the $120/100 NLHE tourney, and play absolutely terrible poker. Once again I have Paul Phillips at my table, and he is fascinating to watch. That was worth the $220, but I feel really embarrassed as I bust out with an underpair that was obviously beaten that I jammed into. Paul good naturedly agrees that it was a really bonehead move. Well, I *think* it was good-natured. Paul was a pleasure to have at both my morning tourney table and the Mirage tourney, and I resolve to somehow earn a little respect back at the tourney on Saturday. It's funny, but playing so badly in front of people whos games I really respect had me MAJORLY motivated to play solidly on Saturday. I still made plenty of mistakes in the NLHE tourney (more about those later), but I think I learned from the ones I had made earlier in the week, and that's what counts. As a side note, I talked with Scott Byron at the Mirage that night about the mistakes I'd made in both the PL game, and in this tourney, and he gave me some very good points to think about in terms of general tournament strategy and attitude.. We continued to run into each other throughout BARGE, and talked again at the Calcutta, and he made a tremendous impression on me with his knowledge of the game, and his willingness to talk through both specific situations, and general attitude and concepts with me. I fully credit my good finish at the NLHE event to the advice I got from Scott. He's a class act, and a great player. My notes end there for day two, but I imagine I probably played some hugely -EV game and drank some beer after that, but I was pretty wiped. A count of the bankroll the next morning indicates I'm still somehow just about even for BARGE less food and whatever dozens of bets I've apparently agreed to let Foldem book on my behalf as part of the ADB syndicate. Thus ended day 2. Bingo