From: David R Huberman Subject: David's Las Vegas Story: BARGE XI David's Las Vegas Story BARGE XI This year was my first BARGE, and only my second ARGE event, ESCARGOT 2001: At the Bike being my first experience with you goofballs. Not understanding that much of the fun happens before Thursday's opening History of Poker tournament, I made plane reservations to arrive Thursday morning. Ed Pizzarello and I enjoyed an easy flight on United to Denver and then on to Las Vegas, arriving at 10:15am. We caught a taxi to the Hampton Inn on Industrial Blvd where we were staying for free during BARGE thanks to Hilton HHonors points. After checking in and dropping our bags in our room, we encounted bad beat one: it was impossible to get a taxi from our hotel. Yikes. We got a ride down to Binions from the hotel shuttle, and I got to experience downtown LV for the first time in my life. Binions was about what I expected: dark, gloomy, smelly, ugly, and chock full of BARGERS when I arrived. Shortly, I sat down at my table to begin my first-ever table experience playing a-5 lowball and 5-card draw. I don't remember everyone at the table, but I sat across from Peter Caldes, who told me all about the quads he played in lowball once, next to Phil Gusftafson, near Paul Berkowitz, and across the table from Paul Stine and Jeff Shulman. I don't remember any specific hands except that I realized I was playing a lot of pre-draw hands. Only Shulman was playing more hands, including once where he capped it before the draw in lowball then drew 3 and amazingly won the hand vs. two or three opponents with an 8-5 low I believe. Two hours into the tournament, not a single person had busted out. I don't remember who beat me out, but I was the 2nd BARGEr to bust out of the tourney, hardly a surprise given my complete cluelessness as to what I was doing :> Ed and I spent the rest of the day exploring Las Vegas. There were so many things to see since we had last visited in the summer of 1996. We played poker at Bellagio for the first time. Ed sat in a juicy 4-8 HE game while I played in an even juicier 8-16 HE game. I didn't get much in the way of cards and lost $47 over four+ hours. Most of my premium hands were snapped off on the turn or river by K-2 or 9-6 catching a second pair to my unimproved top pair. ::shrug:: I played very well, I thought, and managed to lose very little despite only winning 2 or 3 pots the whole four+ hours. Later that night I returned to Binions for the ADB Craps Crawl hosted by Peter Secor. Only about 60 or 70 of us wound up adventuring along Fremont St, starting at the El Cortez (?), as dingy a gambling pit as my sheltered eyes had ever seen. We had a great time whooping it up, with the darksiders taking a bath on one table, but enjoying steady success on the other table. The look on the dealers' faces when we walked in and started buying-in and placing bets was priceless. Patrick Milligan and I joked that the Security cage must have received a rude awakening from their summer evening naps and were probably glued to the monitors having not seen this much action since, well, last year's craps crawl. I won about $30 before we headed off to Fitzgeralds, whereupon I remarked to Steve BIA Nissman that it felt odd being a Yid in a Mick's casino :> We finished the night (or at least I did) in a drunken frenzy at Binions where the tips flowed freely to the dealers, and the darksiders took a bath courtesy of, well, me. I rolled against myself for, gulp, 25 or so minutes. Needless to say, about 20 minutes into it I decided that since I was hot, I would bet the rightside and try and make back the $200 or so I had already lost on myself. No sooner had I spread myself out and bought up some numbers than I sevened out for a net loss of over $300. For some reason, this part of the story was a source of amusement for Nissman and the others. I didn't find it quite as entertaining. I returned to my hotel room at 2:00am-ish, approximately 25 hours after I had woken up that morning in Virginia to catch my early-morning flight. Day Two brought the 10am TOC-style tourney. It started off for me in grand fashion as I was seated at one end of the table with Steve Carbonara, Lee Daniel Crock (who is one of the most gracious poker players I know), and Tonda Hall, Abdul's wife, who entertained us with stories and solid poker play (despite getting ZERO cards the whole time) while we sat together for two or three hours. I played solid, mistake-free HE, Stud, and Omaha/8 for about 6 hours before I ran into my first big mistake. Earlier, I had more than doubled through in a 600-1200 round against someone when I played A-Q in a three-bet pre-flop pot. I flopped a gutshot, and decided to call the "cheap" round just in case my ace or the miracle ten got there on the turn, especially with such a relatively large pot to start with. I hit my miracle card on the turn, and put as much money into the pot as I possibly could. My broadway was g00t at the end, and before I knew it, I had won a T11000+ pot. I sat tightly for about an hour or so, and soon found myself in a stud round. My chip stack was dwindling, and the antes were definitely worth stealing. I tried to do so in middle-ish position relative to the bring-in with non-threatening cards waiting to act behind me. Unfortunately, I bet right into Chuck Weinstock's rolled-up 9s, and he played me like a fiddle! I lost about 60% of my stack to Chuck that hand and started steaming inside. Luckily, it didn't seem to affect my hand selection too badly as I remained tight the remainder of the tourney. I picked up some chips here and there, and before you know it, Joan Hadley and I had survived the bubble and were at the final two tables. Ploink and I busted out on the same hand when I went all-in for T6500 with JJ, he had one chip left in the small-blind, and the big blind called the remaining T2500 without looking at his cards. He had Q-9, turned a Q, I didnt catch a J at the river, and I busted out in 16th place for a $70 win. After collecting my money, Ed and I went and ate up on the strip and I took a nap to prepare for that evening's C-HORSE tourney! I played on Team Presto! with Michael Patteron (Omaha/8), Bob Herlein (master of HE), Michael Hunter (CP and WRGPT champion!), Ron Galicia (stud), and my buddy Ed (Razz). I only played in two pots in my Stud/8 rounds past fourth street, scooping one and halving the other when Bob Ogus refused to lay down a pair of kings against my 4-5-6-7 board which I was betting most of the way. We didn't get much in the way of cards in this ring-game-styled tournament and wound up losing about $32 each - but it was fun and well worth it! Paul Phillips' Team 3%ers won a lot of money that night with Bwana scooping Stud/8 pots and Paul winning big CP pots, including one heads-up against PacPalBuzz where Paul flopped trip 7s and Buzz threw away a pair of 8s (he had 8-8-9 and kept the 8-9 on a 9-7-7 board) right before the 8 hit the turn. Ouch. It was after 2 when the tournament finished, and Ed and I went back to the hotel to try and catch something in the way of sleep before the next morning's 10am NLHE feature event. All the morning table lineups looked difficult. There were simply too many great names playing in this 21-table 10-handed tourney. I sat down with Randy Collack, Ploink, and THREE tiltboys (Perry Friedman, Steve Brecher, and Lennie) along with Warren Sander and others whose names I didn't get. On the THIRD hand of the tournament, just after Perry proclaimed how much of a shame it would be if he busted out before he finished his french fries in front of him, Lennie raised his small blind, Perry went all-in, Lonnie called, and we had our first KK vs. AA battle, with Lennie (AA) winning the hand. Perry, being a tiltboy and all, took the loss well and got up to a round of applause. When Bob Dunning, the tournament director, announced who had busted out and how, the whole room erupted in applause and laughter. Next to us about an hour into the tourney, Phil Hellmuth loudly proclaimed, "All-in!" and was called my Ming. Ming had A-K to Phil's JJ, but the board brought Ming no help, and Phil's jacks were g00t. A few hands later, after I got moved, I found myself with JJ in the small blind. Everyone folded, I think I went all-in or something, and the big blind called with, yup!, AK. AK vs JJ all in the blinds. Wow. I caught a jack on the flop, the AK caught a gutshot draw, but didnt complete it and I busted out someone I never met and doubled-through. It was gone shortly after, though :< I caught 55 immediately after someone scremed, "Presto g00t!" on another table, and made it T1000 to go hoping no one else would call such a large raise. Shelley Louie called, and we saw a flop of 5-x-10. Woo hoo! I immediately went all-in, but unforunately, Shelley called. Turns out I should have tabled my cards when going all-in before he called - he had outs of course, but he hit the one out he probably never considered: RUNNING TENS! Oy! 5-x-10-10-10 was the board, and I went from suck to being hugely re-sucked, and boom, I was out of the tourney. I said goodbye to my friends and wished everyone luck, and caught an early flight home with Ed. We got to the United ticket counter at the airport to find the computer thought our return tickets had been used. Yeah, right. It took them more than an hour to fix the computer by which time they were already boarding our flight. We ran through McCarran, bowling over little kids and trampling homeless people, cutting our way through the security line (to the shouts of, "assholes!" by the pissed off crowd), ran through Terminal 4, and just barely made our flight to LAX which got us in to Terminal 8 just as our flight in terminal 7 was boarding. We ran through the walkway, caught our plane, and took an easy, uneventful flight back home to Dulles. Shout outs to: Gerry Peterson for placing 10th in NLHE! Russ! You da Man!!! I am so happy that Russ won the NLHE tourney! He's a class act who has been very nice to me since meeting me in Feb at ESCARGOT. He's an excellent poker player, and as Harkness recalled here earlier, Ploink uttered that Russ cold-calling two bets is scarier than someone else re-raising :> Buzz! Congratulations on the TOC win! Buzz is one of the people I come to ARGE events to see and talk with. A gentleman of the finest caliber and one aggressive poker player! Nissman, one of my stable of bitches! Stevie Carb and Mike McManus - nice to meet you guys, finally! Michael Patterson and the Team Presto! gang - maybe next year we'll get cards! :> Joan, my Yenta! Love ya babe! Thanks for the groovy spinner! Razzo - you're as nice as your website. Chuck and KidZee - thanks for a great tourney Bob Dunning and the Binion's Tourney Staff - great job guys! I'm planning on attending MARGE in November and possibly FARGO if my travel schedule is open that weekend. See many of you there! /david *--------------------------------* | Global Crossing IP Engineering | | Manager, Global IP Addressing | | TEL: (908) 720-6182 | | FAX: (703) 464-0802 | *--------------------------------*