Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2003 18:52:11 -0700 From: Paul Person To: barge@barge.org Subject: [BARGE] My first BARGE trip report.. As a dedicated lurker, I've never posted a trip report, but since I lucked out and won the BARGE NLHE, I feel obligated to post one. Sorry it's a little longish. 8:00AM Thurs. Gas up and hit the road, arrive at Binion's at 11:45 just as the HOP was getting ready to go, and Chuck finds me a last minute seat. Two moments: Several hands into the lowball round I see the show down and blurt "Oh, there's a joker in the deck!". Several suspicious eyes turn my way. At the start of the 3rd or 4th lowball round I'm delt AAKK3, knee jerk raise UTG, then "Oops! Is this low!?!", and only get one caller! I draw 3, but pair the 3 and K high wins. I exit with AA against KK which improves to K's up. AA is seems to be one of my favorite bust out hands. Oh well, now I can finally go eat! When I learn the Mirage Buffet is not official this year (well, no line pass anyway), I head for the Main St. Station buffet and magically arrive a 4:00 just as they open. Having not eaten since the previous night, I eat way too much and waddle back to my room to recover. Great buffet BTW. When I can get my belt buckled again, I take advantage of the cool weather and head for the strip to find something fashionable to bring home for my Peg and to play a little BJ here and there. I'm not registered for the TOC on Friday so I sleep late, eat breakfast at the Nugget, and back to Binion's for a little poker. Sit in a stud game just starting up while waiting for a $4/8 holdem seat. Can't get anything to stand up. My open ended str8/flsh draw turns into broadway on 6th street but gets check raised by a rivered by a runner-runner flush. Things don't improve when a holdem seat opens, but I'm getting mostly garbage so I'm playing very few hands and only lose about $50. Being still relatively cool and cloudy, I head back out to the strip and get in a $6/12 HE at the Mirage that seems to be always short handed, typically 6-7 handed with two of 'em walking. I keep looking for a fish and not finding one. Still can't get a hand to stand up. Get AA and KK cracked. After several hours of that I leave down another $60 and go wander around the strip some more to people watch and play a little BJ here and there. Saturday the breakfast line is too long at the Nugget but I find no line at Carolines in the Four Queens and have a very good breakfast with excellent service. Back at the Horseshoe for the NLHE tourney I find we've all been provisioned with two little fish. In 30 yrs of poker I've never played with a good luck charm or even a card protector on the table so I feel a little foolish but keep them on the table to give to whoever busts me. After the miserable luck I've had the last two days, I play tight, vowing not to play draws, and so play very few hands. I never have an above average stack but every time it gets to the point where I begin to feel I need to find something soon along comes KK or QQ...and they hold up!!! Even my 99 and TT holds up. And my AK flops K high! What's happening? I don't understand what's different today, and then it hits me. It's the little fish! :-) One of them must be a magic fish!! So I begin to take better care of them, making sure they don't get knocked over and always have a good view of the table. I nurse my stack as the players begin to leave faster and faster and the clapping becomes almost continuous. Then it's bubble time, and suddenly we're down to 10 players! WOOOOHOOOOOO! OMG, I made the final table!! The Banquet is very good. Howard speaks of the on line tournament players that are showing up with very little live tournament experience but many on line tournaments under their belt. Hey, that's me! I played a lot of play money ring games a Paradise and later joined the PokerPages Poker School to play tourney's. At B&M's I just play low limit, mostly O/8 and some HE (recreational). At 10:00 we are back for the final table. Binion's set us up on the same table as the WSOP NLHE final table, and it might have been the same dealer too! Cool! We even had an announcer giving the play by play, and a pretty decent crowd around the rail. (Did he announce the WSOP too?) I've got $18K, basically a 3 way tie for 7th largest stack. Chip leader has about $46K, smallest stack is around $12K. I continue to nurse my stack as I mostly watch. We get down to 5-6 players and the blinds/antes increase to the truly painful stage and I need to find a hand before the blinds get around to me again. I find Qc9c in 4th or 5th position and decide to call an all-in UTG bet from (I think) Tom Goodwin who has me with a big ace. Luckily, my magic fish causes runner-runner flush to appear. Tom is a good sport about it, but I feel guilty anyway. I continue to nurse my stack while Patti Beadles finishes off the rest of the table and suddenly it's "WooooHooo, I'm heads up with Patti!" followed shortly by "OMG, I'm heads up with Patti! I'm toast!!" We take a short break. When we come back, Patti says she is going to give me her bust out prize before we start, and proceeds to hang a necklace of little fish around my neck. I'm sure she had me pegged (rightfully) as the biggest fish of the bunch. Heh, but I still had my magic fish! Again, emulating the WSOP final table, bundles of green are brought to the table with shotgun armed guard. Everyone has a good laugh at the pile of $1's and I vow to ask for my share in quarters so I can hit the slots for a couple hours. My NLHE heads up experience is mostly limited to Poker School. I had no idea how to play against someone in Patti's league. Usually, heads up on line, I play anything above an average hand, but against Patti I didn't want to play anything that marginal so I also dumped half the hands I usually would play. Patti obviously wasn't used to people folding their small blind when heads up, and when I just called one time, she remarked "Huh?" Patti raised just about every hand pre-flop, so when I did play a hand (about 1 in 3.14159), I frequently got enough chips to look at 3-4 more hands. I really don't remember many specific hands, but my small pairs and aces were holding up, and I survived for much longer than I ever dreamed until the blinds/antees were pretty much forcing one or the other of us to go all-in almost every time we played one. On the penultimate hand, Patti had me barely covered when it was my turn to pick a hand and make a stand again. I really don't remember the hand (I think I had a small pair that held up... anyone remember?) but it only left Patti enough chips to post the BB, so I called blind and turned over something really awful like 34o against Patti's Ax, and then sucked out with runner-runner flush or something to end it. Patti showed true class and shook my hand and congratulated me, and I suffered mixed emotions of guilt and WooHoo! But I decided to keep the money anyway. ;-) I had to stay and play a little $2-4 chowaha just to say I played Chowaha with Chris, and got to watch as he worked on an amazing chip castle with about $12K in chips. Wow! Early morning exit a 8:00AM to beat the crowd back to LA. The set of chips that Paradise Poker donated for the NLHE is great. I love them. Thank you very much Paradise! Favorite BARGE memory: Everytime I heard the loudspeaker say "Paul Person makes it $30,000 to go.." I little shiver ran up my spine. :-) How could this be anything but my best BARGE ever! Many thanks to Chuck and Foldem and everyone who worked to make BARGE the wonderful experience it was! Paul Person ________ Thanks to PokerStars, Paradise Poker, and Quiotix Technologies for their generous sponsorship of BARGE 2003.