Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2003 13:46:30 -0700 (PDT) From: kubey@summit.engr.sgi.com (Ken Kubey) To: barge@barge.org Subject: [BARGE] QB's 2003 BARGE Trip Report The story of my eighth BARGE. Didn't miss a beat. First, thanks to all of the folks I borrowed cell phones from. Bingo, Patti, Connie, Mike, Rich, JR, Brian. anyone else? Second, a conversation from two locals I heard on Monday: Local #1: "... bunch of computer geeks and they are all drunk." Local #2: "But they play good drunk." Laughter at table. Wednesday, July 30th. --------------------- 9:00 a.m. Wake up, go into work for a 1/2 day. Sandi drops me off at the airport. Flight is okay. Get to the Horseshoe, check into my $25 room. Check out the PokerStars hospitality suite in room 1819. Pretty darn cool. Free Beer! Hear story of Daniel N. losing a $4000 pot while in a grocery store. Bingo and Jester invite me along to Main Street for dinner. We exchange many cool gambling/hockey stories. I head over to the Team CHORSE event. I joined the Canadian team (Team MooseCock). I'm about as Canadian as Taco Bell, but I seemed to fit in well with these guys. I was playing Omaha-8. I bluffed on the river with a pair of 9's and no low figuring that my lone opponent had missed a flush. He called. I turned up my pair hoping that it might win the high side. My opponent had no pair and no low. Guess I wasn't bluffing after all :-) At some point, Fich was complaining about something. Nolan tells him to stop whining. He does for about 5 seconds and then starts whining again. I call out "String Whine!" laughter. Ali (good Canadian name, eh?) was all-in on a key hand of stud showing something like 2-8-A-7. The betting was heavy. 3 players. One guy showed a straight. Ali produced a full house (222AA) to win a monster pot and keep us in the game. Way to go! Murray cracked me up with antler signals before each round. Wandering from one side of Binion's to the other, I stop to watch a couple playing the giant slot machine. First spin I see: BAR BAR BLANK. Aww. I decide to watch one more: TRIPLE BAR JOKER JOKER DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! $300. They are thrilled. Woman is gushing that they have been married for 30+ years and they've never hit something like this before. It was a nice moment. Thursday, July 31st. --------------------- Later, I got into a 4-8 hold'em game featuring Action Bob. We were often straddling. There were plenty of blind raises. I made the mistake of always looking at my cards. I was down over $200 in the game when I finally won a massive pot with trip jacks. Finished down $100 for the session. Action Bob was killing the game. I think he won a couple of racks. At 5:00 a.m., about 8 of us met up to go play golf (Death March). I think 3 people had gotten some sleep. The rest of us had been up all night. North Shore Mike had been up for two days. Ploink decided to join us despite having no sleep, clubs, or golf shoes. Cool. We were all waiting for Kevan to show up. Kevan was driving from San Francisco and left at 8:30 p.m. He pulled into the valet area at 5:15 looking dazed, but happy. Nolan and I were in the last group along with Gavin. Scottro also came along and was Gavin's cart driver. Scottro got off one super funny line, but I can't find it in my notes. Gavin and Nolan were betting $50+ a hole before long and had each other on tilt after about 30 minutes. Of course we had to play not from the white men's tees, but from the blue championship tees. I think that cost me about 10 strokes and 4 or 5 golf balls. On one hole, I popped up my drive and it landed about 60 yards away just ahead of the ladies' tees. Much laughter. Nolan miss hit his drive badly also ending up on the ladies' tee. More laughter. Nolan was cracking me up and also offered me free shots at $50 or $100 on a few 40+ foot puts. I got his heart pounding on one uphill 50-footer that missed by inches. Mike told us that he was literally falling asleep while walking up the 17th fairway. He had been up for 50+ hours. I hit 3 fabulous shots. The other 130 weren't so hot. Shower, quick sandwich at the snack bar with Jim Bullard. Time for the History of Poker tournament. This tournament is all 5-draw high and lowball (5-draw low). I played/play a lot of draw with my high school friends, so I know these games better than some of our expert hold'em and stud players. I also had my lucky mouse at the table. I was doing okay. I was looking at my cards in two sets of two and then the 5th one. I found trip 7's as I looked at my 3rd and 4th cards. I didn't even look at the 5th one. I saw that JR was about to raise. Just then Sabyl said that she had been dealt 6 cards. MISDEAL!! No!!!!! I showed my hand for sympathy and then discovered that I had been dealt FOUR sevens. Arrgghh!!!! It's very possible that those weren't supposed to be my cards. I was steaming for a few minutes, but managed to get over it. Later, I tried to steal in a lowball round, but Ploink called my all-in bet. I had to draw two. He drew one. I caught a 76 to survive. I caught a rush of cards and was building my stack. We got down to two tables, but only 8 spots would pay. Dan took out 3 players with a pat straight. Andrew Prock who was on my right all day was one of the victims with trip 10's. I think that was the 4th time he had had trip 10's dealt. A little later I found trip 7's in the high round and put in a raise. JR raised all-in. I was happy to call. We both drew two. Can you believe it? I caught the 4th 7. The Poker Gods are weird. JR had a nice hand also with trip 5's. What can you do? After that hand I had a ton of chips and I decided that I was going to coast into the money. I had *never* reached the money in a BARGE poker tournament. I wasn't playing to win it all. I wanted to make the money. That's it. Luckily, no one knew this and I got two walks on my big blind. We got down to 9 players. 5 at the other table, 4 at mine. We played a good 15 minutes with no one going out. Most of the T100 chips were replaced with T500 chips. My big stack of chips got a lot smaller despite being the same value. Then the key hand... Lowball. Ploink goes all-in. I'm in the T1200 big blind with A-3-4-5-J. Remember that I've been up for 33 hours at the point. It's T6000 to call. I carefully count out six chips. I see that I will still have a decent stack if I call and lose. I put the chips out indicating a call. Now I'm told that I only put out T3000. Somehow I thought I was using T1000 chips. I asked the tournament director what my options were. I could now fold giving the T3000 to Ploink or I could put out the other T3000 to call which would leave me with a about T6500. Honestly, if I had the option to take back my 6 chips and fold, I would have done it. But I was committed. I called and drew one. Ploink announced "Ten." I needed a 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 or joker to win the hand and make the money. I was almost too nervous to look at the card. I looked at it. The brain recognized that it was a 9 and I announced in a forceful and happy tone "Nine!" I'm sure I was more thrilled than anyone else to just make the money. About 7-handed, Michael Maurer raised in high draw. I had 4422. I thought about jamming. But two small pair is a dangerous hand to play all-in. I dumped it. Everyone else folded and I was kicking myself for letting Mike steal yet another pot. Then Mike says "I don't usually show hands, but I have to show this one." Double Presto! Quad 5's dealt! So glad I folded. 5-handed, I raised with a pat 10. Jerrod was on the ropes and called for his last couple of chips in the big blind with a two card draw to a 7. He hit the draw to survive. Dang it. A few hands later, I called all-in in the big blind with 7-3-2-2-Joker. I thought Mike was probably out of line raising from the small blind, but it turned out that he had a one card draw to a 75. He caught an 8. I sense that I was out before I looked at my card. A queen. That's okay. I made the money at BARGE. I'm a happy and tired camper. Watched Michael win the tournament. Patrick and Eileen invited me to join them for a free Bellagio buffet. Ding! Food was terrific. Conversation was fun. We drove over to the Mirage to check out the baby pot-limit game. Brian Goetz and Paul Philips were seated next to each other. Last time I saw them, Brian had dark hair and Paul was a blond. Now it was reversed. I asked when they decided to switch hair color. One of them informed me that I missed the ceremony. Heh. Caught a ride with Sabyl back downtown for the Craps Crawl. We started at Binion's. One side of the table was all pass line players. The other side was all don't pass players. The rivalry was fun. Sabyl was more happy when the bad guys lost money than when she won. Next we went to the El Cortez. What a dump! Couldn't get a spot at the craps table, so I just wandered around talking to Shelly, Sethro and others. Someone suggested that we play Rocks and Beer at their 1-3 stud table. Cool. We sat down to open the table. Without warning, Patti went into maniac mode. Rocks and Beer? Forget it. We were playing for real. I started with QQ-A and raised. Foldem and Patti called. I caught another A showing and bet. Patti paired 9's and raised a little more all-in. Oh well. I have 3 shots to beat trips. I call. She catches a 3rd 9. That's all she has. She wins. I play split 4's in a big pot and catch trips to win the pot and get even for the Crawl. The group wanders back to Fitzgerald's. It's 2:00 a.m. I've been up for 41 hours. I grab a wonderful cheeseburger at the Binion's snack bar, head up to my room where the A/C unit sounds like a jet engine and fall asleep. Whew! Friday, August 1st ------------------- Have breakfast with a bunch of guys. TOC-style tournament. Brian G. and Sabyl are at my table. Brian is doing finger puppet stuff with some of the zillion rubber fish on the table. Sabyl is needling him about abusing the fish. Brian asks her if she is the "Fish Advocate General". Maybe you had to be there, but it was pretty funny at the time. I made it to the last 5 tables. Patrick put a big dent in my stack by catching a full house on the river in stud. I went out on some big Omaha-8 hand trying to quadruple up. Oh well. Symposium. Rich and I were missing Jeff Siegal. We recruited Patti to take his place in our little syndicate. Our best buy was Perry and Josh Paley. Perry is a WSOP champ and is fearless. Josh can play no-limit with anyone. We also picked up the Waters/Wattman pair. Dean can play and George played really well in TARGET. Get into a 4-8 HORSE game with a bunch of BARGErs. There were plenty of funny lines. I wrote down a few. The dealer at the next table yells out "We need a floor!" Betty points down and says "There's one right here." Tim Busserman comes up with my favorite line of BARGE 2003 "Math is hard. Let's go gambling!" Sounds like a T-shirt to me. Peter and Tim are involved in a hand. Following is in chat-speak... Tim has KQ on a Q-high board and says "I outkick you." Peter says "But I have two paih." Tim Says "Then you win!" O8 round, I have J977 in the BB. No one raises so I get to see the flop for free. I say "I'm thinking of a flop." while thinking of 7-2-2. Flop is 7-5-2. Close enough. I bet, Tim raises, woman calls, I call. Turn 2. Spooky. I bet, Tim raises, woman calls, I 3-bet, call, call. River 7. Quad 7's AGAIN? I bet, call, call. Tim's Presto! was drawing thin. Woman has A4 for low. There are two terrible non-BARGE players in the game. I'm tired as hell at midnight, but stay up till 2:00 a.m. as the game is fun and I'm doing well. Win $115 and quit the game "early" at about 2:00. Amazingly one of the terrible players is in the pot-limit game and is winning! Holy smokes! I was just too tired to think about playing. Saturday, August 3rd -------------------- Have breakfast with Rich Strauss. Time for the BARGE no-limit event. My starting table is plenty tough. I steal blinds often enough to stay alive. Monster hand... Brian G. raises to T150. Patti makes it T400. Ross says "Raise" and throws in T300 not seeing Patti's raise. He then makes it T800. Brian calls for about T750. Patti calls. Flop X-5-Y. Ross jams, Patti calls. I say "Who has Presto!?" Brian has the set of 5's with a r-r flush draw too. Ross has KK and is in the lead for the big side pot. Patti has QQ and is in deep yogurt. Turn Zd. Brian has the set and the only flush draw. River Qh. Ackkk!!!! Brian is out. Ross is hurt. Patti is back in business. Her only out to win the main. I get moved to a new table with lots of good players. Fich, Russ Fox and Josh to name three. Josh is getting run over by the deck. He's doing a very good Triumph "The Insult Comedy Dog" routine. No one seems to be remotely interested in calling me, so I decide to steal on Russ' big blind. While pretending to look at my cards, I accidentally see one (a 7). I make the standard raise. Cards explode out of people's hands as usual. On Russ. Russ is a good tight player. He'll throw away. No. He raises all-in. Doh! Well, I probably have some total cheese here. Oh no! Pocket 7's. Too much of my stack is in. He could have AK. I call. Russ has 99. Flop comes Xd-6d-4d. I have the 7d. Russ has none. Turn 3d. I win! Cool. But before the dealer puts out the river, I say "5 of diamonds just for fun." Someone thought that was funny. Much later I raise to T900 from early position with JJ. Folded to Josh who starts to think. I'm guessing 45 seconds which is absolutely forever at a poker table. Finally he raises to T3000 folding the rest of the field. Why T3000? Why not just go all-in? Why so long? My read was that he had a big hand and wanted me to call. I thought that the extremely long pause could be QQ or a Hollywood job with AA. I had T1500 left. I've made this mistake before and I'll probably make it again. I folded the jacks after thinking for 15 seconds or so. We showed are cards. Josh had AKo. I made a bad fold. The only bright side is that if Josh had busted me on that hand, I'd have to hear about it for the rest of BARGE. So there was a little mental +EV for me in folding. Later I pick up 77 and raise. Fich jams. I'm pot committed this time and call. Of course he has AA. Well, 7's have been good to me all week, maybe a 7 will... Dealer snaps out the three cards for the flop. An ace shows in the window as he goes to spread them. Aloha. 72 place. Sigh. Banquet. Food was good. Howard Lederer was mesmerizing. His strategy sounds great for a 300-600 game. Maryann (the nice cocktail waitress) told me that she missed Don. Dean and Josh made the final table. I think I made $15. The heads-up battle between Patti and Paul was awesome. Patti seemed to be working him and then all of a sudden Paul would turn the tables and put Patti back on defense. Patti lost a key hand with AJ vs. Paul's A8 and a few minutes later Paul won the whole thing. I thought both played well. I got into the must-move, must-drink 4-8 HORSE game. 7-stud round. I decide to play my first hand without looking at my downcards. I raise coming in showing a Q. A couple of players call. Next card I get another Q and bet. Sherri calls. I keep betting. Now she raises showing nothing. I call her down. She has KK. Doh. Next hand. Jake and Bingo are playing from the rail. I start with split jacks and raise. They call. Jake catches a J. I bet. They call. I'm the only player seated and I'm betting and getting calls from the rail. Gotta love it. 5th street: I bet, Jake calls. Bingo has someone look at his cards and folds. 6th, I bet. Jake comes back to the table and raises! Doh. I call him down. He had 2J2J on first 4 cards. I'm down $80 and my drinks haven't even gotten to the the table. Bingo and I pose for a picture. His hand is on my chest. He asks if I'm lactating. Note to self: time to lose some weight. Queens are wild when a female player has the button. This really spices up the games. I am later informed that it is called "The Wild Bitch" rule. More laughter. Patrick sits down, but informs us that he cannot drink. We are good sports and let him play anyway. Bingo and I start talking about harvesting Patrick's liver. We are already laughing pretty hard when Bingo says: "Give him a Liver Overs button." and then "Must donate liver to Bingo." If you check out Bingo's pictures from BARGE, you'll see me laughing very hard after those lines. In the stud round, Sabyl raises showing a 4. Bingo says "You have rolled up Canadian Presto!?" Game dies. I go play craps. Gavin is betting don't on my roll. I explain to him that I am a pass line player. To his credit, he switches back to the right side pretty quickly and makes some bucks on my decent roll. I have a $2 hard 6 bet out. I roll it. Cool. $18 to me. They give me $63. I'm still trying to figure this out. I think Someone made some other bet for me that made that right. I'm sure no one there was sober enough to remember. I'm extremely close to being even for the night. Call it a day. Sunday, August 4th ------------------ Sandi and I have breakfast at about 1:00 p.m. in the coffee shop. Jim B. joins us to chat. Sandi and I go off to play slots and blackjack and get our butts kicked. Losing $30 on nickel slots sure feels like a lot. Lose a bit at blackjack with the dealer pulling the usual 497 card 21 to beat our pat 20's. I hate blackjack. We try 3 card poker. The game goes okay. I make a straight and actually pull ahead for a few moments before being dealt three rotten hands in a row. Leave that table. Monday, August 5th ------------------ We plan to get to bed around 3:00 a.m. 4:00 at the latest. 2:00 a.m. Okay, back to poker at Binion's. Omaha-8. One guy just destroys the table in about 30 minutes. He wins 8 out of 10 pots. Half the table is broke. I'm stuck $80 being the victim of two of his river hits. Change over to 1-4-8 hold'em game with some of the worst players in the history of organized poker. One lady would only bet with top pair or better and would get calls on the river from 2nd or 3rd pair. It was sick. Get back close to even. Go to check on Sandi at the blackjack pit. I walk up. She loses 4 straight hands in like 2 minutes. I tell her that I don't want to bring her any more bad luck and head back to poker. She does well in my absence. Whew. 6:00 a.m. rolls around. We finally head back over to the Golded Nugget. Go to room? Nah. More slots. Between us, we *found* about $4 in coins in slot trays or on the floor. It was crazy. We actually reach the room at 7:15 a.m. Heh. After noon, we cab it to the Mirage. Sandi has some shopping to do. I go to the poker room. Lists are a mile long. I need to stay near the poker room, but can't just sit there. Ah! The Big Six wheel! $1 bets. Cool. I buy in for $10 and just play the $1 spot. It's kinda fun. I start betting $2 a spin and get stuck. Rebuy. Put $1 on the $20 spot. It hits! I R00L Big Six wheel for $10 profit. Yes!! More slots. 5c Slots at Mirage suck. We have better luck at Harrah's. Sandi finds 4 $1 coins in a $1 slot tray. Free money. At some point, I just have to try the 25c "Winning for Dummies" slot. This one has 4 reels. 4th reel has stuff like 5x, add 100, and re-spin. I hit three mixed 7's with the re-spin. Sandi is excited. It spins again and of course comes up on the same jackpot as it is supposed to. Sandi is more excited. It goes 3 more times which is the max. Woo hoo. We were going nuts. It was only a $60 jackpot or so, but it was too much fun. We walk over to the Bellagio to check out the amazing flowers. Mirage-Cab (nice cabbie) Airport. Last second two-way triple bar win for Sandi. Go home. craps: won blackjack: lost 3-card poker lost live poker: lost a little slots: lost tournies: WON! I had a terrific time at BARGE 2003. It's amazing that you can look forward to something all year long and then have it be *better* than you thought it would be. BARGE belongs at Binion's Horseshoe. I saw Martin V., Lee Jones and Andy Bloch in the Horseshoe. None of them exploded into flames and world continues to spin. Thanks to Chuck and Peter for bringing off a fantastic event. Thanks also to Nolan and Patrick and anyone else who helped out. Zimmers, Don Perry, Quick, we missed ya! But we didn't miss a beat. Can I sign up for BARGE 2004 now? Ken Kubey kubey@engr.sgi.com (650) 933-3536 ________ Thanks to PokerStars, Paradise Poker, and Quiotix Technologies for their generous sponsorship of BARGE 2003. Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 10:57:04 -0700 (PDT) From: kubey@summit.engr.sgi.com (Ken Kubey) To: barge@barge.org Subject: [BARGE] secret passage > > Finding the 2nd secret passage in Binion's. > > You must reveal this to your fellow BARGERs. C'mon, Ken, spill! My room was on the third floor on the old side. I tried to get to the casino by going down the stairs and got lost! I found a hallway of offices and then went down some more stairs and ended up at the back of a kitchen area. So this is all pretty boring, but it was kinda cool walking down that hallway and thinking of all the people that must have been dragged through there and then beaten silly back in the good old days. OB Bonus BARGE quote: Bingo tips the dealer about $15 after winning a HORSE hand. Dealer nearly knocks chips into tray instead of tip bucket. Bingo, seeing the near disaster says: "For Christ's sake, don't give it to Becky!" Ken Kubey kubey@engr.sgi.com (650) 933-3536 ________ Thanks to PokerStars, Paradise Poker, and Quiotix Technologies for their generous sponsorship of BARGE 2003. Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 14:36:11 -0400 To: barge@barge.org From: Chuck Weinstock Subject: Re: [BARGE] secret passage I found one at the Golden Nugget in case anyone cares. I was giving my car to the valet parkers and groused about how long a walk it was from there to the south towers. The attendant showed me a door that lead to a passageway that led to the corridor right near the coffee shop...easily cutting a minute or two off the walk. Coming the other way it's the door labelled "Wheelchair Access". Chuck ________ Thanks to PokerStars, Paradise Poker, and Quiotix Technologies for their generous sponsorship of BARGE 2003.