Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 21:12:55 -0700 (PDT) From: David Aronson Subject: [BARGE] Long trip report, little pocker 2005 BARGE TRIP REPORT Subtitle: Things are still working out by David Aronson Are all my trip reports the same? Is someone or something trying to tell me something? This is too long for my lazy butt to proofread. Sorry. Wednesday, August 3, 2005 The Travel story: My fabulous wife, Caryl, wants to leave at noon for our 3:30 flight out of Midway airport on the southwest side of Chicago. It should take us around an hour to drive there. At noon, she is taking a shower. At 1pm she is strolling around Dominicks looking for snacks for the plane. At 1:30 we are well on our way, and Caryl is wondering if we are early or late. The answer, of course, is “yes”. At 2:00 we arrive on the airport property, only to find that the long term parking on the north side of the airport (something like 57th street) is full, and we are directed to the remote lot south of the airport on 72nd street. So we make a right on Cicero, heading to 72nd street, go three blocks and run into a traffic jam. A really good traffic jam. Like maybe five cars getting through each stoplight. We try to drive around it, and successfully jump about 5 blocks of the traffic. But then we hit the railroad yard. The Cicero bridge has all that traffic, so we try the Central Avenue bridge. Oops, there is no Central Avenue bridge – doh! Caryl, getting somewhat upset now, calls Southwest Airlines and asks why their website doesn’t have a parking / traffic update on it. What do they know. Anyone out there working for an airline, this would be a really cool idea. Anyhow, they assure us that there is room on the 4:30 and 5:30 flights if we miss ours. So fine, nothing at all to get upset about. Having had a nice tour of an industrial park, we make our way back to the Cicero bridge, somehow losing a block in the process. We inch along through traffic, and on the other side of the bridge is the remote lot at about 3:00. Yes, I think the lot moves at 4:00. We try and flag down a shuttle bus as we are parking, but it leaves. So we park. And another shuttle bus magically appears! We grab everything (we think) out of the car and jump on the bus, which whisks us to the airport at 3:07. Caryl has received insider information to skip the curbside check-in and go right to the counter. We do that and find nary (ooh, I love spellcheckers) a line. But what we don’t find is Caryl’s little purse which holds her credit cards and drivers license. We sure hope it fell out in the car when she pulled out the phone to call Southwest. Is it possible to get on a plane without ID? Another panic moment. The guy behind the counter says “yes”. You just go through some extra security and its no big deal. So at 3:10 we push our bags through the x-ray machine, having gone back to get a destination tag put on my golf bag when I somehow notice that there isn’t one on it even thought we told the guy we were checking three bags and he printed three tags and he put three tags onto our luggage, and yes when we got to Vegas we found two tags on one of the suitcases. Now Caryl gets to go to the super security screening while I go into the normal line. She, of course, has only one guy in a wheelchair in her line while I have a plethora of personage in mine. So despite the extra scan, she makes it through well before me, and then has the good sense to tell someone that we’re going to miss our flight unless they get me through. So I hear my name called and a minute later I’m through security and we’re off to the gait. We arrive at our gate at 3:17pm. Our plane arrives at the gate at 3:45. A few hours later we are happily on the ground in Las Vegas. Caryl found a Dollar rental car Express Member card which, when I called on the previous night, got us $30 off the car. Plus it lets you avoid the check-in counter, and they have your contract ready at a tent. Get the contract, pick a car, and we are out of the rental lot in like six minutes. That was certainly different from all the other trip reports. Barge, the first night: We have plans to attend the non-smoking smoker at Pierro’s. First things first, though. We check in at the Nugget and head to the Plaza to say hey and to find our new Chorse friends who are in the lowball tourney. The first thing I see when I get to the poker room is a ghost. I stare at it a second, then look away because I don’t believe in ghosts. Then the ghost talks to me. “Yes, it IS me”, says the ghost. Mike Zimmers, who assured me that he wasn’t going to be there, is there. Somehow he was persuaded, and things worked out, to attend. And there he was. Barge master for many years – for me, the very face of barge, friend to everyone and anyone with a badge. How wonderful to see him back were he belongs, just like Dolly Madison, but without Louis Armstrong singing to him. We greet our barge friends, old and new, just like the trip reports from the past, as if barge 2004 ended yesterday and the year between didn’t really exist. How cool. Then to Pierro’s. I’ve done one long travel story, so I’ll make this one short. There is no exit from 15 south onto Convention Center drive, or else I missed it, or I don’t know how the Sahara exit works. We got off on Spring Mountain, wandered around, went into the wrong Pierro’s, got directions to the right Pierro’s, wandered around some more, found the right Pierro’s, and got there in time to order dinner with everyone else. Dinner was lovely. Caryl’s halibut was very good. My steak in pasta with marinara sauce was delicious. The talk at our table was delightful. Asya, Ben Gabmble, Warren Saunders, Steve “Crunch” Daniels, and Bruce Kramer. Caryl got tired so we gave Asya enough to cover our tab and drove back to the Nugget, where we promptly crashed. Thursday, August 4, 2005 Death March story: I kept writing North Shore Mike, telling him that you can’t hold a Death March at 5:30 in the morning. A Death March is when you play golf at Noon in Las Vegas in August, when the temperature is plus or minus 3 degrees of 120. But Mike decided he liked the name, so all his e-mails had that moniker in the title. I was paired with Scott Burrington and Ken Kubey. At the 13th hole the course manager had come out and told us that unless we skipped a hole, we were going to have a series of two semi-professional golfers run us over from behind. He drove off with our assurance that we would do so in exchange for free lunches for the three of us. But instead of skipping the hole, we just played much faster. So fast the we caught up with a group that had driven around us earlier in the round. We went 17 holes before anything deathlike happened. Then on the 18th tee, fate stepped in. After waiting a minute, the carts in the group ahead of us drove up about 290 yards out and stopped to hit their shots. I’m good for 260 yards if I hit it right. Being in hurry up mode, I decide that they are enough out of range even if I kill it. So I hit. I hit it good, but I push it a bit right and it disappears behind a small hill. About 5 seconds later a South Park like figure pops out from behind the hills waving his arms and screaming. It sounds like “oh my God, you killed Kenny!” It turns out this guy had been left behind by his buddies who had driven off without him. My shot, according to a local witness who happened to be walking down the cart path at the time, missed the guy by a foot, and he got rather upset. He took his anger out on the turf and my ball, slashing away until the ball was safely at rest in the neighboring driving range with a thousand other balls. Heh, little did he know it wasn’t even my ball – I had borrowed it from Scott! North Shore, Gerry Peterson, and Sheri Brabec were re-routed to play the front nine again to avoid the marauding twosomes. Our threesome got our free breakfast/lunch and waited for their arrival. We get back in plenty of time for a shower before Chorse. So maybe we can call this one a near-miss march. Or the almost death march. I hope we get a new name for next year, because I really don’t want to come any closer. CHorse Story: Thanks Peter! Almost everyone on our team had a great time and we are looking forward to a better showing next year. So Caryl wants to play on a team with me in Chorse. After a short effort to land on a team, I decide to troll for players to form our own team. It only takes a day to recruit four players to Team Jam. Mike B, Peter S, Alex Z, and John M. Now we need to figure out who will play what. Caryl wants to play holdem, and I’ve been playing stud-8 online. I send out the dreaded pick your game e-mail. Here are the results: Peter S Omaha John M Razz Alex Z Crazy Pinapple Michael B Stud In a word, unbelievable. Impossible. Not only were there no duplications among their favorite games, but none of them picked the games Caryl and I wanted to play. Math is hard, so does anyone else want to figure out the odds of that happening? We played what we had of cards for most of the rounds, dwindling or stack (or hacking of chunks of it) in most of the early rounds. Then we had a big comeback in the late stage, thanks to I think Michael B, and we only lost half our money. Sushi Story: Caryl had her fist sushi a week ago and she liked it. Due to this fortuitous timing, we sign up. I’m not a real big fan, but there are a few things I like. If you weren’t there, you missed something really special. Asya gave us a map to the place and we drove with Michael B to the Happy Sushi restaurant. By the time we got there, we were seated at the very end of a table that was maybe 100 feet long. I was sitting next to Phil Gustaphson (sp), and he was just getting ready to order a screaming orgasm and a Jims special. Caryl was seated next to Jeff Deitch, who eats at that establishment three times a week. Other people had ordered other stuff which we were told to help ourselves to, and we did. Everyone was ordering and passing the food around. We tasted everything that was kosher, and everything was delicious. And that is from a sushi novice. To top it off, the chef brought out a dish made from some special part of the tuna (belly tuna?) that was extraordinary. Everyone ate and drank saki and some wagered on the over/under on the bill per person and talked about angles to win the bets and had a great time. For those interested, the over/under was set at $50.00 per person including sushi, saki, tax and tip. The under won when it came to $42.00 per person. Stud Story: I was late trying to get in. I was supposed to check with Peter on the day of the tourney. Peter said I was in. Then I wasn’t. Then I was. I ended up wasn’t. No problem. Instead of losing $75 at stud, we won $100 at pai gow. Craps Crawl Story: Kind of like the Stud Story. My phone was supposed to wake us up from our nap, but it didn’t. So we missed it. I heard all the casinos had $5.00 minimums. What is going on with craps downtown? Caryl loves to play craps, but she wants to play for cheap. Lousy. Friday, August 5, 2005 Pre-symposium Story: We slept in and had breakfast at 10:29 at the Golden Nugget buffet. It was pretty good. Not much happened until the symposium. Maybe we watched some of the TOC. Maybe we played some pai gow. We go up to the hospitality sweet to check things out. The place is empty, so we get some drinks and I make a few local calls. There’s a knock on the door and Greg Raymer comes in with JP and Andrew Prock. I hadn’t met Greg or wanted to bother him, but since I opened the door for him I though I could use the opportunity to shake his hand. I said something to him but I must have had a hard time forming the words as he couldn’t make out what I was saying. Sorry Greg. Shelly came in and they started a chinese poker game. Looking to speed things up, they enlisted Caryl to shuffle for them. I left to use the internet at Krispy Kreme and Caryl left after a while and joined me there. Krispy Kreme story: Caryl gets a double combo pack with coffee. The coffee is bad, and the guy says he’ll make some more. Half an hour and no coffee later, we want to leave. I tell Caryl she should get a refund for the coffee. They can’t give her a partial rebate, and they are pissy because we ate two donuts and now want a refund. Finally the manager gives us the whole $4.95 back. We tell the manager to now ring up two donuts, but she tells us to forget it and we leave. Now we’ve got a few extra dollars to give to charity. Symposium Story: Great food. I feel bad for anyone who missed the turkey wrap and the grilled veggies. We get a few bucks into the ADV syndicate thanks to Shelly. I talk Caryl into buying Ron Galicia and someone else when I think they are going for too little. She talks herself into buying Steve Pierce, who made the final table last year and is now a single, when I think he his going for too much. I tell her so, and she gives me the finger (not really, but it sounds good). More on the horses in the NL story. Gawd, its good to see Zimmers back on the podium, helping with barge and taking part in it. Peter does a great job getting everybody auctioned off. When it is over, Bob Hurlein is trying to recruit people for Zimmers’ lowball game. When he tells me that $10 limit is like playing 2-4 hold-em, I agree to play, even though: a) I don’t know the rules and b) I don’t know the strategy and c) I’ve never played it before. Lowball Story: Zimmers gives some tips on how to play. Bob teaches me a strategy poem. The Plaza agrees to rake based on time. The dealers all figure out how to deal 5 card draw with a pause after two cards so that people can kill the, thus doubling the limit. I play as the masters have taught me. Except I don’t know how much to loosen up when I am in the blind and have a partial bet in. I figure if I ask about this, I’d be a pro and then the game would break up because who would be the fish? But I get lucky and get dealt a bunch of pat hands, plus I make a bunch of one card draws. I’m up about $100 until Fich draws two and I draw one. I make a 6 low. He bets and it looks like he can’t wait to get his money in. I stare at my cards, knowing that they are screaming at me to raise. I don’t want to hear them. I put my hands over my ears. I raise anyways. He re-raises faster than he raised! I call and of course he’s drawn two to make a wheel (that’s a A-2-3-4-5). After a few more hands Caryl comes by and wants to eat dinner. I cash out +$80. Dinner Story: We tried to eat at the Four Queens coffee shop. Caryl had bad pancakes, which I didn’t think was possible. I ordered French dip with no cheese but it came with cheese. When it came back 15 minutes later I was asleep. So they packed it up for us and we left. We’re walking back to the GN, and there’s a rock band playing 70’s music on a big stage, and they are good. So we stop and catch the last 5 songs of their set. Then its back to the room for sleep. Saturday, August 6, 2005 NL Tourney Story: We have breakfast at the GN buffet. Somehow when we get there at 8:10am there is no line. Maybe a sign of good things to come. Maybe not. At 9:55 I still can’t find Ron Galacia to see if he wants to buy back his action from the calc^^^^symposium. At 10:00 the cards are in the air. By 10:45 I haven’t won a hand and haven’t made a bet post-flop. I’ve played AK, AQ, KQ, AJ, A4 (blind), J4 blind, and 33. I’ve folded every time someone bet into me. Then I get TT and I think cool, I’ll be out of the tourney in two minutes. I raise 3x the blinds. Its folded around and the BB looks, thinks, and calls. The flop is 468 tricolor. He checks, I bet 400. He check-raises another 400. I try to imagine what he could raise with that I have beat. A pair of 9’s? Maybe. Lets hope so because to call I’ll only have 200 left, so I might as well throw it all in now, which of course I do. One day I’ll learn how to play this game. He calls my all in and shows 44, giving him trips. I don’t get a ten and I’m gone. I won exactly 0 hands. I walk around the block, replaying what I did. I come back into the casino to look for Ron at the remote table where he should have started. That table is empty. I look some more, and he’s in my seat! Uh-oh, he’s only got about T400 left. I tell him I bought him but I wouldn’t even ask him to buy himself back at this point. Caryl is holding her own at a very tough table. I’ve got nothing to do so I watch a little, chat with some bargers, and find that Charles Haynes is going to take the bus or a cab to the Wynn. I’ve got a car so I offer to drive him. He says “only if you are going there anyway”. I say we need to use the car or we are going to have sub-optimal utilization. He thinks that would be just terrible and agrees to ride shotgun. I think I know where I parked the car in the GN parking structure. We go to the spot and find the car. I know it’s the right car because it’s a Stratus without any license plates. But the doors are unlocked, and when I go to get in the seat is pushed up under the steering wheel. That is not where someone who is 6’5” tall would leave the seat. Wrong car. I push the button on the keys and some car in the structure beeps. But we can’t tell where it is coming from. We look high, we look low, and everywhere we possibly can, but there’s no, trying to find the car again. I’m upset that I’m wasting Charles’ time. He thinks its just funny. We find it eventually. We then find the Wynn eventually after making a few wrong turns. Charles takes it all in stride. On the way we chatted about motorcycles and deserts and what a bad combination they can make. We chatted about buses and commuting and putting routers on busses so they can have wi-fi on the way to work. We miss the entrance to the Wynn and I let Charles out in the middle of the street. He must have made it in ok because later he told me he had a good session there. When I get back to the Plaza I check out the action in the tourney. Caryl is still in with about the same amount of chips as when I left. I look in my old seat and there is Ron with something like T3300. Amazing. During a had he is out of I ask him if he wants to buy back his action now, and he does. By the time I get back to the edge of the poker room he busted out. Caryl eventually gets whittled down and goes all-in with A J s. She’s up against a pair of 3’s. When the flop comes Ax3, its all over but the shouting. We lose a little at pai-gow and wait for the banquet. Banquet Story: We sit at a rooling banquet table. I’m sure I could tell you who was there when I was there. I know Mike B from our chorse team was there, because I taught him how to play Chowaha using sugar packets (I know, you play Chowaha with cards – don’t start in with me). Mike, did you get into a game? I must have been starving because the overcooked shoe leather steak tasted pretty good to me. Wil was great. I had been really peaved at the few people who were giving him crap before he even got a chance to speak. I was so happy that he was happy to be there. I wanted to say hi to him afterwards, but the line was too long and I’d signed up for the post-banquet lowball game. Post-banquet lowball: There is Zimmers running the show in the Plaza poker room. They have enough tables and dealers, but the gaming commission won’t let them use tournament tables for ring games. Go figgur. I suspect someone new this ahead of time, because the Horseshoe was ready for us. Zimmers got the chowaha game and a couple of others going at the Shoe, and then he joined us while our game was in progress. I started with $300. Kill pots were now at $40.00 per bet, and if you were raised it was $80.00. Pretty fast I was down about $135. Caryl comes over and asks why I’m playing $20.00 limit. I say, “because I could win”. Then I hit a rush. I was dealt a wheel, and then drew one and made a 75. Is that a 7 smooth? Is 76 a rough 7? Whatever, it was a winner. Then the next hand I had a pat 8. Now I’m ahead $50.00 Shortly after Warren Saunders draws two and makes a 6 to beat another pat 8, Caryl says its 1:00am and we’ve got an early flight out. So I shake everyone’s hand, we say goodbye to all our friends, and get a few hours sleep before we leave. Sunday, August 7, 2005 Travel Home story: No problem checking out, getting gas, getting to the airport, getting thru security and extra security for Cary because she still doesn’t have any ID. We couldn’t print out our boarding pass so we are in group B, but we still get seats in the exit row. This is a big plus when you are 6’5” tall. No problem leaving on time at 8:30am and the flight coming home is fine. Problem on arrival. Southwest lost one of our bags. I tell Caryl it is hardly worth getting upset about if she’s also lost her wallet. We fill out the paper work and catch the shuttle to the remote lot. Caryl’s wallet is there between the drivers seat and the center console. I tell her she made a good trade between losing the bag and finding the wallet. At 3:00pm Southwest calls and said our bag was found and will go out on the 4:00 delivery. At 10:30pm the guy finds our house and a successful trip is completed. The End story: Thanks to everyone. Even the people we haven’t met yet -- without you, barge isn’t the same. But we would like to meet you. Peter and Chuck. Wil. The staff at the Plaza. It was amazing that we could change hotels and not miss anything, unlike that other time which I won’t bring up. It was great, even though we missed karaoke. Can’t wait for next year, whenever and wherever BARGE happens. Signed, David Aronson ________ BARGE 2005 is being supported by PokerStars.com and ParadisePoker.com.