From: "David S. Heller" Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 23:07:27 -0700 Subject: Re: [BARGE] Trips - not that much poker, but a good time anyway. I almost didn't make it to BARGE this year. I am litigating for two. My wife had set a trial for the first week in August. No big deal for her, since she doesn't play poker, but then she went and got elected to the Superior Court, so I had to take over her case. To my surprise, the case settled in late July, so I scurried around and found air fare and convinced the Plaza that the BARGE rate was still in effect. The advice some BARGEr gave me a few years ago about the Dollar rentacar online thingee is still good, so I got a cheap car and no waiting in lines to pick it up. Wednesday afternoon, I flew in on America West. Plane on time. I had agreed to give Rich Strauss a ride, but his plane was late. Apparently it was easier to get to Las Vegas from Seattle than from San Jose. Go figger. Anyway, I discovered that the airport has free wireless, so I did my e-mail on my laptop while waiting. Rich arrived, and we hopped on the Dollar bus. There was Brian G, bound for his own car! With Rich navigating and me driving, we made it to the Plaza without long-hauling ourselves. I got checked in and proceeded to the poker room, where I quickly learned that they don't know how to run a list. They were telling me there was a list for the 4-8 HORSE game, but there was an empty seat in it. Eventually I just sat down and played. I did well for a while. In the razz round I drew a wheel, but I couldn't get Fold'em to call my last bet. No wonder they call him Fold'em, eh? Anyway, I was up a fair amount until the Omaha round. Then I threw it all back, and more. Did I mention that I hate Omaha? Thursday morning was CHORSE, which for me is the best thing at BARGE. (The NL is fun, but my chance of winning any money at that is somewhere between slim and none, and Slim just left on the noon stage for Laredo). My team did pretty well, considering. Considering that we had The Gavin and The Fossilman and The Pappas at our table. TG and TF combined great skill with great luck, which is a truly unfair combination. TP just kept stealing through me (when he wasn't paying the bring-in) while I had such crappy hands I couldn't even stop him. We ended up only losing a few bucks each, which ain't bad for 4 hours against such competition. Friday I worked most of the day. Then I went to the Symposium, then got my car out of the Plaza and drove over to the strip. I'm not too good navigating in a strange city at night, so I just parked at the Mirage, where I knew where to park. I went to Treasure Island intending to see their new pirate show, but it was canceled due to high winds. So I went over to the Wynn and played 4-8 hold'em. They do have comfortable chairs. On my left was the most annoying 20-something poker wannabe who kept up a steady knowitall stream of "outs" and "pot odds" and other such crap. Unfortunately, this story does not have a happy "he got what was coming to him" ending, because he kept hitting freako straight draws and winning pots he did not deserve. I was unable to get some of that money he was only borrowing into my own stack, and left down $99. I walked down the strip, stopped to watch the Volcano, then went on down to the Bellagio to watch a couple of fountain shows. While waiting for the second one, I saw the most amazing thing: this woman was in extremly high, stiletto heels, wearing what I can only describe as a leather harness that left almost nothing to the imagination. She was walking with some guy, and she was PUSHING A BABY CARRIAGE WITH A BABY IN IT. Only in Las Vegas. Anyway, I walked back to the Mirage and started looking for my car. As I walked along, a security person in a golf car type thingee stopped and asked me if I was looking for my car. She actually suggested that I set off the car alarm to help me find it. I thought that was a bit extreme, so I just kept looking. I sort of knew where it was and it did turn up eventually. Back to the Plaza and off to bed. Saturday morning was the tournament. I am proud of the way I played. I'm sure it wasn't much compared to some on this list, but I think I avoided doing anything stupid. I was lucky enough fairly early on to almost double up when my AK held up against JJ, and I actually felt like I played the big stack at the table well, semi-stealing here and there and steadily building it. By the break I was at 5,100, well ahead of the curve. I did run into KK once while I was stealing, which cost me 1,000. So when our table in the kid's section broke up and I went to the adult's room, I had 4,100. And sat down. Between. Andy. Bloch. And. Lee. Jones. With Brian G around the corner, and then Michele Lancaster, and some virgin with a big stack, and Len G and Nolan Dalla and Oh My Gawd, Magnum! I immediately went card dead. I don't mean 72o. I mean 52o. 23o. It was Horrible! Andy Bloch soon busted out. Then I did. First hand after the blinds went to 100-200. My small blind. Virgin with big stack raises to 500. Folded to me. I find AK. I think "he's on a semi-steal, he's bullying, I will re-raise and he will fold, or if he calls, I can bet on the flop." I throw in 1,000. He goes all in. I guess I should have anticipated this, but I didn't. What I should have done is gone all in myself. Not that it matters; he told me later he would have called anyway. I still think I was right to call his all in, though I would be interested in others' thoughts. My thinking at the time was "there's 4,800 in the pot and I call with 3,000, which gives me better than 1.5:1. That's enough pot odds if he has a pair (other than AA or KK). If he just has 2 big cards, any 2 big cards, I am the favorite." So overall I liked my chances. In terms of tournament strategy, I thought "do I want to risk busting out now, when if I just fold here I probably can play for 10 more orbits with my stack about 10 times the blinds, and maybe find a better situation to push in?". In the end I decided that here is a good chance to double up, which is a rare thing and should not be ignored. I call and he turns over JJ. The board changes nothing. IGHN. He who lives by AK v. JJ, dies by AK v. JJ. The banquet was good. The veggie meal was decent this year - veggie lasagna. Wil Wheaton was excellent - funny and insightful. I think he had us pegged perfectly. I was just disappointed that, although he signed up for chowaha, he did not appear there, at least not while I was playing. Nolan's presentation to Chuck and Peter was awesome. Good work, Nolan! I won a HUGE pot at chowaha - I don't know how much it was, but it took me and Russ Fox many minutes to stack it up. We chopped it in half. Half went to my stack, and half went to the dealers. We toked a bunch of it to our dealer, and then took the rest of the dealer half and did drive-by tokes of all the other dealers at Binion's. I was humming "Colonel Bogie's March" and we were saying "Drive by toke from BARGE" at each table. Despite all that, I actually made money at Chowaha, for the second year in a row. Not a lot, but a little. And for the second year in a row, Chowaha was the ONLY game where I made money against BARGErs. Which just goes to prove that the only time I can win money at poker from BARGErs is if they're all really, really, really drunk. As I was racking up to leave, Patti B and Asya also were racking up, in a different way. They came over to our table dared us to throw chips into their respective cleavages. I declined; others did not. Patti then grabbed some of Fold'em's chips and attempted to fit an entire stack into her bosom. She didn't quite make it.... The flight home was fine, except for the extremely long security line Sunday morning. And the looping video with Danny Gans and Wayne Newton giving us advice about how to put our stuff away so we could get through security faster. Which we got to hear over and over and over and over until I wished I *had* brought some firearms just to put a few holes in the screen. My compliments to my CHORSE team, which acquitted itself very well. We'll get 'em next year. My compliments also to Peter and Mike and the physically absent but never far away Chuck. You guys done good. My thanks to all the old friends and new. Hope to see you all next year. ________ BARGE 2005 is being supported by PokerStars.com and ParadisePoker.com.