Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 15:10:43 -0700 (PDT) From: Ken Kubey Subject: [BARGE] QB's 2005 BARGE Trip Report The story of my tenth BARGE. "Where no Wil has gone before." Wednesday, August 3rd. --------------------- Sit down at the gate. Sandi runs off to buy a San Jose snow globe. It occurs to me that I should look around to see if there are any other BARGErs waiting for the flight. Turn to my left.. There is Michael "Kidzee" Zimmers himself! I was a little worried about BARGE switching to the Plaza and not having Steve "I've-been-to-every-BARGE" Jacobs or Chuck "No-way-this-runs-this-smoothly-without-him" Weinstock in attendance. Seeing Zimmers helped lift my spirits. Also say "hi" to Zbigniew and Stubing in SWA "A" line. First BARGEr sighted in the Plaza is Steven Markowitz. We were pleased to hear that he had won the blackjack tournament earlier. Way to go! Also heard that Connie Royal Flushed the competition in the Video Poker Slot tournament. Yay Connie! Lowball tournament.... Draw a table the Gavin Smith and Greg Raymer. BARGE 2004 and WSOP 2004 champions at my table. Piece of cake. Early on, Gavin tries to snow (bluff with a terrible hand), but has to fold when pokerwire Jen makes it four bets pre-draw. Jen is nice enough to show her hand. A steel wheel!! In case you don't know, that's a 5-high straight flush. Yow! I knock Grizz out and he gives me a music CD that he put together as a bustout gift. Thanks Grizz. My favorite line of BARGE 2005... Don't remember the set-up, but Gavin said: "Did Ken Kubey just call me a pussy?" laughter all around. Gavin makes some comment about what lucky players he and Raymer are. Greg fires back: "And when luck runs out, I have skill to fall back on." Everyone at table: "Oooooo!" I'm playing well and catching enough hands to stay in contention. 5 tables. 4 tables. 3 tables. 2 tables. 10-handed. I have Barry T. all-in twice. Even draw... he wins. He draws 2, I draw 1. He wins. Is is fair that that guy is a great player *and* gets lucky too? I bet all-in in on a bluff when I catch a king. Rich Strauss agonizes for about 30 seconds. I'm praying he will fold. Finally he folds. He caught a pair of 2's. Oh, I wanted him to call! heh. Gavin busts out on the bubble in 9th after about a month of 9-handed play. Gavin missing the money saves Greg Raymer a bunch of C-notes on a side bet. I find A-3-5-Joker. About as good a draw as there is. Jim Bullard knocks me out when he makes a 1-card draw to a 7 and I catch a face card. Oh well. Made the money. Can't complain too much. Run into NUT-Z about three times. Each time he thinks it's the first time he's seen me in a year. I think Frank may have been drinking (heh). 2:00 a.m. Actually try to get 2 hours of sleep before golf. I get about 30 or 40 minutes of actual sleep. I am such a pussy. Thursday, August 4th. --------------------- Wake up at 4:00 a.m., take a shower and head down to the poker room to meet the DEATH MARCH crew. I hear tales of of how wasted Sheri was at 1:00 a.m. The other guys agree that there is no way she could possibly show up to play golf at 4:30. 4:30 rolls around and here comes Sheri carrying her golf bag. She looks pretty chipper! Amazing. Congrats to Sheri on being the first ever female Death Marcher. Scott Burrington, David Aronson and I were in the lead group. Scott and I have done the Death March about 5 times, but have never been in the same group before. The three of us had fun playing together. Well, they played. I hacked. Sheri Brabec, Gerald Petersen, and our fearless leader, North Shore Mike were in the 2nd group. I make par on the 2nd hole! Woo hoo! On about the 14th hole, I hit my first two tee shots into the water. Grr... 6th shot... slice. SPLASH! Arrghhhhh. I hate this gter holes. There's no water on the next hole, just some houses Teeing off, I joke that I'll probably knock one into someone's swimming pool. snickers. I shoot 124. That's a big improvement over 2004. I still feel guilty about getting some sleep. Back to the Plaza for... Team CHORSE... I had been warned that we were going to be wearing funny hats this year. I'm on the Canadian team... Team Moosecock. North Shore is bringing the hats. Color me worried. Turns out the hats are just goofy moose heads. Whew. We manage to only lose $20 or so per person. Big improvement. At some point, Len G. makes some comment about my hat saying something about "...having some dignity at BARGE." I'm almost sure that I have never heard the words "dignity" and "BARGE" in the same sentence before. Meanwhile, Sandi is playing the the "Significant-Others" tournament in the little room adjacent to the poker room. This tournament is just for novice players. Sandi has played maybe five times in cardrooms. This will be her very first tournament. 11 girlfriends/wives are around the table. I talk to Sandi for a few seconds, but quickly get shooed out of the room. The ladies have a grand time. They are drinking and laughing and tipping the dealer way, way too much. Sounds like a pretty typical BARGE event now that I think about it. Sandi is doing well. She busts out four of the players. She said that she felt bad about knocking out her new friends, but also really got a thrill out of busting them out too. heh. At some point, the game changes from limit, to no-limit hold'em. I give Sandi a 2-minute crash course on how to play no-limit. I keep my moose hat on for good luck. Now it's heads-up. Sandi vs. Kerry and Sandi has about a 3-1 chip lead. She is one happy half-looped camper. Sandi losses top-pair vs. top-pair-better-kicker and gets creamed with top pair vs. a flopped flush. I didn't get all of the details, but it sounded like Sandi played very, very well. She went out with A4s vs ATs on the final hand. We toasted with champagne with Kerry (the champ) and her SO afterwards. I'm one proud poker coach. I skipped the stud shoot-out tournament, but did hear about a pot where a bunch of the little rubber fish were in the pot. A player was all-in and the dealer made a fish side-pot. Only at BARGE. Sandi and I head over to the Rio to see the Sky Show. We run around to some other casinos. Back the Plaza for... ADB Craps Crawl Win $10 at the Plaza. Walk with everyone to Binion's and then the El Cortez. Mike Chow buys us a round of beers. Ding. Friday, August 5th. ------------------- Head down to McDonald's with Sandi for breakfast. We sit with a disheveled Murray (is that redundant?) Time for the TOC-style tournament. Patrick's tournament timer is up on the big screen. It blanks out. The dealer next to me yells out "mouse" meaning that someone needs to jiggle the mouse to bring the display back up. Later, the screen blanks again. He yells "mouse!" I place GamboMouse right in front of him. He smirks and laughs. Don Perry decides to bust himself out of the tournament. He plays about six Omaha-8 hands in a row without looking at his cards. He wins or splits the pot on some and survives. Don reveals his cards to see that he had flopped a straight with 98. Board Q-J-T-X-Y? My notes are sketchy here. Either he lost to Masa who flopped a flush draw and caught a higher straight on river *or* he lost to Bullbert who rivered a boat. Probably two similar hands. Note to self... whatever you do, do NOT buy Don Perry in the calcutta. I get Nolan, Russ and Scottro to sign their books. I bought them on Conjelco of course. Jester gave me a copy of the ADB CD puzzle. I look forward to checking it out. Don Perry showed me something that looked like the last supper with BARGEr faces. Someone have that online? I go out like Broomcorn's Uncle as I get anted to death. Sabyl takes 3rd. Nice follow-up on her win in the stud event! Wow! Did she borrow Bill's horseshoe? Random BARGE moment... Asya reaches between her boobs and pulls out one of the little rubber fish. She says "What's that doing in there?" Calcutta. Man, this is a small room. But we have fun. Rich and I do our usual syndicate with J.R. pinch-hitting for Jeff Seigal. We get a couple of steals. On Wednesday I saw Mitch Firestone walking by and got a funny feeling that we was going to win the NL event. I talk Rich into buying him along with Steve Watanabe. They can both play. Someone bids Presto, $55. Scottro bids Scottro, $77. Laughter. I can see Fich at the front of the room with his laptop shaking his head. Every other bid all night was a multiple of $5. Greg Raymer is sitting in the row ahead of me. About an hour later, I realize that the young guy sitting next to him is Wil Wheaton. After the bidding is over, I introduce myself to Wil and mention that I was planning to bet a hard-six for him if we got to a craps table since he just turned 33. He agrees that he should bet the hard-six. The guy is as genuine as he can be. I introduce Sandi to the $2.99 Big shrimp cocktail at the Golden Gate. She's hooked. Sandi and I go on a coupon run with my $37 Las Vegas Advisor coupon book. We get creamed. The coupons are bad luck. I swear. We make something like $50 worth of bets with EV of $72. We come away with $2. Not a $2 profit. $2. Then we get stuck in some horrible traffic for 15 minutes behind a big accident near the Wynn. We are both kinda crabby. We ate some food. McDonald's was probably involved. I think I actually got to bed around 3:00 a.m. Saturday, August 6th. -------------------- Line is too long at McDonanld's. Breakfast at Subway. Time for the BARGE no-limit event. Three of my horses are sitting around me. Corey to the right. Patrick and Mitch to my left. AsTs and steal the blinds on first hand. Chip leader! Gerry doubles through Patrick's QQ with AK rivering a K. Ouch. JJ win a good pot. KK steal the blinds. K7s and steal try. Flop Q-Q-7. Turn 7. Winner. About 2 hours in, I get AA. Gerry makes in 300 from early. I have 1600. Raise to 900? Nah. I just push all-in. Gerry spends the next 15 seconds counting his chips and thinking. Come on. Call me. Come on. He says something like "I'm going to hate this." and then calls. He has QQ. I'm wondering what took so long. Dealer snaps off the cards, as he goes to spread the flop, I see a stupid queen in the window and wince. No ace comes. He has me covered by about 1000. I'm gone. Maybe I'm weird, but I like the applause when I get busted out. I asked Gerry if he was thinking about folding. He said no. I think he was thinking about it. Man, I suck at this game. Oh crap. Just now (3 days later) I realize that I almost certainly lost my UnQuick bet too. Arrgghhhhhhh. I walk over to Binion's to tell Rich my bad beat story. Note: if you need a quiet place to make a cell phone call, the middle of Binion's poker room was the quietest spot around. I walk over to the main room at the Plaza. See Frank Brabec's hat. A baseball cap with duct tape over the logo. Written on the tape: "THIS SPACE AVAILABLE" Just freakin' brilliant. Hey Frank, we never did do a shot. Next time for sure! I get into a HORSE game. Sandi comes buy and hands me a slot cashout ticket. For ONE CENT!!!!! I laught pretty hard. I put it into the pot face down. Bingo asks me if it's for $1. I guess he doesn't know just how cheap I really am. David K. wins the pot. Fich comes buy to tell us about the dealer putting out a flop of: Ace-Deuce-Seat card. laughter all around. I'm working on a pretty cool chip structure. Someone got a pic of it. Marc G. tosses a fish at it trying to knock it over. It lands in my 7&7 instead. He buys me another drink. What a guy. Pete Segal also sinks a fish. Bingo offers $500 if someone can throw a fish into his beer bottle. Someone tries. Bingo covers the bottle top saying "I can play defense!" I ask Rob the dealer to drop a fish in the drop box. He does it. $1 tip for Rob. Lee pinch-hits for Tina and wins about a rack in 5 minutes. Lee pinch-hits for me on my big blind, loses the pot. If *I* had been betting. I think the other player might have folded. No worries Lee. I lost a pot playing for Lee several years ago. I win some tiny pot. Like $5. I toss a $1 chip toward the dealer and ask him the chop it. Meaning I want 50c back. David puts out four quarters for the dealer to make change. He ignores us both and just takes all $2. If you happened to see me stiff him the next time I won a pot, that was why. After golf and the calcutta, my bankroll is pretty short. I mention that I'd like to work on an entry for the chip castle building contest later that night. Dave Orr offers to bankroll me into the contest. Thanks Dave! I may take you up on it next year. Horses are doing well. Especially Adam and Mitch. They make the money. Mitch goes out in 17th. Adam finishes 6th! Way to go guys! Our syndiacte turns a tiny profit! Yay! Now I can buy more chips to add onto my chip structure. Big Six Wheel. Win $1. Woo hoo. Third year in a row I've won on thr Big Six Wheel. I mentioned this twice a poker tables and got laughed at both times. Banquet. Sit with Sandi, Rich, Bob H., Martin, Chaz, Barry, Betty, Edmund and Mary Ann. Am I the only person that thought the steak was and other food was pretty good? Sabyl is at the next table. She gets Sandi's cell number and calls her to test it out. Sandi is crouching down while on the phone with Sabyl who is about 20 feet away. They are giggling like school kids playing with walkie-talkies. Sound system was not good. Next time, please have someone test that. Calling Chuck on the cell phone so we could all cheer for him was a fantastic idea. Nolan's presentations to Chuck and Peter were priceless. I've never seen a BARGEr more choked up that Peter when he received his gift. Wil Wheaton was a great speaker. "Are you booing me?" funny. Okay, I didn't learn a lot from Wil, but that was the most entertaining BARGE banquet speech since "Yo Bish... Must warn others." circa 1997. Standing ovation for Zimmers and Peter were well deserved. Chuck, a bunch of us were standing for you to. Back down to the final table... Nich Christensen and DON PERRY!!!! No effing way! Congratulations Don. You R00LER!! I owe you a handshake. Some people head over to Binion's for Chowaha and Must-Drink Horse. Sandi and I change and head over there about an hour later. As I walk by the poker room. Someone (Bruce?) yells out "Kubey Toke!" and I get pelted with about $6. Hey, this is cool! Asya and Patti are making a killing letting guys toss chips into their boobs. A great new BARGE tradition is born. The term "chip rack" will never be the same. There's something in my notes about Bruce Kramer. But shhhhhhhhh. Empty seat next to Mike Chow. Me: "What game is this?" Mike: "Chowaha!" How could I not play? Later, Wil and Lee sit down to my right. Wil plays tighter than two coats of paint. This is the tightest Chowaha game ever. Chow makes a loose call on the flop and says "I'll peel two off." lol. I'm working on a chip castle, but this table sucks. The surface is spongy and uneven. Structure starts to lean. "Hey, my chip castle is on tilt!" Finally it collapses. Visit Sandi who is playing face-up blackjack on the other side. Watch in horror as a player tries to hit with A4-5 showing (20). We manage to stop him. Watch it complete horror as another player (3rd base) stands on soft 16. Dealer was showing a 6 and wne paint, paint to bust. Dumb play rewarded. Steve Landrum and Bruce build a beautiful chip structure. We have pictures. Give me a few days to post them. Will likely be on flickr.com, tag BARGE2005. Sunday, August 7th ------------------ We see Peter in the elevator. He gets us comps for the buffet. Apparently these were available all week. Looking back, Sunday was the only morning I could make it for a buffet anyway. Walking through the Plaza one last time, Sandi runs into her favorite waitress, Jeanie. The taller blonde one. She just has to get us a couple of drinks. She remembers my usual! Sandi and I sit down at a bank of video poker machines to wait. Sandi spots a quarter in the tray. I play it. full boat! Just after the drinks arrive, we are down to 5 credits. I decide to play one last hand and cash out with $1. Pair of 6's. hold the 6's. "Come on 6." draw the other two 6's to make four of a kind. Turn the found quarter into $13.50. Squeak! I give Sandi the $10 bill and keep the rest. Sandi and I casino hop. Lose with match play coupon again. Go to Golden Gate. 2-for-1 coupon at shrimp bar! "I'm sorry sir. That coupon is for anything except the shrimp." Arrghhhhhhh. I'm ready to burn this freakin' coupon book. We did get two good sandwiches for the price of one. Make the wrong turn going to Alamo for like the the 8th time. Plane, car, home. craps: broke even!!! big 6 wheel: won blackjack: lost. Played one hand. dealer 21. so fun. live poker: won slots: lost tournies: lost, but placed in lowball. roshambo: did not play. Oh yeah, no tiltpussies^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hboys. I had a terrific time at BARGE 2005. I was worried that the Plaza would suck. It didn't. I was worried that Peter would melt down without Chuck. He didn't. I was worried that Wil would be phoney and would suck. He R00LED! How can you look forward to something all year long and still have it be as good as you expected? Because it's BARGE, baby. Looking around, I think we need to have a weight-loss contest in 2006. No, I am not going to organize it. Thanks to Chuck and Peter for all of their efforts. Big thanks to the Plaza for having us and doing a very good job. Thanks also to Patrick, Fich, Rafn, Warren and all the other people that helped out. Also have to thank PokerStars and Paradise. Can I sign up for BARGE 2006 now? Ken Kubey kubey@engr.sgi.com (650) 933-3536 ________ BARGE 2005 is being supported by PokerStars.com and ParadisePoker.com.