Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 11:48:01 -0400 From: Regis Donovan Subject: [BARGE] Regis' BARGE trip report Regis' BARGE trip report (or, to translate it into boston-ese, my wicked pissah BAAHHHHGE.) It's a mostly boring trip report about a fabulously fun trip. Not much p0cker content. It appears that all BARGE reports have to include the flight (if there's a flight involved in getting there). The flight out on America West was happily uneventful. I really don't like flying America West -- they have a bad record for getting me back home on time and in the seat I expect to be in, but their nonstops are cheaper than most other options whenever I go to reserve tickets. Claudia and I flew out Weds night (window seat), arriving shortly after 11pm. We made our way downtown to the Plaza and checked in. The room was actually better than I'd expected. What can I say, my expectations were low. Thursday morning I met up with my CHORSE team at the Plaza's breakfast buffet. Parts of it were worth the price (free with comp from the poker cage), but barely. We discussed our r00ling CHORSE strategy, which I think was something like "get chips or at least don't run out of them". This was my first year playing in the CHORSE game, and it was a whole bunch of fun. I didn't bust my team or anything. The sushi outing was a blast. R00ling dead raw fish. After that, Claudia and I got a ride to the Bellagio from Goldiefish and sat in on the $200 capped NLHE game for a while, then went to see "O". (I thought it wasn't as good as some of the other Cirque shows I've seen, but the staging was pretty nifty.) We wandered around on the strip for a while, watching the fountains do their thing, and then hopped a cab back to the Plaza with the CREEPIEST CABBIE EVER. Also, his cab had the most uncomfortable cab seat ever. I think there were mummified bodies stashed under it or something. We headed up to the room for a few minutes when we got back to the Plaza, and I had every intention of heading back down to the craps crawl when it was about to get started but I got lost in my room or fell asleep or something like that, so I missed my chance to drink heavily and explain how craps works to strangers while people play craps at a nearby table with neither dealers nor dice. The benefit of falling asleep early was that I was up in time for the TOC in the morning. I was expecting to bust out early since it consisted of one game I'd never played live (stud) and one game I felt I was really weak at (Omaha) as well as a game I'm only moderately weak at (Hold'em). Unexpectedly, I spent much of the day playing and busted out about 12th or so. I did bust out in time to make it over to the Aladdin for "Fashionistas", which was much better than expected, mostly because they weren't just "pretty people dancing and writhing onstage" but also included an erotic aerial silk act. I may have sprained an eyeball, I'm not sure. Claudia and I wandered around the strip some more and then headed back downtown. I'd hoped to do reasonably well in the NLHE tournament, but I was struck by a moment of st00pid and made a bad bet and busted out a couple of rounds in. I put on my donkey ears and wandered off to putter around downtown and then came back for the banquet. Wil's speech was fun. Roshambo, well, I think I've improved since last year. The amusing thing for me in that game was that the first 5 or so throws that Ben and I did were ties -- one after the other after the other. Asya told me that that chowaha was moving down to Binion's so I headed down the street and bought into a newly formed chowaha game. Besides cleavage toking and the over/under bet on how many chips were in a slot bucket, there was also toking of the maintenance staff, toking of random passers-by, and heavy toking of dealers and floor staff and waitresses. I managed to win only one pot, and that was a small one, so I blew thru my allotted chowaha budget faster than I'd have liked (whereas last year I think chowaha was a moneymaker for me). I think the problem may have been that I was looking at my cards. That never works. After eventually busting out of chowaha, I wandered over to the boring side of the room and had some fun there, confusing the folks at the tables with a small chip castle and offers to toke the pot if I got quads. Once I rebuilt my stack a bit, I was lured in by that evil Canadian chowaha-pimp, Murray, who was at the now-pot-limit chowaha table. I played there for a while until I was too drunk and tired to keep going, so I wimped out and headed back to the Plaza. The next day, the Binion's floorwoman told me the game had finally broken up at about 10AM. On Sunday, after checking out of the Plaza, we went back down to Binion's and played a bit of NL, then entered the 2pm tournament. I was completely and utterly card dead, so I busted out just after the first break without having to make any boneheaded moves to do so; Claudia lasted till after the second break at least. After I busted out, I went back to the 1/2 NL game, but the particularly profitable player who had been there earlier (who had made me my entry fee that morning) was gone. Still, I ground around a bit, making bits here and there but being mostly card dead except for a lovely hand where an older guy bet into me when I'd made a flush. I decided chances were small he had a higher flush and called and I was right. There were some random non-BARGErs there who were talking about the previous night's fun. They described it as "some kind of weird tournament" and so I ended up explaining chowaha and binglaha a few times to different people. After that, it was time to head to the airport and catch the red-eye back to Boston. The flight was uneventful. ________ BARGE 2005 is being supported by PokerStars.com and ParadisePoker.com.