Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2006 21:37:32 -0700 (PDT) From: David Aronson Subject: [BARGE] Caryl and David Trip Report Part 2 (and part 1) (If you have already read part 1, part 2 starts with Friday) Caryl and David do Barge 2006 (# 5 for Caryl Aronson, #8? 9? for David Aronson) Tuesday, 4:37pm: Hi, David here. My wife has once again insisted that we go to BARGE. Bummer, eh? So we head off to the airport 30 minutes later than she wanted to leave, and she's all in a panic, but we get through traffic fairly easily and then she's calmed down. Hello, its Caryl. Why is my husband always late? And why won't our reservations come up on this darn self-serve reservation thing? Now we've got to go to the counter. "Your reservation is under Caryl Aronson, but the credit card says T. C. Aronson. By the way, you sure are tall -- would you like to sit in an exit row"? DING! BARGE officially starts when Frank and Sheri Brabec board the plane and we say hi! The plane ride is uneventful but seems to take forever. Get the car and decide to go to the Venetian to try to get our badges. Caryl: Wow, look at all my old friends! I can't wait to say hello. David: Wow, look at all my old friends! I can't wait to say hello. Check in late at the Golden Nugget. Get stuck with a smoking room (boo). Get a refrigerator -- for "medicine" (yeah). Hallway wreaks (boo). Room doesn't (yeah). Wednesday: Pull in to breakfast at the Egg and I at exactly 9am. 20 people there already. Is this a meal or a poker tournament? We get a side table, and are joined by Steve Landrum and Sabyl Cohen.. Very enjoyable. We get the main table to flip their egg to black so we can get service. Great breakfast! Everyone leaves without paying. Huh? Oh, thanks Ice! We decide to do the Paris tourney at 11am Caryl: My table is full of people who only push all in. So I had to go in with A6, and I lost. David: I won one hand -- I was in the big blind with Q8. Folded to the button (old local?) who calls, small blind folds, I check. J8X flop, I bet, he calls. 8 on the turn, I check, he goes all-in with only T500, I've got him covered and call. He's got A5, hghn. After that the blinds go up fast, my stack goes down fast, and my KQ one off the button jam goes down even faster to KK on the button. What happened to the rest of the afternoon? We ate dinner at the GN coffee shop/buffet because $40 of food came with the room. The buffet is under construction so they moved a table of garbage into the coffee shop and called it a buffet. We ordered from the menu. The food was fine, and done just in time to head to the Venetian for the lowball tournament. David: I got to sit next to Nolan and an empty seat. Nolan was MUCH more entertaining. Especially when he tried to go through my small blind to get the dead chips in the big blind. I won a few hands, but couldn't beat the guy at the end of the table. Nolan got a bunch from him when Gavin and ??? helped him with a hand. Seems he had a one card draw, but who would believe Gavin? Later Kenny Shei came to our table and couldn't miss a draw. Bart was there. I had as much fun as I've ever had losing. Caryl: Wow, I love this game! At the first break I had tripled my chips. Wow, I have no idea how to play this game! I busted out before David did. Walk around, talk, eat, what do I know? You think I took notes or something? Thursday, 5:15am David: Try not to wake Caryl up as I get ready for golf. Drive over to the back of Binion's to meet the hoard of fellow death-marchers. OK, there are only four of us -- where are the rest of you wimps? Cmon' , Kevan and Jerry have been up all night! What kind of excuse could you have? Caryl: How can putting on a pair of shorts be so noisy? David: Wow, QB hasn't played in a year and he can still hit from the rocks like he knows what he is doing. Not much happens until the bird almost dies. It was nice of it to get in the way so that the event title could be continued. Caryl: Thank goodness he’s finally gone. Now I can do some work?? Hey, this is Vegas, right? Somehow Kevan and Jerry manage to stay upright for all 18 holes and Ken doesn’t break any clubs on the rocks (a few nicks here and there, but when you only play once a year who really cares). QB and I high tail it to the GN to pick up Caryl so we can get to CHORSE. I’m the captain and we might make it there 2 minutes before the event starts. But I am confident that our cadre of BARGE veterans can take care of things. Sure enough, when I arrive at 10:59 our entry has been paid, an alternate has been found for our I’ve-got-a-bad-back-and-I-can’t-get-out-of-bed comrade and razz player Pete Stephenson. Thanks Mr. Pickles, wherever you are. Caryl: I keep getting great hands at hold-em, but they keep sucking out on me. But I always leave with more chips than I started with. David: I won 1 hand at Stud-8! Woo Hoo. Everyone Else: Oops, we lost. Kiss our money goodbye. Congratulations to the winners. SUSHI!!!!!!! We drove Michael Brennan and Kenny Shei to I Love Sushi. Caryl and I are novice sushi eaters, having been indoctrinated at last years event. We have been looking forward to this all year. And it lived up to all our expectations, and then some, as Michael shared part of his sake tasting with Caryl. I don’t care if you are a math weenie, you need to come. I don’t care if you are an ADB, you need to come. I don’t care if you hate sushi, you need to come. I don’t care if you have to walk to Henderson, you need to come. If it wasn’t for a wedding, this would be the highlight of the trip. Great company, great sake, and great food. And always take the under! Thanks Asya. Frank Brabec arranged for anyone wanting to go to be limo’d to a blues show. We were picked up at the Plaza and driven in style to the show. Thanks Frank! I could almost tell you who was there: Me, Caryl, Frank, Sheri, Amy, Ploink, Chuck, Grizz, JR, Mike, … (is that it? Did I miss anyone) David: I love it. Great harmonica playing (almost as good as Frank), great beat, doesn’t even matter that you can only understand one word out of five. And who’d have known you could do all those cool tricks with a guitar? I liked when the drummer got to sing a song – kind of like Ringo or Elwood getting to sing. Caryl: After a while they all sound the same. I wanna play craps! So after the first set a bunch of us went out to play. Caryl dropped a few bucks at craps, but I more than made up for it at pai gow. We caught the limo back downtown, had some chow at the 4 Queens coffee shop (3 and ½ stars in the Aronson rating system), and crashed for the evening. -- OK, this is taking forever to write. I’ve got to post something or Peter will kill me. More soon? --- Friday. David: TOC time, I wonder what games we are playing? Caryl: I don't care what games they are playing -- I'm stuck going to a meeting with some potential clients. They own a dozen McDonalds restaurants in the Las Vegas area and are looking for a new accounting firm. As long as I'm here in Vegas, I might as well try to get some more business. David: I can play these Omaha hands when I get the nuts. I can fold Hold'em hands -- how often do you have the nuts there? I'm doing ok, up a little when I win a nice stud hand, making an ace high spade flush in the first five cards. Then, thinking I'm a stud guru, I take my hidden pair of eight's up against Jarrod's hidden pair of tens. Oops, their goes 3/4 of my stack. Then I go out when I take AKQ against TT7. I draw a Q next, but my opponent then proceeds to draw a K, then a J, then a Q, and finally an A on the river to complete an ace high straight. Caryl: What a great lunch meeting. We went to the Bali Hai golf course club house and restaurant. Good food, good company, no crowd, free lunch with wine and new friends. Now to get them to sign on as clients…may take another trip to Vegas. The only drawback was the time…I was picked up at 12:30 and already it was 3:30. Las Vegas Blvd. was so slow and I'm sure I'm missing our chance to join a consortium. David knows how to get everywhere without being on Las Vegas Blvd…how come this lady doesn't? David: Time for some walking and -EV games that I can win at. I usually take my walk after donking off all my chips. This time at least I get some comfort from it having been only ¾ of my chips. Wandering over to the TI, I find a lightly inhabited pai gow table and manage to win a few dollars. After a while it is time to head back for the calc^^^^symposium. The Symposium: I am almost at the hall when Caryl phones asking where I am. I trace my steps back towards the poker room and find her. We make our way past the security guard at the door, peruse the meager food offerings and grab a seat. We are looking over the pairings when Michael Brennan comes over to chat. Caryl asks if he wants to pool some money with us. He says yes. I see Steven Markowitz and ask him if he’d like to join. He says yes also. Then Jeff Deitch sees what is happening and asks to get in, along with his brother-in-law David Sousann. Finally we recruit Kenny Shei and our syndicate is complete. With our combined vast knowledge of Barger’s and our meager bankroll, we pick up 3 pairs. None will cash. But we buy back ¼ of everyone in the group, including Caryl who is paired with Sabyl. They of course went for some ridiculous price, but Caryl has made it to the final table before in this event. Caryl: Lets go watch Michael in the final two tables at the TOC. David: Ok, good idea Michael: How come there were 180 entrants and only one table is being paid. Can’t we make a deal or re-structure the payouts? What is going on? (three hands later). Crud, I busted out – all that time and no payoff. Oh well. Caryl, what do you want to do? Caryl: I want to try Switch Blackjack. Michael: Sounds good. I’ll count. We head over to the Casino Royal to try Switch Blackjack. You play two hands face up, and have the option to switch the 2nd cards on each of the hands. Blackjack pays even money and the dealer ties if he gets to 22. If the dealer turns up a lot of bad cards then you can get a lot of opportunities to double down or split. Otherwise you just lose. Caryl: I love this game! I’m up a bundle. (10 minutes later). I don’t like this game, I’m back to even. David: I’ll try some. I love this game! I’m up a bundle. Michael: Take insurance! The deck is loaded with 10’s David: Oops, too late. I wonder if that would have looked suspicious. Its getting late, and we need to get to the wedding. Michael begs off, and Caryl and I have dinner in the Outback up the stairs at some joint on the strip. They don’t have the grillers at this one – too much prep time or some such lame excuse – but the steaks are good. When we get done, its 10:55pm and the wedding is supposed to be at 11. Caryl: We’re too late. Lets stay and play some more. David: No, we can’t do that. We’ll just show up late, but we have to go. Caryl: You are right. Lets go. We hustle to the car and fly downtown on I15. I let Caryl off and go park. We meet upstairs and the wedding hasn’t started yet – ding! We just missed a couple of karaoke’s. A few more and then the wedding. Wow, if you missed it, try and get the video. It was amazing. Patti was fantastic, Chris was dressed to kill, and Amy was the gorgeous bride. I thought something got stuck in my eye, but whatever it was seemed to be contagious. Afterwards was more karaoke. Caryl: Great Karaoke. Are we going to take a turn? David: I love karaoke. Everybody sings better than me. And there is audience participation, with a monitor turned towards the crowd so we can join in. And I know all these songs. Even One Bourbon, One Scotch, and One Beer. . Caryl: I’m getting tired. I’m going back to the room. David: OK, but you are going to miss the rest. So the first rap song was way too long. It was so long that Mike needed to take a break after 5 minutes and let Terrence take over for a few verses before he finished with the last 5 minutes. And you couldn’t really understand the lyrics. Then he got up to do another one, and asked Tanya to help. I thought to myself: ‘Just what we need, another rap song’. WRONG. He did Baby Got Back, with Tanya showing off her bod. It was awesome. It was stirring. It was… I don’t know what it was – get the video -- after you are done crying from the wedding, do NOT turn it off. Best…. Karaoke… Ever. Sleep occurs around 2:30am. Saturday We got to the 4 Queens for our traditional pre-tourney breakfast. The coffee shop conveniently overlooks a switch blackjack table, which makes Caryl’s eggs might expensive. After that we pick up QB at the Plaza and head over to the Venetian. The last two years I’ve donked off all my chips early, and I’m hoping to avoid that this year. The tourney starts on time as do my usual crappy cards. I bleed off chips as our table is being dominated by the nice elderly lady to my right. I’m down to about T1100 when Caryl comes over. Caryl: I was chatting with the guy in the big blind when it got folded around to me in the small blind. So when I found KK, I just limped. After the flop I bet, he raised, and I went all in because I didn’t think he had anything. But he made two small pair and I’m out! David: Oy, I’m in a hand – can you come back later? Caryl: I’m going up to the hospitality suite to learn how to play Chinese poker. David: OK, I’ll call you when I bust out. I think I won one pot and was down to around T1000 with the blinds at 50-100(?) when it got folded to me in the small blind. With A9s I said “I have to raise”, and I make it 300. After thinking a bit and asking how much I have left, the SB says “I’m going to put you all in”. I don’t think he has me beat, so I say OK. He’s got K9 and I double up. An orbit or two later I get Aks in middle position and raise. The SB (I think it was Oliver) hesitates a second and goes all-in. He has me covered, but I saw him play AK earlier and he seemed to act exactly the same. So I call, and sure enough, he has AK off. Two of my diamonds flop, so I yell for a diamond on the turn but it doesn’t come. So I yell for a diamond on the river, but no, so chop. We go around again and a young whippersnapper who has recently joined the table limps in under the gun. He has about T8000. I’m in middle position with AJ, and I raise the 100 bb to 300 (not enough?). Its folded to around and he says”can’t fold now” and calls. The flop is jack high, and he doesn’t look happy but goes all-in anyway. I call. When his QJ doesn’t improve I’m up to around T4000. Our table breaks soon after that. I get moved to the right of Kyle, whose got enough chips to fill a rack. The blinds are up to 150-300 with an ante of 25. One hand I’m the dealer and its folded to me and I raise 500. Kyle folds and the BB thinks a while, trying to decide if I priced him in. He ends up folding. So a bit later I get presto, and its folded to me. I make it T900 to go, Kyle calls, and everyone else folds. I’m in the 8 seat and 9 is empty, so I have a perfect view of the flop as a 5 appears right on top. Also in the flop is a jack and a two, but how could that matter? I decide to bet T900 as I don’t want to risk going for a check-raise but I don’t want Kyle to fold. Kyle doesn’t fold, and he doesn’t call – he raises to T2000, which about puts me in. I hear Norman Chad inside my head saying, “if he doesn’t get all his money in here, when will he ever do it”? as I re-raise for my remaining few hundred chips, hoping for an overpair. I proudly show my set, and Kyle humbly turns over JJ for top set. EMERGENCY! Quick, call for the master suckout! But no. I tell Kyle “nice hand”, and I mean it. I don’t know if I played it right, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the previous years, and I don’t feel bad about going out with a set. David: Hi honey, I’m out. Caryl: Great! Come on up and play Chinese poker with us. David: Don’t you want to hear how I busted? Caryl: No. David: Dang, I knew I should have had Patti write our wedding vows. Now I’ve got to pay her $1 to listen. So we played Chinese poker for 45 minutes before someone mentioned pinball. Oh yeah, that’s why I busted out before 3pm. We took two cars and headed out about 5 miles to the place. I’d have names but I didn’t take notes, although for sure Cliff Mathews was there looking as un-deadheaded as possible. It was a really great place. They had games from Fireball through modern models, maybe 80 games in all. Five balls for either 25 or 50 cents, with the free game scores set way down, so all of us pinball wizards could rack up the credits. I think I spent $4.00 for the 2 ½ hours that we spent there. Then it was time to head back for the banquet. Caryl: I had a great time playing CP for the 2 ½ hours that David was gone. They taught me so well that I took their money! The banquet was great. I marveled at how you could have a banquet at the Venetian for the same price as a banquet at the Plaza. We were playing 6-way CP at the table and using chips when the announcement was made that we couldn’t have fun in Las Vegas (well, not that much, anyway). We thought the food was pretty good, especially compared to previous years. The speech was fun too, although I’m not looking forward to getting my first poker book published. At some point we learned that Sabyl (paired with Caryl) had finished 7th, and that Mordecai Schwartz (paired with Michael Brennan) was one of the 5 remaining players. Who is Mordecai Schwartz? I don’t know, but ding! Caryl was tired, so I arranged a ride back downtown for her. Steven Markowitz and I watched the final table action. I thought Mordecai was in the 1 seat, and when he busted I went to congratulate him. When I finally tracked him down near the front desk I shook his hand, said congratulations, and read his nametag – Edmund Hack. Doh! Wait, if you’re Edmond Hack, where is Mordecai? He must be… ding! Steven and I then watched Mordecai maneuver his stack masterfully, capturing the crown. I never did get to congratulate Mordecai, so: Congratulations, Mordecai. And thank you for making our syndicate profitable. I hope our entire group can meet you next BARGE to personally thank you. If you come to the symposium I’m sure it will happen – look for the tall guy with the short girl. With Caryl back at the Nugget, I looked around for my lowball game, which I eventually found. After playing over Betty Tanenbaum’s chips for a while, I got my own seat. It proved to be a good one, as I made a small profit for the evening, along with toking the dealers a goodly amount. Thanks Mike Z. We missed you. About 2:15am one of the guys said “last hand for me” and I seconded the motion. I cashed out and said a few goodbye’s, as everyone was still madly playing away. Sunday Our flight out was scheduled for 10am. We filled up the tank, took Tropicana across LVB to the airport and dropped off the car. I lost Caryl, then found her, but we were at the wrong airline. Then we should have waited in line an hour at the right airline but instead it was only 5 minutes. The credit card didn’t work again, this time because they changed the flight number. So we checked in at the counter, requested and received exit row seats, and had an easy trip home. Prologue Saying “great time” and “BARGE” in the same sentence is of course redundant. To our organizers we give our most heartfelt thanks -- Peter, Chuck, Nolan, and whoever else made the magic happen. And to those of you that made up financially for the .com fiasco, thank you also. Thank you to everyone who came and made this the Best… Barge… Ever! Next year I’m going to make it a point to get more names and shake more hands. And take better notes. I really mean it this time! Looking forward to next year already, David and Caryl Aronson