Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2006 14:11:13 -0400 From: "Regis Donovan" Subject: [BARGE] Regis' BARGE 2006 trip report My BARGE 2006 trip report. So, Claudia and I headed off to the airport. Checked in and checked our luggage with JetBlue for a direct flight from BOS to LAS and sat down for dinner. During dinner, I tried to remember if I'd removed a knife from my bag and discovered that I hadn't. I had a very unfriendly looking knife lurking in one of my pockets. I consider it a suckout that I remembered it before trying to go through security. I get a couple of envelopes and some postage and mail the knife back to myself. Return address, "i'm an idiot. logan airport" Flight is uneventful, nobody sitting in the middle seat between us (score!), and we arrive in LV, pick up our bags, then go to get the rental car. I had reserved a compact and end up with an upgraded upgrade to a Ford Escape, a small SUV. Since we were planning on driving around some national parks after BARGE, this is totally a win. We head over to the Casino Royale and check in and discover that the hotel section is not a dive. It's not great, but it's pretty reasonable for the price. Score! Thursday morning, we wander over for the CHORSE tournament. Having tripped and failed to get out of the way in time to be nominated team captain, I ended up wrangling a team that ranged in size from 3 players up to 8 players and then settled down to 6 with one late replacement bringing the total to 7. I unexpectedly end up playing the stud/8 round, and in one hand manage to scoop with a straight for high and a 6 low. The Leftovers end up making a slight amount of money and seemed to generally have fun. Sushi was r00ling. Screaming orgasm g00t. We went back to the Royale and then walked over to TI for the 7:30 show of "Mystere". I'm glad nobody told those folks that humans can't actually do some of that stuff. Friday morning, TOC-style. I suck at this game. I bust out and then kick around the Venetian ending up in a couple of different games including (briefly) some chinese poker. Claudia goes deep in the TOC, making it till after the dinner break. We wander off to Cafe Lux for dinner and discuss strategy. Given her stack, the strategy is: "hope to suck out". After dinner, she lasts for one more hand but careful planning fails and she gets no suckout. We head back to the Royale and some kind of east-coast-timezone inertia kicks in and we both fall asleep and miss out on all the friday night fun. oops. Saturday, NLHE. I suck at this game. I bust out early, fill out my survey, and then Claudia busts out and also fills out a survey. We head down to Binion's for the 2pm tournament and buy in there. Claudia gives her 2006 BARGE pin to a floor guy. I bust out of the tournament when someone re-suckouts my suckout. (JJ vs KK, I make a set, then the other player makes her set and IGPRGN and settle into a $1/$2 NLHE ring game.) I poke about making something like $50 in the ring game while Claudia continues to get deeper and deeper into the tournament. I think the karma of the pin toke was working for her. The final table gets down to 4 people, then to 3 and they do a 3-way chop. I drive to the Venetian and we get to the banquet partway thru the meal. The staff manages to scare up some rubber chicken for us while we wait for Phil Gordon's speech where he demonstrated that he is not overrated as a speaker. Even if it was a long drawn-out bad beat story. If I ever write a gambling book, tho, I'll have to ask him for tips on handling Mason. (http://flickr.com/photos/rmd1023/223804726/) Post-banquet, Roshambo. I suck at this game. The for-fun roshambo tournament was fun, although I gave more fun than I got. I drew Phil Gordon in the first round in an apparent attempt to maximize height differences between opponents. (I remember someone got a picture of us together but I forget who and I haven't seen it on flickr yet. If you're the person who took it, could you send me a copy?) I built an early 4-0 lead but was eventually defeated 10-9. I was expecting him to throw rock a lot and so I ended up throwing paper a lot. It was a long drawn-out battle, epic in proportion and some crazy number of total throws. I think we synched up something like 9 throws in a row at one point. But when we were 9-9, I foolishly figured he'd go with rock and threw paper. He went scissors and shredded my paper. I should've gone with rock. Good old rock. Nothing beats rock. Reindeer games were awesome. I was seated in what was initially listed as a "must-move" chowaha game, although there wasn't much moving going on. The Venetian put out table plaques for our games, even if they misspelled chowaha: http://flickr.com/photos/rmd1023/223804799/ We had a blast -- tourists joined in (three at one point, I think). The first non-BARGEr in the game, Long Nguyen, started totally r00ling. With some urging from Perry, Lunchbox made an awesome toke and did some awesome snorting. I fear Perry's jedi mind trick. We played chowaha, chowahagonal -- chowahaggis if you're scottish, I think -- and double-wide chowaha (aka uberha), half-indian chowaha, and roll-your-own. Also, a couple of r00ling chip castles were built. With Chowahagonal, two additional paths for the 5 cards are added -- diagonally up from the low outside flop card to the high inside, and down from the high outside to the low inside. then zag up or down (as approrpiate) to the adjacent turn card and end at the river card. Ultraha/uberha is just silly, and yet there are still cards left in the deck. Kind of surprising, really. (http://flickr.com/photos/rmd1023/223805767/) I had my camera out and been taking pictures of chipcastles at my table. During a game of half-indian chowaha, Asya says "take my picture! take my picture!" So I do. Then she says "lemme see!" and I almost show it to her before I realize what was going on, there. Sneaky woman, that Asya. But she arranged for 50 people to have screaming orgasms the evening before, and what more can you ask from a woman? http://flickr.com/photos/rmd1023/223805692/ I left around 3:30 or 4:00 am. Sunday, we did a lot of nothing, then played in the $1/$2 nlhe game at the MGM for a while. I suck at this game. I made a hundred or so, while Claudia continued her r00ling and ended up +$400 or so. Razzo was one of our dealers -- he spotted Claudia's replacement BARGE pin and outed himself to us and we discussed Phil Gordon's "techniques". We went over to NYNY and saw Zumanity, which had changed a bit since I'd seen it a few years before. Then we wandered back to our hotel to prepare for the non-LV, all-canyons all-the-time part of the vacation. Monday we drove out around Bryce Canyon, Tuesday we went to the north rim of the Grand Canyon, and Weds we went back to LV via Zion Canyon. Weds afternoon we played a bit more at the MGM (Claudia was up, I bled chips in a couple of beats -- one of them a bad beat when I was rivered, and the other in a solid beat by Claudia, damn her). Then a red-eye back to Boston. Again, nobody between us in the middle seat, for more comfortable dozing. A huge giant "thank you" to Pete and Chuck, our outstanding adaptable resiliant organizers for making BARGE almost happen, then recovering and making it almost happen, and then making it really happen just in time for it to actually happen and r00l. --regis