Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2007 23:16:58 -0800 From: Michael Hunter Subject: [BARGE] 2007 TR I wrote this sometime after BARGE on a plane flight back from Europe but then never really finished it. At this point I doubt I every will. mph BARGE 07 TR I almost didn't make it to BARGE this year. 11 years ago my first BARGE was a perfect 30 year olds mid life crisis gift given its timeframe around my birthday. This year I'm buried in work, life abuse, and general craziness. If I hadn't missed a BARGE a few years ago for a friend's wedding I'm almost certain I would have decided 10 years was enough but life is only simple enought to say its not that simple. I had been a super stress case over my 40th birthday which happened on the first day of BARGE. I had managed to be a perfect ass to wife and friends, eat a couple of silly expensive dinners, and then toss one of them in a massive mix of nice wine and MJ - the first just enough that I could have held it. But I smoke infrequently so the second by itself would have been toxic. As a partial tradeoff I havn't been to a full BARGE in a long time. The weekend is usually just enough. I worked some silly schedule before BARGE sleeping about every other day and not much then making my drive to the airport before BARGE more of a hour long blur then it should be. I arrived a bit before the symposium. My typical run through the airport and a mad dash for the taxi line worked fine and I was talking to a ex Bay Area resident cum Las Vegas cab driver who lived in vegas 'cuz he couldn't spew enough going to Reno. He received a phone call every minute for the first few asking for money for a friend who needed to fly back to the Phillipines for his Father's funeral. Hmmm, sometime my hobby makes me ill. Arriving at the shoe I grab a badge from a grumpy floorman and chat up the first few people I see. I suffer the emotional let down of having pushed the whole week and then jumping into a already in full swing BARGE crowd. Saddenz. Fairly quickly I hook up with some BARGErs headed over to the symposium. Being fairly early to the symposium I get a couple of runs at the hor d'orvs. I should have grabbed a chair but am still not completely ready to relax. Ultimately I ended up sitting next to Michele, Jerrod, and Andrew watching them playing several strange variants of CP. I'd forgotten any cards or chips so I don't try to get any HU NLHE going. Thats a first in quite a few years. I buy at least one horse and buy myself back for what at the time seemed like a reasonable price. Wondering back from the symposium I chat with Michael Patterson. As always Michael is a joy to chat with. I'm very happy and think the BARGE community is in deep debt to Michael for his work. I attempt to play after the symposium but ultimately have to go to bed due to the sleep debt I'm running. The next morning I get to breakfast last but still manage to have a nice conversation with ADB Juplier, his wife, and Rich Strauss. I end up missing the first few hands of the tournament. Directly to my left is Michael Patterson and directly to my right is Dave Fructer. Later Jerrod shows up across from me. The early rounds go fairly straight forwardly. I lay down QQ early to a re^2 from the sb by what I think is a fairly tight raise. Blah, blah, blah. I'd forgotten a bust out gift and was feeling bad so unlike other years I was forcing myself to focus to maximize whatever chance I had of not having to give anybody a gift. But I don't collect anthing I could regive for a long time as I don't bust anybody but just kept my stack growing. Later in a flurry of busts I take out two of our hosts (in retrospect my call of Michael was bad) and Wesley among others. Of these hands I just barely remember Michael's because I thought about the hand distributions the next morning and worked out my chip equity and Wesley's because he wrote the hands (but *not* the _situation_) inside the cover of his bust out gift. Several times I have chips to push with, am chopped back and end up squeezing several times given the flat money payout and the steep ego payout. I get lucky a fair bit but finally bust to in 10th who is playing well. In a funny story after the fact I end up not getting the money for my part of the symposium so I guess it wasn't cheap after all! Now things get hazy. Its been a rough week, month, year, ... Wrote a mountain of code over a pound of stimulants and a ton of stress. Amusingly I read Dalla's _Stuey_ and Lesh's _Searching for the Sound_ in the middle of it all. But I've been a good boy lately and just start drinking at as a good a pace this fat old man can maintain. I had fun conversations with Michael Chow and Brian Goetz whome I see fairly regularly and really enjoy and a bunch of other people that I don't see as regularly and also really enjoy. Grizz let me listen to a funny dead community commentary entitled _Come All Ye' Deadheads_ and sang to the obvious tune. The speech was fine, blah, blah, blah. Back in the poker room I end up at the binglaha game. I like binglaha but personally would prefer a mixed PL game. Sadly nothing like that seems likely to happen and this game isn't holding my attention. It has been a tradition of mine for a fair number of years now to take a break out of the binglaha game for a lap dance. I grab a few shots, left some cash and chips on the table, and head out. I vaguely remember getting rubbed on and then wondering out to dinner. I think I had some beer at MSS and left without paying only to be chased down but the next thing I remember is waking up in my room Sunday morning. If anybody helped effect this. Thank you. I wander down to the poker room who asks me a bunch of questions but finally gives me the money. I toke the reminder mod 100 and am off. I had brought my copy of Bill and Jerrod's _Math Of Poker_ but had forgotten to get it signed. Food was guaranteed and finding either to sign MOP wasn't so I bowed to my stomach. I decide to get a shrimp cocktail but given my tip only had franklins. I'm the first in line and get the riot act in a casino for using one. Huh? In any case it works out. Between the cab ride and the flight I read _Dancing Barefoot_. I think I stop on pages 55 (up to getting in line at the airport), 77 (until I fall asleep on the airplane), and then finish it at home. A delightful read. On my way home from Reno I decide to take 50 over the pass. On the way up I listen to an interview on Sirius 17 about the GDR release _100 Year Hall_ between Lesh and Weir. Its a fun interview but over and over I'm reminded that Weir from before he graduated from high school was raised in the city a rocker but Lesh has a far broader and more normal upbringing. In a funny bit of foreshadowing I remember Weir making a comment along the lines of "colder then a whores goodbye". After I drop over the pass and come in sight of the lake I'm stuck by how beautiful the dark and choppy lake appears. Even after having spent the last 15 years or so visiting the lake and the last 6 living there I'm still amazed at how many faces this jewel can wear. I make it home, walk the wife, hug the dogs, and... go play poker?! I didn't really play much at BARGE and there is a pot limit dealer's choice game most Sunday evenings at one of the local rooms. It only last a few hours. Nothing really happens and I lose $50. I wonder over to the other room and play in a short handed 3-5/1000 NLHE game. I get an opponent to fold a couple of hands, win some pots at show down, blah, blah, blah. Then the weakier builds a stack and shoves on my set and back doors his flush. I rebuy but now he is even and ends up leaving after a bit and the game disintegrates with nobody wanting to play short or heads up. I'm feeling down at this point. A bit of emotional let down from a quick BARGE. I'm parked at the other casino and one of the other players wants to walk over with me but I ditch him going to a different cage so I can wander on my own. Wondering by one of the clubs I run across one of the Tahoe 20-something cocktail waitresses I know barely standing drunk and crying. Some incoherant conversation reveals she has lost her friends and appears to be distraught over her best friends boyfriend spreading rumors about her. Drama. I'm in just the right mood to take on her plight and walk her outside. She thinks her friend is working but they have been barred from being in the casion outside of their shift. At this point I have a very attractive young woman basically drapped on my arm needing help. Now I'm very willing to help her :) We wonder around, find out her friend is off work, call around, blah, blah, blah. Well, almost blah. I've told her I will take her home but she still wants to look around for her friends. So we walk around a bit. At this point I'm still somewhat wounded about just turning 40. But a funny thing happens. As we are walking around a group of young drunken boys start giving her a hard time about sleeping with "some old man". Somebody calls her a "whore" several times. I wonder at my passivity. I'd have gotten my ass kicked a few years ago correcting that behavior. At some point somebody makes a comment to the effect that "he must be 40 or something". Heh. I resemble that. She and I have a funny laugh. Ultimately I load her into my car and drive her back towards her end of town. On the way there we stop by her friends house so she can get the things she left at the club and probably gain some comfort with some random dude giving her a ride home. Friends give her money, we find a dog she knows that is running loose and take it home, and ultimately make it to her house. All the normal adventures. She tries to give me a $20 for the ride but I end up slipping it back in her sweater. Somehow the funds I just lost plus those in my pocket make that irrelevant. I finally get her home, play with her dogs and a new few days old puppy, and chat a bit. She keeps thanking me stressing that I didn't know what those guys could have done to her. That people can be that mean to each other bothers me deeply. Instead of taking out their sexual frustrations on her she should have been able to trust them to get her home safely. But one finally amusing moment is had when I realize that the sweater with the $20 in it is still in my car and stick my head back in her door and toss it at her as she pulls up her pants. Heh. Perv Michael sticks his head back up. Ah well. I didn't see anything you couldn't see in a cocktail uniform. I was trying to figure out how I could ask to see the few tatooes you can't see in the uniform as she has some of the best overall composition in Tahoe. But that would have been too creepy. My drive home isn't short but it seems short as my mind is a whir with my weekend. I get home and snuggle up next to my wife. Thinking about my evening I realize that maybe a mostly drama-less 40 isn't so bad.