Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 11:56:52 -0400 From: Tom Hummel Subject: [BARGE] Trip report (long) Thanks to some lucky scheduling, I was able to make my first BARGE in a few years. This is my story... Dropped my girls off at school on Tuesday morning, then back home to finish up some last minute work, then wait for a cab to the airport. The $60 cab turns out to be a lot more convenient and cheaper than parking at the airport and I waited until the last minute, so I couldn't get a shuttle or limo. My cab driver is from the area and is very talkative. Apparently, he's held every job known and I'm pretty sure he mentioned meeting the queen of England and being abducted by aliens at some point. Web check-in the night before makes everything at the airport a breeze, although I forgot that I had my pocket knife on me until I got to security and started emptying my pockets. Seems silly to me to do baggage check for a pocket knife that was a freebie from a trade show, so in the trash it goes :-( The flight was fuller than I hoped (web had shown an empty seat next to me as recent as a few hours before), but I manage. Brought a DVD of "The Great Escape" with me. Three hour movie makes the four hour flight seem much quicker. As the plane is boarding I notice a familiar face, but can't remember a name and can't catch his eye. When I get off the plane I wait for him to deplane and sure enough, it's fellow BARGEr Mike Cantrememberhislastname. Mike and I grab a cab to Binions together. Looks like luck is with me this trip already. I get checked in and notice something peculiar about the room. Apparently they've started remodeling this one, because the bathroom is really nice, but they haven't replaced any furniture, etc. so despite the nice bathroom, the blankets on the bed have cigarette burn holes and the curtains are letting in sunlight through the parts that have been worn paper thin or just plain shredded. Oh well, it's cheap and I'm traveling alone. Downstairs I get my Binions card and go off to find the biggest jackpot slot machine that I can to burn through the $10 slot comp. There's a $1 progressive jackpot slot machine nearby and I quickly hit for $15. Luck is still looking good! I get to the poker area and say some "hello"s. It's so great seeing some of these people who I haven't seen in years. I still have a couple hours before the 8OB tournament, so I watche a Chinese Poker game for a bit and decide, "what the hell" and sit down to my first ever CP session. We're playing $10 a point and I buy in for $300. I didn't take notes on this part, but I do remember a couple hands. Ploink was at the table and in one hand he managed to play an AQ flush in the middle and I still managed to scoop him with boat/bigger boat for my middle and back. Not to be outdone, he later scoops me when I'm playing a boat in the middle when he makes quads on the back I believe. I manage to push my beginners luck and cash out after about an hour and a half later up $120. Woohoo! Luck still holding! Off to the 8OB tournament. I haven't been playing as much poker as I would have liked over the past year, but that's especially true of 8OB. Still, that's exactly why I love playing in these tournaments - the chance to play games that I don't normally play. I start this tournament moving in the wrong direction. At the end of the first round my 2K in starting chips is down to 1875... At the end of round 2 it's at 1805... then 1555... 1525... 1350. Finally, during level 6 I start winning some hands - which is good, because the betting limits are getting up there. By the end of level 6 I'm at 4525 and moving in the right direction... 4850... 9650... then broke. I told you the limits were getting up there. That was my one complaint about this and even moreso, the lowball tournament. The limits rose a bit too fast. As far as hands, I didn't take a lot of notes here, and I've waited too long before writing this trip report to accurately remember any. The next morning I have breakfast with some other BARGErs and decide that I'm going to just stick around at Binions for the day. I sit in a 1-2 NLHE game for awhile and donk around for about an hour, locking in a monstrous win of $3. After grabbing a bite to eat I register for the 2pm NLHE tourney with a few other BARGE players, including Barry K, who is seated to my left at the first table. I'm doing ok, and we reach the 50-100 level when the following hand plays out... Barry raises UTG to $350. Anyone who's played with Barry knows that he could have any two cards at this point, as long as they are both higher than a queen . There are two callers by the time that it reaches me, so I decide that my 82s is a monster for the bargain price of $250 into a $1200 pot. The flop comes out 988. I check, Barry obliges with a bet and gets a caller. I push allin and Barry must have seen the glint in my eye and folds. The other caller calls my allin though so that I can have the pleasure of showing down my 82s00ted. Barry just smiles and laughs. At first, he can't believe that I called preflop with 82, but when I point out that it was s00ted, he realizes that it was a must-call. Ok, well maybe not. My stack is growing nicely after this until I get JJ. There are two callers before it reaches me on the button, so I put in a nice healthy raise. I get called by a local and Bwana. The flop comes Axx and the local pushes allin. Bwana is horribly short-stacked at this point and calls. After considering the stack sizes, past play, and the reactions of the local, etc. I decide that he saw Greg Raymer talk about the stop-n-go once and that he's on a middle-ish pair. Bwana could be on pretty much anything since his call after the flop was mandatory, but even so there's enough of a sidepot for me to play for anyway. I call and the local flips up 88. Good to see that my read was dead on. Scott flips up JJ. I say to Scott, "We're in a lot of trouble now." I'm thinking, we have no redraws if he hits the 8. Sure enough the 8 hits and IGHN. Oh well, at least I'm done in time for the lowball tournament! I was actually doing well in the lowball tournament, steadily increasing my stack size, but as I pointed out earlier the levels seemed to go up a bit steeply. Eventually they overcame me so that two missed hands in a row meant elimination and that's what happened. There were at least a couple of noteworthy hands that I recall. I had Andrew Proch at my table, as well as Kevin Un (?). In one hand, Kevin raised before the draw, Andrew reraised. Kevin called and drew 1 and Andrew stood pat. Checked down and Andrew showed his... pat Q-high. Yes, he reraised before the draw and stood pat on a Q. Lucky for him Kevin paired. Andrew's play may have been correct of course - your best bet may be that your opponent pairs and reraising then standing pat may let you get through the post-draw play cheaper. I'm a lowball novice though, so I don't know for sure. I also had Nichole at my table for most of this event. She was two to my right and in one hand she was the BB and there was no raise before her so she got to play for free and drew four. I told her that she really needed to make the powerful play of drawing four then betting out, but she obviously didn't believe me and checked. Two hands later there was no raise to my BB, so I got a free draw. I should point out that with Kevin, Andrew, and Greg Pappas at my table it was VERY rare for this to happen. Anyway, I was holding KKQJT, so I drew 5. I then remarked that I was going to make the even stronger play of drawing 5 and betting out. I got one caller and tabled my 7-5 to take the pot. Eventually, that kind of luck wasn't enough to keep my stack above the blinds though, and I went under. I was done in time for the 11pm tournament at Caesars. No notes on this one, except that I started an annoying trend of being eliminated after flopping a set and having another player push allin ahead of me with a flush draw and get there. This happened three times during BARGE and not once did the draw miss or did I complete the boat. :-( Spent the rest of the night at Caesars booking a small win at 1-2 NLHE (hint: less than my $3 win in 1-2 at Binions), a small loss at 3-6 LHE while I waited for another seat (hey, there was a cute girl at the 3-6 table), and a $150 win at the 2-5 NLHE. Had a blast rooling over that game with Pete Siegel and some other BARGErs while we waited for Chic to get busted at the final table in the tournament. After he was busted we waited around for the bonus drawing that they do. One hour after the tournaments at Caesars they randomly pick a name from the tournament players and that person wins the jackpot, which goes up $100 every time it's unclaimed. It was at $400 and there were 6 BARGE players in our group, so we figured we had a decent shot of one of us winning it. No luck there though. 5:15am, time to head back to Binions before I have to see sunlight. Thursday started out with a 4 hour session of 1-2 NLHE. I played some of the best poker I've ever played. I called a $100 bet on the river with AK-high because I was pretty sure that my opponent had AJ and sure enough that is exactly what he flipped over. I (correctly) folded top two pair on a non-scary board when I knew my opponent had made his set. I was consistently and accurately putting the other players on hands, even when I wasn't in the hand. Needless to say, it was a big losing session for me. Of course, almost all of the $200 loss came from one hand, where I flopped a set and someone made their flush draw after most of the money was in the pot. To his defense, he also had a str8 draw. BTW, this is not counted in one of the three tournament elimination hands that I mentioned earlier. The moral of the story is, flopping sets sucks when you're not going to win with them. Around 4:30pm a bunch of us headed over to the Mirage to register for the 7pm $230 NLHE tournament, then it was off for all-u-can-eat sushi. Had a great time, which is pretty much a given considering the company of Barry K, Rebuy, Dave F, Pete S, George W, Mike, Len G, Murray, and whoever it is that I'm sure I'm forgetting so that they can feel left out that I didn't mention them. BTW, both Len and Pete S were sporting new glasses at BARGE and looked very studious. Has anyone ever done an experiment to see if other players play differently against players wearing glasses? Time to head out for the tournament and my stomach is in serious pain from way too much food. I consider taking up bulemia, but decide against it. I should mention that when we all registered for the tournament the tourney director asked us if we had any seating preferences - did we all want to sit together, be at separate tables, etc. When it got to me at the back of the line I saw that Rebuy, Dave F, and Barry K were all at table 11. I said, "Put me anywhere but table 11." As much as I like the company I wanted to win too. :-) I might have had better luck at table 11. It turned out that my table had no other BARGE players and the competition was rather weak. That is, until one of them pushed all in with their flush draw on the flop. Any guesses as to what I had? On the bright side, I was eliminated in about 40 minutes, which meant that I could run across the street to the Venetian and try to donk off more of my chips in their 8pm $125 tournament with 1 $50 rebuy and a $5 dealer toke for bonus chips. I immediately donked off a large portion of my stack pushing a hand too far and had to really buckle down. I was able to pull my game together and started playing some good poker. Not a lot of huge hands - a lot of hands where I built a moderate sized pot, then took it down. Most of the opposition was weak and didn't try too hard to stand in my way. There were a few good players in the mix though. When we got down to two tables I was one of the larger stacks with one other aggresive (and good) player sitting on a big stack and two other decent players at the table, although one was very short-stacked. This was when the tournament-defining hand happened. I limped in late position with JTs. Normally I wouldn't be first coming into a hand in late position without raising it, but I did so here for a couple of reasons... first, the other good player was in the BB and still had a big stack. In fact, he was the only player who could bust me. I didn't want to give him a chance to resteal from me, but risking just the BB was worth it IMO. The second reason was to get exactly the response that I got. After I called the BB said, "You just call?! What the hell do you have?!?!" The flop came out AJx, all suited and it was checked to me. I put out a moderate sized bet and he called. The turn paired the A. Unfortunately, here was where I made a big mistake (even bigger than limping preflop). I didn't want to give him odds to draw for a flush, which is what I thought he might have. I was convinced that he would have bet with any ace on that flop given his prior play. I wanted to make a decent sized bet. I accidentally grabbed more chips than I meant to though, and made a BIG bet. He pushed in. Hmmm... he's certainly good enough to check-raise with a flush draw on what looks like a scary board. I've also unwittingly given myself huge pot odds now, so I end up calling after much deliberation. The other player flips up 53s and has flopped the flush. Aiyaa. Looks like I'm in desperate need of another Jack. Sadly, the river is an Ace. Wait a second... hey, that gives me aces-full. Cool. I'm now sitting on what is the top stack in the tournament by far and the best player at the table is now severely short-stacked and steaming. He starts gunning for me and it doesn't take long before I get the rest of his chips. >From that point on it was simple bully poker. I was stealing and restealing with abandon and at the final table I was still easily the biggest stack. Perhaps the worst player at the table then went on a bit of a rush and ended up with a stack that rivaled my own. On one ocassion I have to lay down what I think is probably the best hand because he's willing to put all of his chips in against the other big stack. By the time that we were down to 5 players the blinds had gotten out of control again. Even still having the biggest stack, it's an allin fest for just about everyone else. When we get down to four players, someone has double through me and we're all about even in chips. Someone suggests a deal around 3am. At first I'm thinking that I want to turn it down, since we still have one pretty bad player at the table. But the blinds really are out of hand, the player to my immediate left is an excellent player (wish he were somewhere else), the player to my right is pretty good as well, and I'm starting to get tired. I agree to the deal, and when it's all done I end up with $2200 for my troubles, having the largest stack by just a bit. This is going longer than I expected, so I'm going to end it here. If I have a chance, I may bore everyone with part II of my BARGE 2007 trip report. -Tom.