Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2008 14:13:27 -0700 From: "Tilt City" Subject: [BARGE] BARGE 2008 trip report Thanks to Chuck, Peter, Mickdog, Nick, and everyone else who helped out behind the scenes for another great BARGE! Here's my trip report: I got into Las Vegas on Monday night. My flight was delayed three hours or so, and I needed a drink when I got in. I met Matt Grapenthein (Grapes) and Bob Lauria at the bar, and later we ended up going to grab a bite to eat with some of Bob's friends. After that I went to sleep since the first BARGE event was less than 24 hours away! On Tuesday, Alan Jaffray and the three of us went to grab lunch at South Point. After eating lunch at their buffet (which I thought was a pretty good value), we went to play pinball (I forget the name of the place), I started off playing the WPT pinball game. Sometimes the flop would show rags along with my shitty hole cards. Then all of a sudden I'd hit something and the machine would say I got a full house, even though it wasn't possible based on the unpaired board. I made it all the way to WPT Bahamas but then I busted out. Saddenz. There was also this video game that Grapes and I played where you had to pass various challenges to advance in the police department. All of the tests involved shooting at stuff on the screen. I guess all of these video games glamorize police work, and gloss over the more routine aspects like typing up police reports. Some of the challenges tested accuracy, others -- memory or speed. One of them required that you shoot at certain types of doughnuts while avoiding other kinds. We advanced to captain but then quit before either of us became commissoner. (High paying consulting gig in the private sector, thank you very much.) Before we left, I was getting thirsty and decided to buy a Gatorade from the vending machine. I wanted to try the Tiger Woods Gatorade but there were different flavors of that one and the one I wanted was 2nd from the front, so I just got a regular Gatorade instead. At 7pm it was time for the "NL shootout to limit HORSE" tournament. Eventually it got down to Asya Kamsky and me heads-up at our table. We were both getting kind of shortstacked, so I dared Asya to move in. She moved in with 22, I called with A9, and she won. I think I had her covered but I soon got it all-in after that and lost. I was hearing rumors that ADB Jester (Jeff Woods) was around and that he looked totally different. I looked around for him but didn't spot him. Finally when someone pointed out, I didn't recognize him initially. The next morning i went to breakfast at Egg & I with a bunch of BARGERs. A funny moment happened when Ken Kubey walked in. Peter Secor was sitting next to Jester and said to Kubey, "Hey Ken, I'd like to introduce you to the newest ADB'er" [motioning towards Jester]. "Hi, I'm Ken Kubey... what's your name?" "I'm Jeff Woods." QB says nothing and stares for a second. Then his jaw drops. Anyway, thanks for breakfast, Ice! After a nice breakfast I went to play the blackjack tournament. My starting table included Gavin Smith (whom I was crossbooked against during BARGE), Ploink, Steven Markowitz, and Warren Sander. I messed up on the last hand and didn't bet the right amount or make the right play. Next time maybe I'll play better. Of course, that's what I said last year, but as you see, it didn't happen this year. Gavin won the table which ended up costing me some money. (Story of my 2008 BARGE) After grabbing some food at the shrimp cocktail place at the Golden Gate -- thanks for telling me about that, Ploink! -- I played some Chinese poker to kill time before the Video Poker tournament. Chic Natkins (who had finished 2nd in the blackjack tournament) had already gotten a royal and two or three quads in the first flight of the VP tourney, so I decided to play very aggressively for big hands. Alas, it was not to be. I think I finished with 1520 points, same as Bob Lauria. I didn't even use up all my credits. On the other hand, Jordan (Fellknight), sitting next to me, used up all his credits with over three minutes to spare. Wednesday night: lowball tournament. While I couldn't repeat the magic (dumb luck) of two years ago, I did have some moments. One time I drew three against Nolan Dalla and made a hand that was good. It's fun playing against Nolan especially if you can put a couple of bad beats on him! I was also wearing Spencer's badge and flipped it around to signal that I was going to play lowball Zorak style, whatever that means. (Bill Chen wasn't at BARGE, so we couldn't have that drunken heads-up lowball freezeout that is still scheduled for some BARGE.) Some of my usual lowball drawing magic went to Randy Collack; he told me about a hand where drew three and made an eight, which was good. I smiled like a proud parent. It wouldn't be until later in the week that I would regain my drawing skills. (See later adventures in the BREST game) I forget if this took place Wednesday night, but I jumped into a Chinese poker game where they were playing with royalties. I've never played with royalties, but I assume the strategy is generally: if you can win royalties, set your hand to win the royalties. The first hand, I got to set trips in the front -- ding! Thursday: CHORSE I was playing on Team Jam again, this year playing Crazy Pineapple. I had no idea what I was doing and didn't even have a chance to review CPFAP (Crazy Pineapple for Advanced Players). I actually had better luck choosing which card to discard than usual, and won a modest amount for the team. The rest of Team Jam was able to turn a profit as well, so we finished up, but the first place team was Team Moosecock. Congrats to Moosecock! I actually subbed a round or two for Murray on Team Moosecock during BARGE 2006 and I was happy to see them win. Too bad No[rth] Sho[re] Mike, whom I have never actually met, wasn't around to see the victory. After that it was time for sushi at I Love Sushi. I drove up with Deron and the Kluchmans. When we got to Henderson, the restaurant was filled with BARGE people. As usual, the sushi was tasty, and I got some stuff that I don't normally order at a sushi place. For the over/under for the bill, I took the under, and it won (ding!). Kevin Un set a good line though. Props to Ben Gamble for the saki choices and the individual explanations. And thanks to Asya for organizing! Thursday night: stud shootout. Once again, I didn't win my table, and Gavin Smith won his. More money lost. (By the way, does anyone have an e-mail address for Gavin? I still have to settle up with him.) At my shootout table was Steve "lunchbox" Forcash. He explained that his nickname on the badge used to be "luckbox", but one time a dealer misread his nametag and called him "lunchbox" and so Steve obviously had to go with that as his nickname after that. I forget what night it was, but at dinner maybe Thursday or Friday. Grapes and JP came up with the idea for the following Chinese poker variant: Each of the four players gets dealt 12 cards. From the remaining undealt cards, the dealer reveals two cards as a "mini flop." Now each player has to set: (a) High hand in the front. The player uses three cards which combine with the two exposed card to make a five-card high hand in the front. (b) 2-7 hand in the middle. The player puts down 4 cards and gets an invisible bug to use. (c) A five-card high hand in the back. The back hand has to beat or tie the combined five-card hand in the front. When I heard the explanation, I thought, "Oh no, not another Chinese poker variant!" For example, I don't think the 3-player 17-card variant is very good because it takes too long for everyone to set their hands. But after playing the Grapes/JP game, I found I really liked the game. Gavin Smith saw us playing it and jumped in. He also really liked it as well. One thing about the game is that chopping in the middle is fairly common, although I'm not sure that's a huge drawback. After BARGE, I was telling someone about this variant (I think it was Andrew Prock) and he wondered if the game would work better if the middle was a 4-card badugi hand. Without having tried that, I have no idea if that would actually be better. (I think) Thursday night: BREST game. A few of us start a mixed game of badugi, razz, eight or better, stud, and triple draw 2-7 lowball. I think the main lineup was me, Jerrod, Michelle, Grapes, and *TT* (he just had a written-in nametag so he probably didn't register in time). I don't play any of these games normally but it's fun to play them at BARGE against good players at low stakes. Sometimes I tried to play tight although in the draw games I would just raise and draw three. I made smooth 7's twice in TD, and I even made a wheel in badugi. CHA-CHING! Even Jerrod got in the act once. I think he called from the blinds once in badugi and drew four, then made a good badugi on the end. I was burning through chips in that game but thanks to my drawing skills I even managed to finish with a profit for the night. Friday morning: TOC, I showed up a little late, then hosed a bunch of chips in all of the games, and busted out quickly. Symposium: Once again I joined in the syndicate that included David and Caryl Aronson, Deron, Steve Markowitz, Michael Brennan, and maybe a few others I forget. But I left all the bidding to them and went to play the Chinese poker side game (which literally took place at the side of the room). Since we had more than enough people for CP, Grapes and I switched every few hands and played the same chips. At the end, it was time to settle up and we were down. So we played double or nothing -- one hand of CP -- to see who would be on the hook. Actually it was a bit more than double or nothing, since we had a twist that if it would have been a 3-0 sweep, the stakes would be doubled. I ended up losing 2-1, and then Grapes said he was happy that he lost some hands in the middle so that I ended up losing more after the double-or-nothing hand. A bunch of us then went to dinner at the Golden Nugget buffet: Dan Nussbaum was telling some blackjack stories and he said that in Saint Martin, "I _got_ to see JP naked." Asya immediately commented on Dan's choice of the word "got". Saturday NL: I bust three players from my table in short succession thanks to winning coinflips and also 40-60s. I was chatting with Mordecai Schwartz for a little bit and mentioned that I had met his son Sasha at the WSOP this summer, and he told me that one of the top hits when you google Sasha Schwartz and poker is my BARGE 2006 trip report where I mentioned Sasha getting bid on during the Symposium by Bill and Jerrod. Banquet: As he promised, Scott Harker showed up to the banquet. I switched my nametag so that Spencer Sun / Zorak is showing, then I went up to Scott and started talking to him. I told him that it was good to see him, as I wasn't sure if he'd show up, and that I [Zorak] almost had to be a pussy and not show up because of my cat. Scott says, "Oh yeah, I read your livejournal entry about your cat, I hope your cat is better." We talked for a few more minutes before I pointed out that I was not actually Spencer. Food: I got the salmon and I thought it was pretty good. Prime rib isn't my favorite cut of steak, and I thought there was a chance the chicken might turn out to be dry. In fact someone else at my table thought his chicken was a little dry so I was glad I got the salmon. Speaker: I couldn't tell if Tom Schneider was joking or serious in some of his (I presume) jokes. I guess it made people a little uncomfortable since we couldn't always tell. Binglaha: Just like at past BARGEs, I still have no idea how to play this game but I think I only dropped a buy-in or so. One time I made a stupid call on the river, fearing that I was going quartered. I did in fact get quartered by Crunch, and then I even more stupidly mucked my hand, so I didn't even get a quarter. IFSATG! This time I stuck around on Sunday as well, so I went out to the dinner at Rosemary's that was organized by Patrick Milligan. Some of their dishes were very nice and I hope to go back there before next year's BARGE. I'm not sure if I'll be able to make it to any of the other ARG events before BARGE 2009 but I hope to make it to FARGO in the fall.