Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2010 02:19:30 -0400 From: Warren Sander Subject: [BARGE] Warren's trip report I don't often do a trip report but what the hey bad beat travel story: I took jet blue BOS->JFK->LAS first leg was fine. but from JFK->BOS I had the only row where the TV's didn't work. Ok I can live without TV for a couple of hours. However, in the row in front of me the couple had their 18 month old who decided to stand on daddy's lap, look back and scream for 5 hours. The considerate and caring parents thought it best to let her scream and no amount of requests from anyone within 10 rows in front or behind would deter them from their progressive parenting to even ask her to be quiet. Thanks to noise canceling headphones it was only a dull roar and I managed to tune her out (I guess having mild Tinnitus allowed me to actually fall asleep for awhile) Got to Vegas, Got onto shuttle to rental car (why oh why did they put the rental cars so far away?). Alamo lets you choose your car and after trying a couple out I chose a chevy hhr which I would not purchase but it functioned fine. Hit in-and-out on sahara for dinner before badugi. Got to 4 queens, checked in, noticed room had nice flat screen TV (only noticed later it had only a few channels and none worth watching but not much TV watching at barge anyway) Great view of AC cooling towers. I don't think in 18 barges I've ever had an actual view of anything I wanted to look at but not much looking out of window at barge. I am a great badugi player but I suck at drawing. I think I only had 1 draw that actually improved my hand. Toss Ts get Js etc until I bust out Played ring game not much happened. In fact that's the story of this barge. I don't think I was ever up or down more that $200 in any game for the whole trip. I hovered around even for poker. I did win at Pai-Gow Poker and Texas Holdem bonus. Tired Tuesday and crashed early. Egg&I on Wednesday was good and bad. Great company, great conversation but the Egg attached I. I went 'weird' and ordered one of their Hawaiian dishes and it didn't agree with me. A big Thank You to Ice, Goldie and Chuck for this great tradition. Decided to find the pawn stars shop and managed to find a parking place and get in the door right before they kicked everyone out. I guess it's more important to them to film than to sell. I skipped blackjack and video poker this year because I suck at both of them. I had to go back to my room because I had a phone interview for a job at Liberty Mutual Insurance. This is the 3rd time I've interviewed for this position over the past year but the hiring manager is very slow at making a decision and ends up not making a decision and every quarter her budget gets cut so no job. The same thing happened this time too. Great interview, I have the exact experience they need because they need someone to do some work that didn't get done a year ago when another guy took my 30-60-90 day plan and decided to present it as his own and after 90 days he didn't know what to do. Gee isn't that nice. So when I got back home I found out that she again had her budget cut. Maybe next quarter. l don't even know if I want this job at this point. It's really frustrating to have to start over on the interview process for what will be the 4th time next time. Played some Chinese poker when possible and again never up or down much. This is good cause my bankroll is restricted so no Binglaha for me this year. The biggest I played was a couple of hands of 8-16 one night where I got 1-outed, 2-outed and 9 outed so I quit that game. Didn't do anything in the lowball either. If I got the bug I had 4 other unplayable cards. Why do I get dealt pat full houses in lowball and 7-5's if I play 5 card draw? some sort of sync issue with cards vs game played. Then again I think everyone got dealt huge hands a lot. Maybe a 1/2 lowball 1/2 draw high would be fun to play... Thursday I was lucky to have texted Bob Lauria when he tweeted that chic was not coming to barge and got onto the Inglorious Donkeys team. We had a quick meeting and I got stud-8. I played 2 hands to the river neither of which I won but neither cost much either. Other than those 2 hands I didn't have a single playable hand. Luckily the rest of my team had good hands and we scooped the thing. This is my 2nd name on the plaque. Next year I get #3 (Jarrod and Michelle need to come back to barge soon cause there are only a few people up 3 times like them) During team chorse I played chinese during the down time. Good rule we setup. If you paid time you got your hands. If you didn't and someone who did pay time was there they got the hands. Never before have I seen people actually requesting to pay time.. I wish sushi wasn't on the same day as the smoker. I can't do both. I skipped the 6 game event and went to the smoker. Great time as always at the goldman's. I did a couple of things I shouldn't have and probably made a fool of myself. I know Bob Ogus gave me a look I won't soon forget (but I forgot). Made the same mistake I always make when listening to my GPS but there's more than one way to Dan and Sharon's. Going back to 4 queens my GPS got really pissed at me when I was on the wrong side of the street because of construction detour. I didn't know it was that sensitive. Friday I sucked at the TOC and again not much movement on ring games. Joined goldie's syndicate for the symposium and showed a profit again this year. I've done pretty good at the symposium over the past 4 years with 3 ME winners. Got purchased by Foldem who got screwed because my pair was a no-show. Nice spread at the symposium and first time ever that the food didn't run out in the first 10 minutes. Good selection the only down was the teasing with the good liquor that we couldn't get with our free tickets. (I wanted a Cognac but no joy, I don't drink much because of calories and blood sugar issues but once in awhile especially if I'm not driving). Played some chinese poker and ploink was a monster playing 4 hands at once and shuffling/dealing before some people set one hand. I got a useful lesson from Andy Bloch on a less than optimum setting of a hand (it went from my set -10 to andy's set -2) super secret knowledge that everyone but me had. Went back and again played ring and not much bankroll movement. No Karaoke for me. I don't sing. I don't dance. And I don't think any rewards would be enough to make me cause everyone's ears to bleed if I sang or eye's to bleed if I danced. At main event on Saturday I was at a table and treading water until Micon arrived. Got my first pair on button. Micon hadn't even sat down and I raised button w/KKs, Micon re-reaised, I shoved, he called and showed 77. Flop was 3 spades w/7s on the board. So I had 11 outs. No joy. I guess that's why he gets to be on TV and I get to pay Goldie yet again. I need Quick to come back to barge. I don't think I ever had to pay him off. Again played ring game until banquet. No real movement. Sat with Goldie etc at banquet, food was fine. I wish they had plain horseradish rather than cream sauce. Managed to push my giant grass stocks off to goldie. Had some great scotch that ploink brought and some that patti brought. Good. I'm not normally a scotch person but these were pretty good and I might look for some decent scotch for home use. Reindeer games signup was smooth this year and games startup was pretty good. I still think we need to just take the list for each game and a sign for the game and give them to the dealer and have people just go to the tables and arrange themselves rather than do names over PA. Then again I am not in charge of doing this. If asked that's how I would set it up. Maybe next year... played veto 4-8 dealers choice where 2 people could vote to veto a game and the chooser would have to think up another game. Attempted to call Foldem's new 'arithmetic holdem' game but got veto's. I think if you are drinking/drunk this is a very hard game because you have to be able to add up to 13. It took almost 3 hours to go around the table once selecting games. I tried to 2 table with chinese but then just moved over to chinese. again no huge bankroll movement. Crashed about 4AM During this I tried to find out how to get my Binion's comps over to the 4 queens for my room. I think I had something like $160+ in comps. The slot host left early so a couple of the poker room managers wrote up a slip and got the casino manager to sign it and they thought he actually comped my stay. This turned out to be the case when I went to check out. [I wrote about this in another email] Got up on Sunday and checked out of 4 queens. My flight back to boston was leaving at 11:59PM so I had the whole day. Before heading to the goldman's hangover party I went to the Palms to play a couple of hands of something to keep some comps and an offer I am planning to use in January. My cousin's son is turning 21 and we've been planning a 'take you to vegas' weekend for 21 years. This is going to be on January 7th so I don't think I can do january barge and 21 party. But if I do the 21 party we will probably be at the palms. While I was there I decided to see a movie and caught 'the other guys' Then I headed over to the Goldmans. Great after barge cooldown party after poker overdose for the week. I sat in the follow the queen etc etc etc stud 8 game and during one hand that took over 45 minutes I hit the wall and had to leave for the airport. I again forgot to go one exit after the airport exit for rental return and ended up having to drive through the airport to turn around and get to rental car return. Took almost 40 minutes at 10:30 to drive through the airport. Then some one decided that blocking the rental car entrance was a good place to check out their map and they wouldn't move their car until about 10 cars were honking at them. Managed to catch a shuttle to terminal and get to security for a 15 minute wait and then got 'trapped' waiting for someone to do something with my laptop in a random check. Got to the gate about 5 minutes before boarding so I didn't have a chance to plug my phone in to get a bit of a charge. [note to self. Don't forget your car charger next year, GPS eats my phone] Flight back was uneventful, slept the whole way. Got to Boston, watched the framingham bus pull away so I was stuck waiting 1/2 hour for bus. Took 1.5 hours to go from boston to framingham during rush hour (normally ~45 minutes) got home and crashed. So my 18th barge is over. Back to looking for a job. Things run hot and cold. I'm writing this after having oral surgery today and I got the first part of an implant installed and I got 3 calls about jobs and I can't talk. Yesterday I got a call from a place that had an emergency need for a contract job in buffalo but I would have had to be there this week and I've been waiting 5 months to do get this surgery done so no joy there. I did manage to point them to a friend out in Utah who could do the job and if he gets it he will give me a 'finders fee'. Thanks as always to Nick, Mick, and Peter. Thanks to the Floors managers, poker room managers and dealers at Binions And thanks to the cocktail waitresses as binions. So I spent a week in Vegas, I went to Binions, 4 Queens and the Palms. That's all and the Palms only for 4 hours. No actual meals of note except the smoker. Well the vicodin is finally kicking in and the swelling is down. Maybe I can get some sleep. -- -warren Warren Sander http://www.linkedin.com/in/warrensander warrensander@gmail.com 508 740 9316