Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2011 17:08:04 -0700 (PDT)
From: Bob Jones
Subject: [BARGE] Bob's best barge evah

So I'm sitting in McClaren after yet another great BARGE with a
little time thanks to yet another flight delay so I figured I'd
bang out a trip report while I still remembered anything. [edit: I
started it Sunday, finishing now. Delay was only 30 minutes.] Always
a delay at BARGE, not sure why. Hard to believe this was my 7th
BARGE. Best one evah, I'm pretty sure.

Good beat travel story. Asya had said she could pick me up at the
airport Thursday evening after Sushi. Sushi was delayed because of
the 4th round of CHORSE. My flight was delayed slightly because the
poker and travel gods love to taunt me and always throw in a little
angst with an extra delay on the way to BARGE. But, in the end the
timing worked out perfectly for me to meet her and Ben at the rental
car center. I did not get tunneled! Thanks for the lift guys!

I had not signed up for the 6 game because I figured it would be
close from a timing perspective and I suck at all 6 games, but I
could have made it if I skipped checking in at the Nugget (remind
me to rant someday about why hotel checkin takes more than 30 seconds
per person). Oh well, wandered through the tourney area and said
hello to some people, but since nothing is more annoying when
focusing on a tourney than someone standing behind you, I wandered
over to the main poker room and got in a $1-2 NL game. Game was
shall we say, "nitty". I mean, ADB Allnight and Lingcod were the
loose players. I promptly dusted off $60 to Adam trying to bluff
him off of his real hand. Better start than last year where I stacked
myself on the first hand I played w/99 vs TT. But, as the evening
progressed and beer units were consumed, the game got better. A lot
better. Not quite a $1-2 NL game like the Venetian in 2006, but
good enough.

Prock showed up and I talked him into playing even though, "nooo
limitttt issss booooorrrriiinnnngggg". He took a seat to my left.
Love having a tight passive player like Prock on my left. We got
it all in with my 66 vs his 55. "Yes!" I exclaimed when we flipped
the cards. "Presto at BARGE!" Adam explained. And boom, 5 on the
flop and my stacks went away. lol. Thanks Adam!

I don't really remember all the details of how I did it, but I
eventually overcame this hand, as well as a horribly played (by me)
hand where I shipped my stack again when I had a baby flush against
not quite as baby flush (you *called* my raise with 94s? don't you
know who I am?), and later got four outed on the river with my
turned flush against someone's two pair that rivered a fullhouse.
But eventually, I came all the way back for a small profit. I think
I cashed some Sklansky bux from the flush vs fullhouse when I rivered
a flush against a guy's set or something. Also stole a bunch from
a really drunk local (or maybe he was a tourist, but he was really
drunk and when he wasn't showing me his cards was playing blind).
His usual move was to make it $15 or 20 and collect his $3. But,
once in a while you could steal it back from him (or get it all in
with AT vs QT).

Got some career advice from Andrew along the way. Apparently, my
company specializes in long cons. Was fun trying to explain CRM/ERP/SCM
and several other TLAs to someone who would just bang out a quick
script or C program to solve the same problems. I seem to recall
sometime after midnight we realized that we had missed the "early
bird special" craps crawl. I think the crawlers got a blue plate
special on the hardways or a free cup of Postum for their early
start or something.

Eventually, I think around 3:30 or 4, I finally had had too many
coronas and just enough profit to call it a night. I ran into fellow
Denverite Brett leaving the poker room and as we walked over to the
Golden Nugget we picked up a friend on Freemont Street. Either she
was really drunk or was working way too hard to find a date, but
she pegged Brett as 26 and I was "older, probably 29." She wanted
to know how to win at 3 card poker or something. I think she was a
stray from a bachelorette party. Either that or she was a hooker
with a balloon animal tied to her waist. About halfway to the carson
tower I think she realized, "hey, what happened to all my friends"
and said, "wait, where am I." With that, we bid her adios and went
to our rooms.

I woke up 3 hours later at around 7:15. Just in time for the "fun"
run. Screw that, I felt like death and went back to sleep for two
more hours. I was still pretty tired and hung over by the time I
sat down at my TOC seat. Still, I ran like god for the first level,
making a lot in stud and holdem. Easy game when you keep getting
aces up in stud and having pocket queens in holdem. That would be
the highlight, as after the first break I bled it all away. I did
knock out another fellow Denverite, Brenda, when my KJo overpowered
her weak KK with a J on the flop and a J on the river. Sadly, I
couldn't beat Former Virgin Queen Schmuckbox's KK with my QJ, despite
having two pair on the turn when my last chips went in, as he hit
his flush on da river. Crap. It was a nice, fun table, with Bruce
I, Gillian, Ron, PRM, John, Clutch, Brenda, and I didn't want to
leave.

Ran into Mickdog and Keith in the binions snackbar, aka, "losers'
lounge". You could tell who was still in the tourney as bargers
came storming in on break, grabbed food, and bolted back out,
averting their eyes from the losers lest they get some on themselves.
Then there were those us with plenty of time to linger over hobo
stew.

Oh well, after lunch it was off to the Golden Nugget for some more
$1-2 NL. I know that I've been told the games are much worse than
they used to be, but you can still occasionally stack someone with
an overpair against their middle pair and I made a nice tidy profit
in two hours of play.

While the symposium takes some heat as not being what it used to
be and there is talk of killing it all together, I actually think
of it more as a nice cocktail hour and had a good time despite
bidding on nobody. Talked to Zibigniew, John Grout, and Professor
Chaos for a while. Hung out with Ms. Sicky Tina, Northshore, Mickdog,
and Heldar too. Just had fun mingling with a bunch of different
people. Some guy in an ADB hat wouldn't stop talking on the microphone,
though. Blahblahblah10doIhear20blahblah50sold. Endlessly. ;-) If
the BOD and organizers decide to kill it, I can live with that, but
I hope there is some other low key cocktail hourish event to take
its place.

Friday night it was back to $1-2 NL. I know a lot of BARGErs say,
"why do you want to play $1-2 NL, you can play that *anytime*."
Yeah, I suppose that's true, as far as it goes, but practically
speaking, I don't. And Colorado doesn't have pure NL. The $1-2 blind
$2-100 spread is similar, but I never bother doing the hour drive
to get to the hills and play. So, I hadn't played poker of any sort
since April. Besides, I like the Cadillac of Poker. You guys can
play your Edsels of Poker, your broken down MGBs of poker, and your
DeSotas of poker, but sometimes I need the moment of terror following
hours of boredom that no limit brings.

We had a fun lineup of BARGErs in the game, Spencer, Brenda,
Schmuckbox, Brett, Dianna, John from Australia, Deadmonywalking,
Michael Hunter, Russ "I wrote the book on low limit no limit" Fox,
and a few others rotated through. I don't remember many memorable
hands, or how I did it, but I actually took a few hundred out of
this game. I vaguely remember that there was a steady stream of
tourists coming through, in addition to the bargers, dropping
$100-200 at a time into the game end then leaving. At some point,
I made the mistake of telling Ron, "you know, you're playing really
well." Trigger full on spew mode. Maybe that's how I made money,
I'm not sure. I did let Spencer push me out of a pot for Ron's case
chips, I do remember that. I was really tired, despite my almost 5
hours of drunken sleep the night before and I wanted to be "fresh"
for the main event, so around midnight I called it a night.

For the main event, I didn't need to be fresh. I had bruises on my
face from getting smacked with the deck. A steady stream of AK, AQ,
KK, QQ, JJ kept me in chips and I think I peaked at about $17k
before the first break. I knocked out Gillain. Took some of Bruce's
chips. Took some of Schmengie's (I suspect he thought I kept
re-stealing from him, because he kept raising my blinds, and I kept
taking the pot away from him, but I mostly had real hands.) Then I
once again slammed it in reverse and started spewing. First, I got
unlucky, losing w/99 vs 66 to Redbird. Dammit! I wanted an Angry
Bird! Then I played ace-rag horribly against Paul Stien's AK. Then
I got moved to a new table, spewed a bit more, and right before the
second break lost with A7 vs A4. This left me with 6500. A couple
hands after the break, I hit the "shove" button with A6s and ran
into Chris "don't call me Tom" Mecklin's AJ. I failed to suck out
and was done.

Back to the losers' lounge to spend some of my hard earned binions
comp dollars. As I was finishing up, Betty T sat down, so I stayed
and chatted with her. It's been a rough summer for the Tannenbaum's
but it was really nice talking to her. After we finished, she headed
off to go see Barry and I headed off to the Nugget. I ended up
getting back into some $1-2. Another pretty good game. At some point
Ross & George sat down. And then I got into an ugly hand when I
lost the biggest pot I was in all weekend when my set of jacks got
rundown by the nut flush drawer with AQh. Two hearts on a jack high
flush draw and an ace on the turn pretty much sealed that he wasn't
folding, despite my best efforts. Not sure how we pulled in another
passenger on the flop with his no-pair-no-draw AQo, but I got a
little steamy when my $700 pot went the wrong direction when the
3h came on the river.

A couple of hands later, I picked up 44 UTG+1 and made it $6 (I
forget, is that in Russ' book?). Call, call, call. SB, probably the
best non-barger I played against all weekend, makes it $40. Now, I
had seen him squeeze twice from the blinds before, so I tanked a
bit and decided eff it and raised to $100, leaving me a little over
a hundred back. Three folders and back to him. He goes into the
tank. I could tell he was really not comfortable I'm not sure I'm
calling if he shoves, but I probably have to. He calls. Flop was
T83 rainbow or some such. So I put my $116 in. He tanks for a long
time and suddenly my "I think he has AK read" didn't feel so good.
Eventually he folded. Whew. Lesson learned, don't squeeze the dude
on tilt! lol I played another orbit or two, but then had to head
to the banquet.

The banquet was a good time with some of the LJ crew
(Ron/Chris/Tom/Russ/Karl/Aaron/Prock). Good speeches about and to
Peter. I hesitate to call it a "Roast". I'm glad he gets a well
deserved chance to focus less on running barges and more on playing
barge games. I really enjoyed Mori's speech, much more than I thought
I would. I have to say you organizers do a great job getting great
speakers. Just about every speaker at my seven barges has exceeded
expectations. What didn't exceed my expectation? Gotta say the food.
Ah well, always a risk getting "prime" rib at Binions, that's why
they call it "gambling."

Off to the reindeer games. I'd signed up for HO and ended up playing
with Russ, Mr. Raise, Tina, NSM, Lennie, Sharon, Tom from NYC, and
Murray. I hate poker. Dusted off the better part of a couple hundred
bucks. Decided to go wander. Got sucked into Lowbah. First at Prock
& Zibigniew's table then at Patrick, Chris', and Spencer's table.
I think Keith was there too. And I forget who else, things were
getting hazy by now. Dusted off the better part of a couple hundred
bucks. Patrick explained that he's been playing this game a long
time as he drew and got an 8 to beat my pat 7. Went back to HO. Sat
next to Crunch. Dusted off the remainder, save $16. Tilted after
folding to a river bet with QQxx no low on a board with 456xx and
three to a suit. QQ was huge. Fuck me. I hate poker. Crunch points
out that it's tough to get rich making big laydowns. Hey, Hellmuth
has done it, why can't I? I'd had enough of losing, so I headed
out. Stopped by the roulette wheel with the $16 in chips I had left.
Bet black. Doubled. Went to the craps table. Put it on the Come
line. Hit a six. Put it on the Come line, point 10, seven out.
Dammit, my "parlayed $16 into a fortune story" came to a sad ending.
Back to the Nugget for sleep.

Sunday, I grabbed some breakfast and stopped by binions to say
goodbye to people before heading home. And that was pretty much it.
I'm sure I left out a ton of names and details, probably a third
of this is fiction. It's an exercise for the reader to decide which
third. I had a great time. Best barge evah? Of course! Would have
been better if I'd cashed or something, but hey, I came home with
a little more money in my pocket than I left with, which is never
a bad thing. One thing about BARGE that I've learned is to take
Rick Steve's advice and don't try to do everything. I missed the
smoker, craps crawl, and fun run this time around, but I'll try to
do them next time. I've tried to keep this in mind the last couple
of barges and it's really worked for me.

Thanks to Peter, Nick, Mickdog, Bree, and all the organizers who
work behind the scenes making this such a great event!

Bob "the builder" Jones

p.s. Jupe, I was in such a rush on Thursday packing before work I
forgot the hardhat. Next year.