Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2013 16:40:18 -0400
From: Regis Donovan
Subject: [BARGE] A few snippets from my BARGE

I didn't take notes over the trip, so this is just a few scattered bits and
pieces of a trip report.  Some highlights of the BARGE:

After a late departure, we had an uneventful flight to LAS (where a guy in
our row helpfully warned us about scary DEFCON hackers around the Rio and I
only schooled him on infosec a little bit), and after a bit of "dude,
where's my car" rental car confusion we headed down to the 4 queens and
checked in.  Happily, our nonsmoking room was, in fact, nonsmoking. After
chilling a bit, we headed over to pick up our name tags and see some folks.

That evening, I played in the Chinese poker tournament. What a big batch of
fun! The 2 minute deadline for setting my hand was a lot of pressure to
start with, but I got used to it pretty quickly. I am not too unhappy with
my play - no egregious failures except for one time I fouled my hand
because I forgot that I was doing the last hand of a high round while the
clock showed us as partway into a low round. I ended up going deeper than I
expected but not as deep as I hoped. If we have a Chinese tournament next
year - and I hope we do - and we have a similar structure, it might be good
to have label cards on the table indicating what the current hand is, since
long hand times and short levels mean the clock is inaccurate for the
current hand a nontrivial amount of the time.

We spent part of Weds afternoon at the Aria. I had chip fever, but it was a
hemorrhagic fever.

I really enjoyed the 6 game tournament - this is the second year I've
played it and I've enjoyed it both times. Particularly that it gives me a
chance to play games I'm not that familiar with. (Badugi and RazzDugi, I am
looking at you.)

At sushi, Patti convinced me to do something I hadn't done since about
1981. That was odd.  I just don't think of myself as a Lipstick Lesbian.

Craps crawl was the usual sort of chip-spewing dark-side-betting fun with
bonus 'watching Sharon motorboat Redbird' and I appreciated the earlier
start time that meshed better with my still somewhat east-coast internal
clock. "Pipe down!" "Hey! We're gambling here!"

I was in both the TOC and the main event, had fun in both, but didn't go
too deep in either.

Karaoke ... I ended up requesting a karaoke song for the first time ever (I
guess it was a week of firsts for me?) because nothing says 'karaoke' like
singing a love song written from the point of view of a lovesick
super-villain. "I'm so into you, but I'm way too smart for you! Even my
henchmen think I'm crazy..." (http://youtu.be/k7aV4oPXRec)

And reindeer games, well, Stephanie ruled the (nearly) all-women chowaha
with an iron - if manicured - fist, strictly enforcing (mostly) the "one
hand per man, then you leave the table" rule. It was an whole lot of high
octane fun, even for reindeer games.

I enjoyed both the Banquet and the Symposium, so the change-up didn't harsh
my BARGE fun at all.  I am not sure, but I think splitting the various
public speaking parts of things may be a net win.

Thanks, of course, to the Organizers in all their organizational
awesomeness - Mickdog, Nick, and Bree, plus everyone else who helps to make
official and unofficial awesomeness come together - and to the folks at
Binion's for yet another Best BARGE Ever.

--Regis