From: David Lawful
Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2016 23:04:18 -0600
Subject: [BARGE] Dave sam_6 Lawful's 2016 BARGE trip report


Dave “sam_6” Lawful’s BARGE 2016 Trip Report:

Best BARGE evah! And let me tell you why…

I drove in from Denver this year with my friend and home game member John “SciFiWriter” Campbell. I had been urging John to join in our August festivities for years and he had finally decided to make the trek. I knew his thoughtful careful style of play would serve him well at BARGE. This is the first time I had traveled by car to BARGE and with the two of us trading off driving legs and talking about everything from poker strategy to science fiction the time went by amazingly quickly. The scenery along the way also made the drive worth doing since we had the time. We rolled into the Orleans valet around 7:00PM local.

A trade show had caused the downtown rates to be way more than the Orleans (even with the resort fee) that night so it was the plan to stay there Sunday and play the O/8 tournament on Monday before heading downtown. I was pleasantly surprised at how the rooms there have been nicely remodeled. Checking out the poker room after our arrival I quickly realized that it was chocked full of BARGERs playing in the Sunday night HORSE event. Tired from the road I declined to enter but it’s on the list for next year if I can arrange my travel right. I have concluded that even if the Orleans was the site of a BARGE 1999 where the house “didn’t get us” (it was my first, I didn’t know any better) it is a good choice for a place to stay early in the week because of room quality and poker action.

If I was paying the $17 resort fee I sure as heck was going to use the health club, so I got in a treadmill and core workout on Monday morning before breakfast. No joy in the Orleans cash games or O/8 tournament so we headed downtown to the Four Queens. I scored a recently remodeled non-smoking room on a floor that was mostly under construction.

After a little Binion’s 4-8 HORSE action it was time for the 6-Player Max event. Some time after my first table move “Massa” refreshed my memory about what it is like to run into a flopped set with two pair made on the river and I returned to the HORSE game. Much later I was walking by the final table and was told that John had just busted in third place. I was right about the strength of his play but the cat was out of the bag, “SciFiWriter” was a calcutta bargain no more.

Tuesday morning I was up early, grabbed my iPad, and headed to the poker room to use the wifi setup. There I ran into Sean “Oscar” McGuiness and Dan Nussbaum who were waiting for JP “Mr. M” to go to breakfast. The idea was to meet by 8:30, have breakfast together, and then go back and start a game. This idea is a keeper. Tuesday’s choice, the Golden Nugget buffet, was better than I remembered and there was no problem starting a HORSE game right away upon our return. With a day devoted to HORSE I was ready to mix it up in the 26-Game. The surprise fun format of 2015 had made a return this year. Thanks to my Calcutta partner Rick Becker who consistently out pipped me I was not able to get enough traction to last through all 26 this year.

This year’s hosted breakfast at Hash House A Go-Go was fabulous. Thanks again to Chuck, Ice, and Goldie. I did break one of my dietary rules “Never eat anything bigger than your head” but how was I to know something with the name “benedict” would be built upon a half cubic foot foundation of mashed potatoes and biscuits? Anyone who orders “one pancake” at this joint is in for a big surprise. SciFiWriter told me he did just that and had to take half of it back to his room to eat the next morning. He did claim it was healthy because it was filled with granola which he said is the pancake equivalent of “s00ted.” John is a very fast learner.

You can’t do everything at BARGE, you will hurt yourself if you try to go to every official event and every unofficial event. Once I came to this realization I promised myself to try one event I had never done each BARGE and this year I picked Wednesday’s Smoker generously hosted by Dan and Sharon Goldman.  My medical condition precludes cigars but modest amounts of barbecue and bourbon can’t be all that bad. Also, I am a bigger favorite in eating and drinking than in Lowball so it made the Smoker the obvious choice. Dan had a menu of no less than 17 different bourbons, which were presented with printed tasting notes and commentary.  We tasted in increasing retail price order. My preference as a sipping whisky was the mid-priced Woodford Reserve.  Thanks again Dan for a fun and enlightening activity. Don’t think for one minute however that the future savings on bourbon will come close in value to the monster pot you dragged playing the hammer against my pocket queens!
  by making deuces full.

I was so full from the GN buffet on Tuesday there was no way I could go to PublicUS for coffee followed by Lotus of Siam that morning. So on Thursday morning I walked down to PublicUS after my morning run. I thoroughly enjoyed the coffee. Thanks for the great suggestion Mickdog and Steve McLaughlin. After a quick shower, it was time to meet-up with team MPN for CHORSE (pronounced “Sea Horse”) breakfast and strategy session. I started playing on Team MPN in 2014 and we had been close to winning before but had never quite finished in the number one spot. This year was our year, consistently building our stack from level to level we again found ourselves at the final table with a tiny chip lead over the Donkeys. After picking up several pots through the final hands we had increased our lead but were dealt blanks in the final hand, a Stud game. The other three teams were trying to catch us by building a large pot pumped by the Donkeys who were clearly on a straight draw; or !
 had they already made it? Ultimately the McLibtards, playing from the smallest stack, properly redistributed the wealth of the Donkeys by dragging the pot but could not make up the for the people’s deficit. This put team MPN in the CHORSE winner’s circle for the first time! Congrats to my team mates Andrew Prock, Mike “Howler” McBride, David “Heldar” Heller, Russ “Messenger of Doom” Fox, and Scott “Scottro” Harker. I am confident that a new plaque will be made for Binion’s to display the names of the backlog of CHORSE winning teams. You are the organizer in charge of trophies right Russ?

Note to self: Learn to play PLO.

The Friday TOC style tournament is one my favorite formats. This year I went deeper than others in the recent past but not deep enough so I ended up in the HORSE and Inception cash games. The Symposium was fun. I was part of an impromptu Syndicate organized by Sean “Oscar” McGuiness. I was leaving the room at one point and found myself face to face with our guest speaker Daniel Negreanu who, through a calendar snafu, ended up being really early for the banquet. He was interested enough in the Symposium to later comment about it in his CardPlayer blog.

Saturday morning I made a point of walking down to PublicUS for a cup to go. This ended up being a 30-minute stride in the early LV heat but it was worth every drop to get my mind focused and also to get a body moving that would with any luck be sitting the entire day looking for two cards to play effectively. Seated at table three the early part of the event seemed to be completely dominated by Barbara “Kevan’s Mom” Garrett. It was like every two cards she touched turned to chips for her. If she was behind the board would catch her up, if she was ahead she stayed ahead. Meanwhile I was completely and utterly card dead so at least I was not in confrontations with her. At one point I counted four downs where I did not play a single hand.  Or, if my blinds were allowed to stand the flop never matched my hole cards in any way. I remained on life support by picking up presto, which I was able to play cheaply against Chris O’Connor and have it hold up to the end. Chris ha!
 d picked up one of the other 5s from the blind and hung around for the same flopped straight draw that never came in. I also picked up pocket queens that I was able to play against Barbara and took some of her chips by flopping queens full of tens. I was almost amazed she didn’t show me pocket tens. In another confrontation I tried a late middle position steal with A9 off and was re-raised all in by Barbara. I laid it down to what Barbara later told me was AK. Then I went pretty much card dead again! Nevertheless, somehow, somehow, for the first time since 2013 I made the dinner break. I made the dinner break with 11 big blinds for the upcoming round. With 29 remaining I still had to play through half the field to make the money.

Daniel gave one of the better BARGE banquet speeches in recent years. The Q&A session was superb. He also graciously posed for photos with numerous BARGERs. I left the banquet convinced that Daniel Negreanu is the best ambassador that our game has today.

Unfortunately right after dinner things got bad, real bad. I raised with AJ off trying to capture the blinds and antes and ended up all in against Susan  hand and the tables voted for a save that would be financed by the top three places. I left the tournament in 14th place shoving my stack all in with JT off from the small blind against Mav who thought for a while and called with A4. An unnecessary 4 came on the board and IGHN. I left happy and amazed that I had actually made the money given an all day struggle to keep my head above water. Also a little post play analysis with the help of Kevin Un confirmed that given my chip count at that point I had made a decent decision. But the fact is I would have never been in the position to do that had Foldem not been there earlier to calm me down. 

It was great to see SiFiWriter make his second final table at his first BARGE and I was relieved to see Rick Becker, my Calcutta partner, walk to the tan felt oval too. When all the Calcutta bets were settled it turned out that I had made $1 profit on which included the slight loss taken in my share of Oscar’s Syndicate.

The ride home was as easy as the ride out, full of great conversation about our experiences, hands played, commitments to learn more, and plans for the future. We made Grand Junction by dinnertime and were home by around 10:00PM. We’ll be back. BARGE 2017 is only 51 weeks away and EMBARGO is even closer.