Subject: Bill Hafey's FARGO V Trip Report Part 1 - very long
Date: 16 Oct 2001 02:14:46 GMT
From: vc61@aol.com (Bill Alan)
Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com
Newsgroups: rec.gambling.poker

Note - This is a very long trip report in several sections. My very limited
experience in such things makes me concerned that those of you who have any
interest in it will get all that I write. If you don't please let me know and I
will send it as an attachment.

=================================================

Allow a very proud Father to brag about his 43-year-old Son, and business
partner, Tom Hafey.

Tom, who plays card room poker only once a year (at FARGO) finished third in
the main event, 7-Card Stud.

Those of you who are lucky enough to have a Son who continues to prove he can
hold his own in a tough poker tournament will know how I feel about this
happening. And you will be reading more about Tommy's showing in the sequence
of events, which follows.

************************

FARGO V was to have been run by a very-well-liked guy who ran FARGO last year .
. . Don Perry.  But Don has been quite ill lately and so the FARGO committee
dug into its untidy files to find someone who could serve this year in his
place.

After going through a long list of candidates (1) the committee came up with
only one person who had any ARG event organizing experience. I suppose I should
have been flattered that they chose me. But I felt a bit like the Clint
Eastwood character in *Space Cowboys*.  Used goods, but needed ones.

Still, with a huge assist from Joan Hadley and Crunch Daniel, the job got done
and FARGO V got off without a hitch on October 12 as planned.

*********************

DAY ONE -- Wednesday, October 11

I planned on arriving about 4 PM at Foxwoods to (a) avoid any check-in hassles
and (b) get used to playing poker again . . . as my last year has been pretty
much a non-poker one due to my own health problems.  Happily (b) has not been
an issue for a while, but (a) proved to be a huge pain in the ass.

Arriving at the VIP desk to check into the FARGO Hospitality Suite I was
quickly processed into 611.  However, 611 proved to be a nicely appointed
bedroom and not the sort of quarters one pictures as a place to hold frivolous
parties at 4 AM. I didn't really care about myself, but I had visions of Arty
having fits as Bruce (ADB BigBoy) Kramer casually plumped himself on Arty's bed
(with, of course, Arty sound asleep in it) whilst smoking one of his embargoed
cigars.

This will not do, I said to myself.

So then I began a two-hour marathon with the charming ladies in the VIP room
who greet you with a mouth uncommonly filled with white-teeth while they
proceed to fuck up your suite reservation . . . made months ago by
well-intended people in the poker room.

"Give us a few minutes", white-teeth responded, and we will straighten things
out. I suggest that Foxwoods' VIP ladies never seek to "be all that you can be"
at the controls of our nation's instant-response defensive weapons systems as
we will surely lose the war if they are chosen to do so.

If there is anything more off-putting than elevator music it is American Indian
elevator music. And after nearly two hours of listening to it I was finally
connected to someone with enough juice to put me where I had expected to be: In
Suite 400 at the end of an endless hallway which must have put Suite 400
somewhere in Rhode Island.

(More about the endless hallway and the superior skills of BigBoy when it comes
to dealing with adversity.)

From that point on everything was fine.

No. Wait a minute. I forgot to mention that I had my luggage searched.

I had packed a case of Heinekens plus a jug of Wild Turkey in an unmarked black
bag, intending to sneak them in and thus make good cheer affordable in The
Hospitality Suite. Then what to my wondering ears should appear but a security
guard, who clearly had missed his calling as a middle linebacker for the NY
Giants, and who proceeded to have a look into my poorly concealed bag full of
booze.

With a knowing wink, he let me pass.

Now finally ensconced in my intended quarters I proceeded to pour myself a
large flacon of Wild Turkey 101 and hie myself over to the Jacuzzi, where I
could relax after a hard day's unpleasantness.

By now it was game time for the Yankees/Oakland ALCS and I decided to relax
with a room service supper and several noggins of W.T. The Yankees blew it so I
decided to have one more for the road and make a sane start in the poker room
in the AM.

**********************

DAY TWO -- Thursday, October 12th

Room service breakfast.

I consider room service . . . especially room service breakfast . . . to be the
only redeeming factor in being forced to spend the night in a rented bedroom,
no matter how opulent. In my younger days my job took me regularly to places
like Hollywood, London, and the like and I made it a point never to break my
fast in a hotel dining room . . . with one notable exception.  The Savoy, in
London, made it all worthwhile as one could enjoy watching the Brits doing all
sorts of central-casting stuff. (They actually do say "Cheerio" when
departing.)

Then a quick shower and . . .

Let the games begin.

I had intended to ease myself in by signing up for 5-10, but God had chosen me
to play slightly higher stakes today. Once upon a time I would have considered
10-20 to be small stakes. But that was once upon a time, many years ago, when I
was not (as I am now) dependent on a pension check to sustain my Lady/Wife and
myself in a truly modest life style. But then BigBoy talked me into filling up
a 10-20 table, for which I am in his debt.

Editorial Insert:

There will not be much detail about individual hands in this report. I shall
depend on those who are not in the early stages of Altzheimers to handle such
things with regard to FARGO V.

Suffice it to say that the deck was very kind to me in this opening foray and
that I broke away after a few hours to sup with Eric & Ice in a fine coffee
shop, The Veranda Cafˇ in the Pequot Tower end of the hotel. I strongly
recommend this place to those who want to eat well, if not elegantly, at
Foxwoods and pay a tab that will not cause your children to go hungry. It's a
place your Mother would like and you will have a hard time ringing up a bill of
more than $25 for steak, lobster tails, and similar offerings, drinks extra.
The three of us had a pop or two and ate whatever we chose to for a bit more
than $65 plus T&T. And your cardiologist will applaud the very long walk it
takes to get there, if not the saturated fat content and caloric count of most
of the food offered there.  What the hell . . . you are at FARGO to seek fun.

But while I am on the subject do not, under any circumstances, allow Bruce
Kramer (BigBoy) to do the room service ordering late at night in The
Hospitality Suite.  Do not, that is, unless your tastes run to spicy nachos and
one of those death by chocolate thingees as a desert offering.

But I am ahead of myself.  B4 eating I had run $200 up to about $800 in the
10-20 Hold'em game . . . a win I am usually very comfortable with at day's end.
I even considered an early-to-bed again, but I'm pleased that I didn't.

Dinner conversation got me up to speed on Steve Eisenstein. He and I both did
tours with the Navy in WESTPAC, mine in Korea and his in several areas, most
notably Vietnam. We had met for the first time at MARGE '99 and I had known him
to be involved only as an aircrewman on a plane like the one that collided in
midair with a Chinese jet and crash landed on a Chinese island somewhere in
that vast area. I, of course, flaunted my very modest combat experience flying
in Korea in '52-'53, implying I'm sure that his duty was relatively less heroic
than my own.

But that was B4 I knew about his Silver Star and two Purple Hearts in Vietnam.
For reasons I never pursued, Ice was transferred to what the Navy calls "the
beach" in that awful war. He flew in one of the most danger-laden aircraft the
Navy had to offer, and as the most exposed person in that aircraft. I believe
the term for it was hatch gunner in a search & rescue helicopter. You get the
idea.

I was bold enough to ask if he minded talking about his citation for The Silver
Star.  His only response was "It wasn't pretty".

I had learned to respect Steve's poker abilities. Now I have profound respect
for him on a much higher level.

Back to the poker room after a brief interlude at a $10 Blackjack table on The
Pequot Tower's elegant casino floor where each of us blew off about $100 in the
space of 10 minutes.

I got back into a 10-20 Hold'em game about 9 PM. Why not? It had been very good
to me earlier. But this time I got into one of those games we all dream about.
I had players on either side of me who had tons of checks in front of them they
were determined to cash. The guy on my right called every single flop, even a
raised one. The guy on my left could be depended on to raise on anything better
than 2-2. Yet both of them could usually be depended on to fold their hands if
I bet $20 on the river. God had sent them to my table.

A few hours later I reluctantly left the game to play in that night's Midnight
Madness. At that point I was ahead by more than $1700.

Midnight Madness is a game you need to play very aggressively. With 30 players
entered, no-limit, winner take all, and only $100 to start, you cannot play
like a rock early in the game or you won't have enough checks to make a
difference later on. (To my thinking Greg Pappas or Raydon find this their kind
of game and you can bet your lungs that one, or both, of them will be at the
final table.)

I did what I had to do and went out on a pair of Jacks B4 the flop. Q-X offsuit
connected and I was history.

With money to spare I left the poker room and headed for the crap pit. There
are no winning systems at the crap table. But there is, to my mind, only one
way to play the game. You must always make a bet you are comfortable with on
the line and then back it up with maximum odds behind the line. If you do so
you will lower the house edge to well under 1%.

(This same theory is available to "Don't" betters like my pal Jaeger, but they
lay the odds rather than take them as I do. Eric is one of my best poker pals,
but he is the only "Don't" better other than Nolan I have any respect for. My
Daddy always taught me "Don't Don't". Why piss off the rest of the table to
achieve a comparable result?  But, needless to say, a concern for pissing off
people is one that Jaeger, or Nolan, for that matter, has never bought into.)

Full odds at most casinos I've been to is usually 2X your line bet. But, if you
have an adequate bankroll, you can use a couple of odds quirks most casinos
(including Foxwoods) subscribe to because it makes it easier for them to pay
off and speeds up the game.

An unimportant one is to put two units on the line. If the point is 6 or 8 they
will allow a 5-unit bet behind the line (2.5X odds). But much better is a
3-unit bet on the line. You can then take 10-unit odds (3.33X) if the point is
6 or 8, and 8 unit odds (2.66X) if the point is 5 or 9. You get only double
odds, though, if the point is 4 or 10.

You can get rich, or broke, quickly if you play the 3-unit line bet. I follow a
fixed betting pattern.  I make a $5 bet on the line and put $10 behind the line
when a point is established. But if the point is 4 or 10 I make a come bet of
$15. If the shooter sevens out on the next roll it becomes a wash. (I lose $15
on the line bet and get paid $15 on the come bet.) If he rolls anything else I
take the $30, $50, or $40 odds the come point allows.

This makes craps a simple game to play, and I never deviate from it. Starting
with that one-unit line bet I have won as much as $2,000 in a very short time.
(Just B4 leaving Foxwoods on Sunday I had my first losing session. I took $300
to the crap pit, followed the above routine, and lost all of it in about 15
minutes.)

But notice I never refer to this action as a "system". It is a fixed routine,
and, even when you get down to a house edge of less than the * of 1% you get at
3.33X odds, the house still has an edge. But compare it to the roughly 9% the
house enjoys at the slots and you'll see that the crap table is about 18 times
kinder to your bankroll than the slots.

At the end of my 2-hour crap session I was ahead . . . but not by much.

Tonight I simply could not lose. I was ahead of the casino by more than $2,000.
And I had every gambler's dream . . . A Golden Arm. It was as if I simply
couldn't lose.

But, incredibly, it was to get better tomorrow.

Part II to follow in a few days.

Bill Hafey
AKA Bill Alan