Groovy, man
Are You Experienced?
I arrived at Binion's Wednesday evening wearing a tie-dye t-shirt as an undershirt. I like to do that to provide a little ying to the yang of the long sleeve polo shirt I was wearing. Why? I have no idea, I have no fashion sense whatsoever. But, as it turns out it was appropriate garb since Freemont Street decided to celebrate the 40th anniversary of 1969 and a lot of the dealers and staff were wearing tie-dyes all weekend. Kind of weird to have an anniversary to a year, but I guess it was the summer of Woodstock...and tom_bayes' birth. It was also a metaphor for my BARGE experience this year, sort of groovy and mellow. No, I didn't go to Fruchter's "wake & bake" to get all mellow, it just seemed that way all on its own.
Wednesday night the first thing I did after getting my badge and saying hello to a few people, I sat down in a $1-2 NL game with adbjupe & Brenda. And stacked off two hands later with 99. God, I suck at poker. Off to Lowbah where I didn't win a single pot. Not the blinds, not a chip. My best hand was my bustout hand where I patted from the BB with a 97. Nolan drew one or two from the SB and got a 96. Or something like that.
Back to $1-2 NL. I won back my money from earlier when I got it all in bad and sucked out against a tourist. The hand kind of played itself, really though, I raised with AK, got called, flop was AK7, tourist bet, I raised, he shipped, I called. He had the Scottro, which got corrupted by a king on the turn and he missed his one outer.
Then I got to play with "The Duke of Freemont Street." A guy sits down all pimped out in a double breasted suit, fedora, jewelry galore, boutonniere, and about $10k in cash. He played about an orbit or two without seeing a flop, then folded aces face up when he got check-raised by the same guy in the Scottro hand above. The guy had bottom pair and some sort of straight draw, I think. So the Duke racks up and leaves when it's about to be his big blind, because once aces get cracked everything is going to get cracked all night. Uh, they weren't cracked, sir. I had heard about The Duke before and I think he basically nut-peddles and likes to flash his cash around. He seemed like a nice guy who has some interesting stories, though, so I was a little disappointed he didn't stick around longer.
Meanwhile, Jimmy A is trying to drag Dan Goldman over from our table to the Binglaha game they are getting started so he jumps into the BB and tells the dealer to deal him in, he's got a thousand back (everyone else had between $100-400 in front of them). Then before the dealer starts dealing, Jimmy tells the table it's 50-50 he's going all in pre-flop. Dan limps, as do a few others, including the small blind. Jimmy ships in a stack of hundreds. Everyone insta-mucks around to the small blind. Jimmy starts whining that nobody wants to gamble. The SB shows his QTo and somehow Jimmy convinces the SB that he's got a worse ten or something and the SB calls all-in with his $200. Jimmy flips over AA. lol. R00ling move.
Eventually, I go join Howler and ronsrants in $3-6 LHE. Ron is raising and re-raising every pot, generally with nothing. Nobody is folding, Ron is losing. Tough to tell if he was tilting or just trying to be a r00ler. Howler gets in the middle of some massive pot and makes a crying call on the raggy flop (something like T73). He tells the dealer he'll give him half the pot if he wins. Turn's a 3. More betting and raising. River is a blank, and Howler takes down a hundred+ dollar pot with some quality hand like Q3o. Well, he takes down half of a hundred+ dollar pot, the dealer got the rest. Maybe it was a hundred+ dollar pot, I don't actually remember. By next week it will have been a four figure pot. NH sir, well played!
At some point, Ron points to a guy in the corner and asks if he looks familiar. We agree that he looks a lot like andrewhime. Later on the mystery guy is behind me talking to mickdog. His voice gives him away, it's definitely andrewhime, so I ask if he is andrewhime. Yes, it was indeed andrewhime. The mysterious LJ'er had gone so far as to register with a pseudonym Steven Jonez just to throw stalkers off his trail. Then he was disappointed that nobody knew he was at BARGE and none of the other LJers recognized him, or said anything if they did. lol.
After a while I rack up my $30 profit, and give mickdog a ride back to the Venetian. Last year at TARGET, mickdog had gotten comped a room at the Palazzo and convinced me to play some video poker there. I did and have been getting offers ever since. It was tough to rationalize paying for a room downtown when I could get a free room at the Venetian. In retrospect, though, I kind of wish I'd stayed at the Nugget instead. I ended up spending about as much for a car as I would have for a room and felt a bit removed from BARGE because I was down on the strip. There was also the whole drinking and driving thing to worry about.
On to Thursday and CHORSE. The Implied Oddballs did not win, but we did not go broke. What a bunch of nits we are. We need to work on that. We were essentially even for the first two rounds and then lost about half our stacks in the third round. More fun than the actual event were the side games. njchick had someone playing one of her stacks at one table, I was playing her stack at the other, and she was playing over tom_bayes, meanwhile whipartist was playing andrewhime's stack. Too funny.
I got into an Omaha only dealer's choice game with Bingo, Bob-O, etc. Oklahoma seems to have been the wacky game of choice. I called Binglaha, which worked out okay, even playing $3-6 limit. Bingo said Jester had called him to play some dice before the Smoker, so I joined them. Finished up $50 thanks to a great roll by a tourist at the other end. Somehow, Jester had his spidey senses working and didn't have any darkside bets out there to save himself a big chunk of his bankroll. I think the guy hit four points.
Thursday night I went with Paul Gibbony to the Goldman's for the smoker for some barbeque and bourbon. I wasn't sure how the whole bourbon tasting thing was going to work, so when Bingo poured some shots for Tanya, I figured the bourbon bar was open and a few of us started doing some premature tasting. Oops. By the time the official tasting started, I'd pretty much consumed my self imposed limit that I set because I had to drive back. This was bad planning. So was cutting myself off after a couple of the less expensive bourbons and missing out on the really good stuff. Oh well, live and learn. It was a fun evening and I didn't get a DUI and have to call ronsrants to bail me out. Thanks again, Dan.
I skipped the craps crawl and played a little dealer's choice with Zbig and Merlyn before calling it a night and heading back down to the Venetian.
Chariots of Fire
Friday morning I had set my alarm for an ungodly hour for Vegas, 7:15 (that's AM, people), so I could get downtown for the fun run. It didn't matter, I was awake by 6:30. I don't know what it is, but as I've crossed over to the dark side of 40, I can't sleep in any more, almost no matter what time I go to bed. I tracked down Mickdog and we drove over to get some miles in.
By 8:30 there were six of us. Me, Mickdog, Dave Lawful, Deadhead, Ron, and Joe Long. Somehow all of the women who had signed up pussied out. I think you hear me Asya & Tina! We would have gone recruiting at Glitter Gulch, but it looked like they were closed. We agreed that despite the 90 degree temperature the 2nd Annual BARGE Fun Run deserved at least two miles out of us, so we did two laps of the 1 mile loop that Ron and Mickdog had scouted. I have to say, this was one of my highlights of BARGE. It wasn't "fun" per se, it was just kind of cool and different and gave me an excuse to eat ice cream later on. See, there's that mellowness I was talking about.
The TOC was fairly uneventful, other than getting someone off their high half of an Omaha hand by pounding with the nut low and then calling Grapes all the way down with split 7s in a stud round. And no, Matt, I probably was not folding if you bet 7th. Then I basically went in reverse the rest of the tourney. Turns out being a calling station is fun when you make the hero calls, but it gets expensive when people do actually make hands on you.
I hung around for a bit and then headed back to the Venetian for a much needed nap. After a couple of hours of zzzs I went to check out the action in the Venetian poker room. As much as I love Binions and the way they treat BARGE, the Venetian is my favorite poker room in Vegas. I sat down at a $1-2 NL game and got myself stacked in the first orbit again. Man do I suck at poker. At least this time I had a decent hand, as my 2nd nut flush ran into the nuts. Oh well, not sure whether shipping it was the right move or not, but such is life. I don't really start to play until I'm down at least a buy-in, at least that's what LenG was telling me Saturday night. That first buy-in are your "loose chips."
I decided to play in their 7 pm tourney. I made it past the first break and then promptly over played 66 and was out. So, back to the cash games. This time I was the stacker instead of the stackee as someone else thought that their trip jacks with top kicker was good on a paired board with a straight and a flush out there. That brought me back to pretty close to even for my NL play for the night, so I went an played a little VP to try to keep the offers coming, got some ice cream, and then headed off to bed.
The Deuce is on the loose! Saturday, I didn't want to have to deal with a rental car after the banquet and reindeer games, so I took the Deuce downtown from the Venetian. Awesome. It stops every 50 feet or so. Some guy was giving the woman sitting next him his life story. "Blah, blah, blah, then in April I had rectal bleeding!" Jesus, the things people will tell perfect strangers.
It was time for the big one, the no limit Texas Hold'em main event. I was determined to play well. Or failing that, get run over by the deck. I went with option B. AA, KK, KK, JJ, JJ, JJ, 88, 99, 22, 88, etc, etc. I was the pocket pair king for the first four hours. A couple of people at my table thought I was running people over, yet they kept folding when I had the goods, the bastards. I think my total for the event was about a dozen pocket pairs. And when I didn't have the winner when the money went in, I ran like Chic and sucked out. I knocked out John Pickels when his TT couldn't out run my 44 as I caught my runner-runner gutshot (can you call it a double gutter if you need two gutshot cards?). Later I knocked out Drunky McLibtard Murray himself when he couldn't find the fold button to my Qx shove with is A5 and I caught a queen or something.
I knocked out adb_foldem out of mercy so he could get to the ER. I knocked out Deadhead and got half a dozen bustout gifts from him (a couple of bottles of Lambic, a bottle opener and a cork screw to open them with, some origami he spent hours making, and a couple of left over post cards from his origami project). I knocked out someone whose name I didn't catch, but he gave me some Texas playing cards that were handy later on.
I did make one big play against Brenda when I called her pre-flop raise w/KJs on the button then shoved all-in over the top of her continuation bet when two of my suit flopped. I think she knew I was bluffing but decided her ace high was not enough to call off most of her chips. That got me far enough to make the money.
Once we got down to two tables, I started paying for all those good cards I'd had earlier and started catching like rcfox and had a steady stream of 92o, 83o, etc. Finally, I was getting really short and either called all-in on Kenny Shei's raise or re-raised him slightly, I don't remember which, with my QJo from the button. I figured against his range I wasn't in horrible shape and he had enough chips to protect me from other people coming in. He showed up with AKo. Since when does Kenny get cards like that? I failed to suck out and I was out in 15th. I've cashed three times in BARGE events...and three times Kenny has knocked me out. Next year, Kenny, next year.
I sat and drank my Lambics with Paul G and Ron Nutt, occasionally checking on fellow Coloradoan Brenda. 303 in the house! Three of us from the Implied Oddballs cashed in the NL event, and Paul took 8th in the TOC. Brenda went on to take 2nd in the main event. Maybe we do learn something from all those books we talk about. Well, maybe the others do, I just try to keep a steady stream of pocket pairs coming my way. Once the remaining players were on break, Brenda, Paul, and I went to Benny's Bullpen to decompress a little. Thanks for the drink, Paul.
When I got to the banquet Doyle was sitting on a bench, signing autographs and letting people take his picture. I hadn't been sure how that was going to work, so I had not brought my copy of Super/System. I also had not brought a real camera. Then, I remembered the playing cards I had gotten as a bustout gift. They had a Davey Crockett quote on the back, "You can go to hell, I'm going to Texas."
So I had Doyle sign one of the tens. The wrong one of course. But he liked the cards enough that he took one. That's right, Doyle Freakin' Brunson accepted a gift from me. How cool is that? Then I noticed that Jester was standing there with a camera and I asked if he'd take my picture. It turns out it wasn't his camera, it was Mike Klein's but he snapped it anyway and Mike is going to send me a copy when he's back from vacation. Very cool, guys, sorry if I seemed a little rude or out of it, I was a little excited to meet Doyle.
I thought Doyle's speech was great and Nolan did a great job digging out the stories. Nolan obviously doesn't read TexDolly on twitter if he thought Doyle voted for Obama. lol. Great intro by Nick, too. You were really funny and the little roast of Doyle was perfect.
After the banquet I got into PLO/PLO8 mix with schmengie, LenG, Rick M, Paul Stein, Murray McLibtard, mrraise, etc. They all know how to play PLO and PLO8. I don't. I also looked around and they were all drinking H2O. WTF? Hello? Reindeer games, anyone?!? Even Drunky himself was sober. Bunch o' nits! Luckily I stacked schmengie once or it would have been an expensive experience. I did cost myself a bit chasing a low and getting there when we were playing a PLO round. Mixed games+alcohol=bad idea. I'm sure Dennis appreciated the donation. I didn't feel too bad about it because a couple of orbits later mrraise did the same thing. Finally, around 2 am I racked up my $180 loss, said goodbye to people, and cabbed it back to the Venetian and sadly another BARGE was over. I can't believe I've been to five of them already.
Thanks to Peter, Nick, and Mickdog for doing a great job, as usual! Coming through with Doyle as the guest speaker was great. Heck, even my steak at the Nugget was tasty and tender. Best BARGE evah!