The SIGGRAPH conference (on high-end computer graphics) was held in Las Vegas at about the first weekend in August, 1991. Several regular participants of the rec.gambling USENET newsgroup decided to meet up at this conference, and thus BARGE was born. It was during this time frame that the "presto" story occurred, as well as the Frank Irwin green chip fishing expedition. Despite the lack of planned activities and despite the fact that the "BARGE" label wasn’t applied until next year [I think], we count this as the first BARGE.