(As sent to the BARGE mailing list. Subscribe now!)
This is based on a true story. Some of it happened, but I don’t remember those parts. Names have been changed, unintentionally. Events have been omitted, misremembered, reorganized, and/or made up.
As usual, I did not take notes; and I have trouble remembering hands when I’m not playing twelve hours of poker in a day, and sober. With the occasional assistance of my attorney, whom I have retained to provide both gambling and drinking advice, and the app I use for tracking poker sessions, I have produced the following alleged Trip Report, submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree.
Over the past few months, there has been an increasing amount of Elysian Space Dust beer in my life. That stuff is everywhere. The little happy hops face on the bottle, inexplicably spewing forth the eponymous dust, haunts my dreams. It is delicious, but at 8.2% ABV, also efficient at inducing intoxication. While I have enjoyed my time with Space Dust, I cannot consistently remember it.
Bay 101 (my home sweet home casino) serves Space Dust. Bevmo has stacks of it near the door. And the week before BARGE I’m at a business trip, we have free time, so we go to a bar, then another bar, then a different bar, and finally to a bar, which serves Space Dust. Some locals note our order and acknowledge it as effective way to get drunk quickly. I have verified experimentally that they are correct.
More relevant to this trip report, the Westgate also has Space Dust on tap.
What I’m saying is, there may be some gaps here.
I spend the few days leading up to my BARGE trip looking at Facebook and the WhatsApp chat, and also, bidding up the Calcutta. More on that later.
I arrive Thursday in the early afternoon. I go first to the front desk, ask for a room where I can see the Sphere, and in the central tower—and get both. I walk into my room, park my suitcase, and turn around and head for the poker room.
There’s a seat open in a dealer’s choice game. The game is momentarily something sane. I sit down for the lols and free drinks while I wait for the Omaha game. Based on my 2022 experience, I order a beer with the duck on the tap (Able Baker Atomic Duck) which I had previously discovered at the Westgate just because of the shape of the tap handle. Soon I switch to Space Dust, thus beginning the end of me remembering anything. I make a few bucks.
At 4PM, I switch to the PLO tournament. I used to be moderately competent at PLO, maybe. Now we all agree that I suck. I burn through my chips and lammers pretty quickly.
During the tournament, Rich wins the 3 Hand Hold’em that I arrived too late to play. I send out the following two messages on the group chat:
“Congrats rich. Would you like to take my omaha stack before I piss it away?”
and then 20 minutes later:
“too late”
At least I am efficient, and I am out fairly quickly. I can’t remember the details of my exit, because Space Dust. Later, I discover Dean has posted a selfie of the two of us, and I’m giving the camera the finger. Oh, yeah, Dean busted me out.
At least there’s a 1-2 game with some people who haven’t published poker books, so I take a seat in it. I remember it as uneventful, but slightly profitable.
Meanwhile, my efforts to buy the entire Calcutta pool have been noted by a few folks, who think I’m messing with them. Steve W, at some point, asks why I kept outbidding him. Of course, it wasn’t personal. It was automated. I know I also annoyed Hammer and Kevin Un.
At 4PM, I hosted a PL Omaha X-or-better game. I missed this at EMBARGO, not having attended, and thought it would be fun as a cash game. And it was, just not profitable. Except for Sam Scheinberg, having found a loophole to his dad’s dictum to “don’t play Binglaha,” and who made bank.
Thankfully the game breaks. I take a seat in the NL game. I think Un might have been in it. But I have no memory of it. Space Dust.
At this point, it’s about 1:30 in the morning, so I talk Chris Kuntz into going to the Peppermill for breakfast. It’s about We get there and the PEPPERMILL IS CLOSED for the night. They are only 24 hours on weekends now. I don’t know what Vegas is coming to.
So we go to Denny’s. It’s actually not bad.
After that I get back to my room and discover I do not have a toothbrush. I decide that’s a problem for tomorrow, and go to bed.
Soon it’s Friday morning. I get up at about 9:50 and go downstairs to the gift shop and spend nine bucks on a toothbrush. Time is precious, because the tournament is at 10:30, and I still have to buy in, eat something, and, most importantly, deal with my Calcutta bids. My bot has been busy overnight and just before I shower, I see that have close to $600 in horses, which was close to my cap. Awesome.
I tweak my bot’s setup, shower, get dressed, and head downstairs. The Westgate’s quick food options just aren’t that quick, so I get by with some junk from the gift shop.
The TOC starts on time and I become the chip leader, netting two bets on the first hand with a masterful bluff with 72o, which I show, because it’s BARGE, thus ensuring I don’t get another bluff through until my table breaks.
I check my Calcutta progress every 90 seconds or so. My total bid amounts keep dropping. That shouldn’t be, I think. But I want to play the TOC and not run upstairs to fix my bot. I bid on some horses manually, but I don’t have my handicaps, and I’m trying to play a poker tournament here and not get emotionally involved in the Calcutta.
Hammer keeps bidding up the Calcutta Field item, which has gotten funnier and funnier as it gets more and more bloated. Because the WSOP overlapped BARGE, a lot of heavy hitters are in town, and they’re all in the Field since they didn’t preregister. But a little birdie has told me that some of the big names aren’t playing, so I stay away. The Field went for $132, which was a big jump over where Hammer and I had been arguing earlier in the week.
Most of the Calcutta auctions close at 11:30. Late bids extend a few. I get a few more bids in. Everything is closed by 11:50 or so. Once I’m sure I’m done, I’m the second to pay for the Calcutta. (Russ is conveniently sitting on my right, and he pays first by moving money from one pocket to another.)
We get to the first break, and I really want to know what happened with my bot. I run to my room to have a look. I accidentally restarted it with a delay I had put in to keep it idle overnight (to avoid annoying the folks running the server), and it wasn’t going to start until the mid-afternoon. Sigh. There’s always next year.
Plus, I still got some bargain horses and I’m only in $174. A select few r00lers buy back, money they will never see again.
Back to the TOC. My table breaks at least three times, which I suppose is bad, except I got to see more people. I apologize if I have forgotten our conversation. I’m on a drug that interferes with memory. The cocktail waitress brings it by regularly.
Sometime after 3, I beg Andrew Prock for a couple slices of pizza from the snack bar. He delivers.
I make the TOC dinner break. I think I played OK to this point I am competent at limit hold’em and stud, and stay out of trouble in Omaha.
Chris Kuntz and I go to Sid’s for dinner. Sid’s temporary home is an improvement on the old room: At least some of the chairs are comfortable. The new room looks like it will be even better. I ordered the quesadilla. It was fine.
A little after 6, Rich texts me to make sure I’m coming to the 6PM private craps game. I’m already late, but they haven’t started yet. We get the game started around 6:20. Since I’m still in the TOC, I have to be efficient, and I am. I lose quickly. Nobody can roll for shit. I go to the dark side. It sucks there by myself, and I am tempted by the light every time someone makes a point, so I switch back and forth. I lose both ways. No Space Dust, but whatever I was drinking was just fine. I escaped back to the TOC with a solid loss. QB would later tell me they got out of the hole—well done!
Table limits were down to around $10 for the Westgate this year for most games, but the private table was still nice. (I note this in case someone is archiving trip reports, to remember the glory days where you could still make a $10 bet in Las Vegas.)
I get back to the TOC for the restart, and after a bit, we get down to two tables. I play some Omaha hand that I should have just mucked. I’m short. Not too long thereafter, it’s NL time.
Two of us get all-in when it’s 11 handed, and I’m the shorter stack. Both all-ins are all out. I understand a save was made for ninth, so I double-bubbled.
Somewhere in here I get the fantastic idea to give Hammer a $1 retainer, just so I can make Fear and Loathing jokes about making various questionable decisions, all on the advice of my attorney.
I tag along with Prock, Grapes, Hammer, and other folks I have forgotten (Space Dust) to play Ultimate Texas Hold’em for…reasons. There’s just one table in the Westgate’s understated pit. After a while, most of us are seated. I’m playing $10 or $25, depending on my whim, but the real gamblers are playing for more. Cocktails are ordered, possibly Voodoo Range IPA (7.0% ABV), since we’re served by a different bar.
Dealer changes from a competent one to, uh, a different one. I win her first hand at $10, so I post quarters for the ante/play bet. None of the BARGErs are playing the “trips” bet, I’m following along in case some of the advantage luck heads my way.
Second hand, I have an unplayable hand, and fold. But Grapes and a few other BARGErs are pretty excited and have posted a 4x play bet.
Dealer mucks some cards, then says there’s a “shuffle machine malfunction” and she’ll have to void the hand. By malfunction, she means that she pushed the button too soon, and the shuffle machine has mixed up the dealer’s hole cards with the muck.
And hat’s when the argument started. Grapes is very upset that the dealer managed to kill a very profitable hand. Everyone who is still in the hand agrees, plus Andrew Prock, who is on the rail putting in a friend-of-the-court brief that the staff just loved. The players are upset that the dealer managed to kill the hand just after they had posted profitable 4x play bets. Their suggestion is that they just shuffle the muck and deal.
I keep my mouth shut, since I both want the heavy players to get paid, but I also my $50 back.
We get visited by the floor manager and then the casino manager all over, to no avail. Hand killed. We’re all leaving, but first, my refund.
Guy on my left (not a BARGEr) had $10 bets posted, and he had folded, so he gets his $20 back.
Dealer says, “How much you have out?”
I say, “$50, quarter-quarter,” pointing to the two betting circles.
Dealer returns my $50 the first circle, and my $50 to the second. OK. I color up and leave. At least I’m even.
It’s about 7:30, and I want to see Penn & Teller, so I rope in Chris Kuntz, who is up for whatever. We walk around the Rio for a bit, which feels the same as the last time I was there in 2009, except now there’s KISS mini-golf.
We have seats in the upper section, but the usher for some reason moves us to the main floor for an upgrade at no cost. Cool. I’m thinking they had a big group cancel. Anyway, good beat.
We get there early enough to listen to the preshow with the really tall bass player before he wanders off to his “other job”.
It’s a good show, almost entirely new stuff.
On the way out I buy a P&T magic kit to take home for my kids. Upon getting back to the hotel, I discover it’s too big to fit in my bag in both height and width. (On Sunday, Rodney kindly took me to FedEx so we could get the Magic kit boxed up. This costs another $25.)
We head back to the Westgate and I jump in a 1-2 game. I wonder what happened after I started ordering Space Dust. Apparently I won.
Eventually I go to bed.
I’m up Saturday morning just early enough, and downstairs for the main at 10:30.
I’m at the table just outside the poker room with Len G, Christin, Betty T, and I can’t remember who else.
The 4 seat is a guy I’ve never seen before. He’s an older gentleman in a white sleeveless undershirt. One side of his badge is printed but the other is hand-written. That side says George.
The way he’s handling his cards suggests he is not a regular in poker rooms, much less BARGE. Plus, he is a calling station. This is obvious, so I try to bluff him off a pot. (And I was sober!) Of course it doesn’t work.
Later I get my money back, with interest, peddling the near nuts when he just can’t let go, and I bet every street. He makes the first break, but busts not too long after that.
I get moved to a new table near the slot machines with something like an average stack.
With around half the players out, Chris Kuntz busts out. We had a $20 last-longer, which he pays. I put his $20 on the table with my toke chips.
I have AcJc, I call a raise preflop. Flop A-high with a club, I call a bet. Turn is a club, I jam, and I’m called. I’m up against a bigger ace. I miss and I’m out. Still kicking myself over this. I don’t hate my play, but I remember calling preflop thinking he had to have a bigger ace, and I wish I’d trusted my read.
So I walk Chris Kuntz’s $20 LL over to Goldie.
I go to the poker room proper to take a look at the lists, and a minute later, I hear a ferocious round of applause. If I had just behaved myself for another five minutes, tops, I could have won the Go4Goldie bet.
My attorney advises me to go to the Bellagio if I want to play limit, so I talk Chris into going to the Bellagio, where I sign us up for… 2-5 NL.
I long ago lost my MGM players card, so the brush makes me a new one. When I get to the table, I buy in and put down my players card. The dealer, and some of the players, give me shit because it is a Westgate card. On the walk from the brush to my table, maybe 50 feet, I have managed to lose a players card. (Ten minutes before I lost the card, new personal best.)
The game is decent. I think there are some regulars, but there’s also a guy who stacks his chips 10 high. He reaches into his pocket a few times. The game has a $500 cap, which someone (Karma, maybe?) theorized is low enough to keep a lot of pros out, since it’s not worth their time.
I won 680 over about 2.5 hours.
It’s about 9PM by the time we get back from the strip, and at this point it’s clear my technical failures have doomed me in the Calcutta. I had 16 horses in eight lots, and I got $0 back. Oh, well, hopefully we run this again.
Thanks to those who bought back their action. Your charity is what keeps me in the game.
In any case, I am very, very happy that this has run for the past couple years. I’ve really enjoyed it, and had a lot of fun while losing badly this year. Thanks to Dave Low, QB, Russ Fox, and whoever was involved that I didn’t happen to interact with.
In addition to the regular 1-2 game, there are two reindeer games running: one where they explain rules most of the time, euphemistcally called “Dealer’s Choice”, and a 4/8 T-HORSE game (the T is for triple draw). I decide the latter is more to my liking. I try to buy $400 in chips, but Won at the podium doesn’t have that much blue. So I get some red, too. I sit down to try and build a chip castle, then remember I don’t know how to build a chip castle.
A seat is open in the 1-2 game on Kevin Un’s left. That looks like a pretty good game. I lock it up, and turn my blue chips into red at the podium. When I get to the table, the seat has somehow migrated to Un’s right.
I start ordering drinks for Sam Scheinberg across the room so I can get a chance at recovering a few bucks from the PLO/X game.
I like playing with Un. The game has one of the same players from Saturday night at BARGE in 2022.
But the Binglaha game looks like more fun, so…
Sam Scheinberg is in the game, and since JZK told him not to play it, I definitely want to. I ask Sam about the Moscow Mule. He says it’s terrible. I taste it. He’s right. Sharon Goldman would be most displeased. I stick to Space Dust.
We try repeatedly to get QB to play, but it doesn’t work. Our best chance of remembering any of the one liners was to have QB in the game writing them down. I think we shouted one at the other table and it made his trip report. Everything else, nobody remembers.
The poker room is served by the sports book bar, if the sports book is open. By the wee hours of the morning, the waitresses are having to hoof it all the way across to the main bar, and the main bar has a lot less on tap.
That’s OK, Hammer starts ordering shots. A round of Kamikazes for all.
Now that’s a questionable decision, but when the next round was Fireball, I realized it was going to be that kind of night. The next round was also Fireball, when my attorney showed up with a tumbler full, and a bunch of empty cups, each of which got a generous pour.
Thank goodness the poker room has a fridge full of bottled water, or I would probably have had a fatal hangover.
James Hammer offers to get us all late checkouts to keep the game going. He goes to the podium, and after a quick phone call, we all have until 3PM. I later discover two late checkout fees have been charged to my room, one of them clearly marked “XFER FROM HAMMER” on my folio. (Of course he paid me back.)
At some point, James Hammer starts signing autographs of his pictures from Rodney. “Thanks for the money!” We all got a souvenir.
I only remember one hand. I had pocket 3s, there was no low, I flopped a set and turn quads, and Grizz bet into me. I raised. Grizz called. No low.
I spent the rest of the evening losing that back, but I mostly stayed out of trouble, and turned a profit.
I don’t know when I went to bed. I think I was there when the game broke. Grizz says that was almost 8AM. I know I saw daylight outside the door to the Superbook. I somehow got upstairs under my own power.
It was a night to remember, just not very clearly.
I wake up just after the crack of noon with a lot less hangover than I deserve. Pack up, get some breakfast from Sid’s, and wander over to the very quiet poker room. Ran into Dr. Doofenschmirtz who was going to the Goldman’s party, so I hitched a ride with him, after a quick trip to the players club, and then a not so quick trip to the front desk, to turn my meager comps into room credits.
At the Goldman’s, there was a raging $1 game of LCR going on, where I got hustled by the most skilled players in the world over two nailbiting rounds.
I drank water until my low-grade hangover finally abated. Got a chance to catch up with Karma, who I have only seen at BARGE since he fled San Jose. Sat outside in the heat for the first time since I’d been in town, which bothered me less than I expected.
Bruce Kramer and I caught a ride back to the airport with Dr. Doofenschmirtz. I could just gawk out the back windows of the car. The airport turns out to be a pretty impressive place to see the Sphere. Its location off-strip looks almost on-strip from the road into the terminal. It’s as cool in person as it looks in pictures.
I got to the airport early enough that, when TSA Precheck was closed, it wasn’t much of a problem. I got back into Oakland on time.
This was my tenth BARGE. (Finally got the coin—thank you, Patti!) And I had a great time. There are a lot of folks I missed, but I enjoyed seeing some old friends and making some new ones.
Thanks to the Westgate for putting up with us, and having a damn fine beer selection at the Superbook bar. I think the remodeling looks like it’s heading in the right direction. Thanks for putting a craps table together for us, too (even if you did put the coldest dice in the state at it).
I also want to thank Elysian Brewing, which is partially responsible for most of the mistakes in this trip report.
I also want to thank the Organizers, and the Board, for the best BARGE I’ve had. I still miss quite a few folks who weren’t there, and so I thought I’d actually try and finish a trip report, even if I couldn’t remember half the shit I should put in it. Peter, this one’s for you.
Postscript: The kids wanted to go to Alaska, so we did, about a week after BARGE. While travelling, we’re all at some restaurant, and my wife suggests I might want a drink, and points out they have some beer called Elysian Space Dust. I start twitching slightly and politely decline.