Bigpoker.ca – The Way I See It – Mike McManus – Poker Article

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When I was first asked to write this piece, my first thought was: How
do I describe an event that is the most fun I’ve ever had….that
didn’t involve a gallon of butterscotch syrup and a Sherpa midget?
Hell, I’m still not really sure. But maybe, just maybe, I can
make a flaccid effort that is serviceable enough to give an idea of
the joyous enlightenment, the rapturous epiphany (or is that epiphanous
rapture?) that is the Big August rec.gambling Excursion, or, as it has
become better known, BARGE.

Staged annually in Las Vegas during the first weekend of August, BARGE
began as a face-to-face meeting of regular contributors to an Internet
gambling discussion forum. What began as a meeting of ten guys playing
a blackjack tournament in a Vegas hotel room in 1991, has evolved (or,
as some would say, degenerated) into a near week-long series of poker
tournaments, golf outings, invented poker games, banquets, craps tours,
reckless boozing, bald-faced degenerate gambling and just about anything
else you can expect (and, sometimes, not expect) to do in Sin City.
It is, in other words: a great big steaming pile of fun.

I am by no means a seasoned veteran of this crazy event; I’ve
only attended three times. But never before have I experienced the sense
of camaraderie and community I felt from the first moment I walked into
the poker room at Binion’s Horseshoe in August 2001. Sort of like
the first moment I walked into reform school. “If you haven’t
been there, you don’t understand,” says Nick Christenson, a Bay
Area player who has attended every BARGE but one since 1995. “If
you have been there, you may still not understand, but you’ll have a
smile on your face thinking about it.” Also reminiscent of reform
school.

‘Scottro’, a poker player from Ohio, likes to remember
his first BARGE as a culinary experience: he ate half a keno crayon
for fifty bucks. “I figured my son, who was 2 at the time, chews
crayons all the time, so what harm could it do?” he reasoned.
“It was very bland and not really horrible tasting, and it didn’t
stick to my teeth like I thought it would.” (The jokes are starting
to write themselves, folks….).

“Scottro continues: “I tried to think if I’d seen the ‘non-toxic’
markings on the side like on other crayons. I checked one of the remaining
crayons on the table, and there was no indication at all that I didn’t
just ingest pure cyanide in some form. I scooped up the $50 and spent
the rest of the night with two conflicting thoughts: was I going to
make it through the night alive, and damn, BARGE is cool!”

Others have BARGE stories that have had a more profound and lasting
effect on their lives than the mere eating of a stick of colored wax.
Kim Scheinberg, a veteran of eight BARGEs, recalls waiting to cash out
chips at the Mirage poker room one year. “I look up and notice
a guy wearing a BARGE nametag that says ‘Kim Scheinberg’!”.
Apparently, some shameless hooligan thought it would be funny to assume
Kim’s identity for a few days. Well, it now seems that it was
funny to Ms. Scheinberg: she married him two years later. Shameless
hooligans, myself included, have found a refuge at BARGE; some, it would
appear, even find love.

An inexplicable yet inherent trust seems to form between BARGEers,
in some cases almost immediately. From my own 2003 trip report, detailing
a $1/2 pot limit mixed game: “Omaha round, my traveling companion/home
game nemesis Murray ‘Luckbucket’ Logan needs to use the
men’s room, and allows Gavin Smith, a very drunk fellow Canadian
whom we had met only the night before, to play his chips. After some
pre-flop raising, our countryman finds himself heads-up with Len G.,
a very solid East Coast player. Len bets out on the flop. Murray arrives
back at the table just as The Gavin (as I later christened him) pushes
all of Murray’s chips forward, going all in. Len ponders for a
few minutes. The Gavin says, ‘I’ll show you half my hand,’
and turns over a pair of deuces, which in no way coordinates with the
board. Murray has a look on his face that may be bemusement. Or horror,
it was never clear which. After a few more seconds, Len folds. Murray
makes the sign of the cross while looking skyward. I ask The Gavin later
what he had, and he says, ‘A pair of deuces.’ Murray later
relates that Gavin told him he had the nuts. It’s anybody’s
guess.”

And the games…..oh, lord, the games! Must-drink/must-straddle
HORSE. Chinese poker played with regular poker up front, deuce-to-seven
lowball in the middle, and cribbage in the back. Chowaha, an Omaha variation
invented by Mike Chow, with three flops, two turns, and a single river
(don’t even ask about Thermonuclear Chowaha…). And then,
in 2003: the introduction of Binglaha. The description of this game,
and the circumstances surrounding its creation, is best left to the
game’s creator, ‘Bingo’: “It’s about 2:00am
and I’ve had a rather hops and barley filled evening thus far,
and I now find myself playing $2-5-5 pot-limit Omaha. Wanting to spice
up the game a little, I pull a single die from my pocket. ‘How
about if we see the flop, and then after the flop betting is over, we
roll the dice? If it’s 1, 2, or 3 we’re playing pot-limit Omaha 8 High
Low Split, if it’s 4, 5, or 6 it’s pot-limit Omaha High Only.’

“The guy to my left, a rather well known poker writer, now has
beer spewing from his nose. The eighty year old local, who has just
been brutalized three hands in a row, stalks off in disgust, not sure
if we’re making fun of him, but pretty sure he’s in some twilight zone
where people no longer care about money.

“Before you know it, even the other two locals in the game think
this is just a marvelous idea. So we play. Pot Limit, $2-5-5. Bing-la-ha.
When’s the last time you heard THAT over your cardroom P.A. system?”
(Actually, one of my fondest BARGE memories was the August night in
2001 when the brush at Binion’s announced over the mike: “Attention,
players! We have immediate seating in must-drink, must-straddle, must-move
Chowaha!” I nearly ruptured something from laughing so hard, as
the locals all looked skyward to the P.A. speakers, wondering if they
had heard right.)

‘Bingo’ goes on: “I left the game after an hour or
so, barely able to stand, but from what I hear it went on all night
long. And that’s what makes BARGE so great: not only can you make up
your own insane poker games, but they’ll keep going all night long after
you go to bed! Only trouble is I never got that damn dice back………”

These stories are not unusual for BARGE; in fact, there are hundreds
of stories as yet unpublished (or unpublishable) that would further
advance the notion that it’s just a damned fun place to be. “The
people that come to BARGE are some of the brightest and funniest and
most fun-loving people in the world,” says Ken “QB”
Kubey, who has attended nine previous BARGEs, and is a founding member
of Team Moosecock (don’t even ask about this, either). “We
are there to have fun first, and if we happen to win some money too,
all the better. Every player that busts out of a tournament is applauded.
Every dealer is tipped. And no one is left out.”

Virtually every BARGE attendee I’ve met echoes these sentiments;
the spirit of the event (no, I’m not talking about liquid spirits
here) manifests itself in many, many ways. “It’s having
people you’ve never met in person come up to you and treat you like
a long lost friend,” says Michael ‘mickdog’ Patterson,
a writer and teacher from Portland, Oregon. “It’s hanging
out with people who play poker as much for the love of the game as for
the money involved.” Or, as Florida businessman Randy Collack
explains, “I almost never think about poker when I think about
BARGE; BARGE is people….friends.” Well, Randy, we all knew you
almost never think about poker; certainly not when you’re at the
table, anyway. (I kid, because I care.)

Last year’s edition of this storied event attracted more than
two hundred revelers, and at least that many are expected to show their
mugs this year. My mug will be one of them; maybe yours should, too.
We can have a beer together at the must-drink, must-straddle, must-move
Binglaha table. Then you, too, might have some cool stories with which
to mesmerize your next dinner party, Bar Mitzvah, bowling night, or
sewing circle.

For more information on BARGE and its smaller regional offspring,
go to www.barge.org
, or to the author’s BARGE page at www3.telus.net/public/a5a60097/barge.htm.
The author wishes to thank the BARGE community for their contributions,
intentional or not, to this article.

North Shore Mike is a poker player from North Vancouver, BC, Canada.

North Shore Mike

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