I played in YACHT this weekend. It's pretty entertaining, but is clearly a friendly tournament for small stakes, so the sharks are few and far between. This is good for me.

The early bits of the tournament are fairly uneventful for me. Early on I fail to play many hands, steal a little, fold a lot.

10-20 blinds, someone limps, then a raise to 150, and I have KK. He has 800 back and I have him covered, so I just jam. He folds. A little later roughly the same thing happens when I have QQ. What's with the giant raises? A bit later (20-40 blinds?) a player with 505 total opens. I put him in from the sb with JJ, but he has AA. Oops.

I continue to avoid playing big pots, but bust a bunch of small stacks with AJ-like hands. Meanwhile, I chat with the woman sitting next to me, Emily, who is not an RGPer but rather a garden city dealer that someone invited. She was very startled at the fact that the game was player dealt, and makes a couple of dealing mistakes, for which she got (gently) mocked. She's actually a perfectly good dealer at GC. She's also puzzled by the clapping for bustouts.

Meanwhile, blinds are going up. I steal enough to keep ahead of the blinds, and occasionally bust some crippled player. No idea why I am the designated big stick. Paul Zuzelo is at the table behind me, and occasionally shows up to berate the other players for allowing me to have a big stack. James Kojo and Hubert Chen show up at my table, causing a big ruckus while we taunt one another. They're to my left, so I steal from the button or cutoff every orbit.

Kojo gets repeatedly sucked out on by the same guy, getting all in three times with dominating hands and losing all three to bust. It was very ugly. We laughed at him repeatedly -- Hubert and I are nice that way. Random aside on Kojo: everybody knows him. He's fairly recently started playing the GC 20-40, and he is on a first name basis with every dealer, floorman, regular, prop, etc. I've been playing there for years and I know basically nobody there. Emily (the dealer) was much nicer to me after Kojo came over to say hi, despite the fact that she's dealt to me for years (and I tip!). He also has learned things that I would never get told, like that there's apparently a brothel within easy walking distance from GC; if you hear players talking about "boom boom", that's what they mean.

We get down to 20 people, which is the money. We combine tables, then look puzzled when one of the players doesn't have a seat. Confusion ensues until we realize that we are in fact at 21 people, and uncombine the tables. Heh.

One hand later, we're down to 20. A bunch of people go out including Hubert, since 16-20 pay the same ($10 profit!) and we're quickly down to 14. Blinds are like 250-500, I have 7k, and I open for 1500 on the button with A5. BB defends. Flop is AJ3. He looks at his chips, hesitates, and checks. I actually think this is a weakness tell, that he has something mediocre and decided not to bet it for fear of the A. I check behind. Turn is a T. He moves in, I call. He has JT. Oops. I'm down to $1k.

I cleverly get AA and 77 in the next two hands, and get back up to 7k. Whee.

At the final table, there are two big stacks (including the JT guy), and a bunch of fairly small ones. Folded to me in the sb with about 8 players left, and Paul Zuzelo in the bb has 7 blinds or so. I have Q9s and jam. He has A8 and calls, and then seems quite surprised at how weak my hand was: "I would have thought you'd at least have a king!" This seems totally straightforward to me, and he's a pretty good player, so maybe not. I cleverly suck out.

When we get down to 4 and 5 handed, the JT guy is doing a lot of min raising and limping from late position. This is really good because he limps or min raises into my big blind several times. I double up when I check with KTs, then jam when the flop comes Js9x7s, and he thinks and calls with A6, which he limped with on the button. I'm a 70% favorite and get there. Eventually he runs out of chips and busts.

Meanwhile, the woman to my right, Stefanee, limps in the sb, and I check with garbage. We check the flop, and she bets the turn. She has shown herself to be quite tight against raises, so I bluff raise, and she folds. Now I've almost caught up with Melissa, the chip leader.

When I get down to heads up with Melissa, she has me outchipped 60-40 or so, but plays way too tight, and I get to take a few too many blinds. Then she's short, and even though I jam with 75s and lose (she had 3x the bb then), next hand she jams and I have an A that holds up.

This is an absurdly long trip report for a tournament where first pays out $1610, but ARG events are always fun, and this is more-or-less one of those. One annoyance: when I got paid, I got two $5s, three $100s, and sixty-five $20s. That is a big wad of bills.

Thanks to Patrick Milligan for organizing, and Rodney Chen for tournament directing.

The urinals at Binion's are incredibly poorly laid out. There are dividers that put urinals in sets of two, like so:

oo|oo|oo|oo

If you know anything about urinal psychology, you know that this is pretty much the worst possible layout. No man will go stand right next to another man in a tiny enclosure like that. This is actually worse than no dividers at all, because then if it's crowded, every urinal will get used -- but at least twice during barge, I saw men hesitate when each section was occupied, and then either hold off or head for a stall.

During some tournament break, I went into the restroom, and every section had someone in it. I paused, then decided that it was absurd to let silly social conventions get in the way of bladder relief, so I joined prock in his little cubby-for-two. We had the following interaction:

Me: Mind if I come stand uncomfortably close to you?
Prock actually looks uncomfortable, so I start to feel a little bad at not only impinging on his space but violating the no-talk-while-peeing-next-to-another-man rule, but then:
prock: Only if I can look at your penis.
Me: Uhhh.... I fold.

After finishing and washing, I walked out to see prock about to tell some hand story or other to hgfalling. That sounded boring, so I piped up in a tattletail voice, "Jerrod, Prock asked to see my penis!" Jerrod looked puzzled: "What?" Prock objected, "I didn't *ask* -- it was part of a negotiation."

hgfalling: Well, that makes it much better then. I mean if like the consideration is such that you are getting sufficient value, then you should probably let him. I mean, we play black chip holdem games, it seems like the consideration [interrupting himself when he sees michlan approaching] Honey! We're talking about Dave Orr's penis!

michlan, cowering: Wife repellant!

She turns to walk away.

Me: More like game theoretic considerations thereof.

hgfalling continues, but by this time prock and I are laughing too hard to have any recollection of what he was saying.

It occurs to me that this may be a "you had to be there" moment. Also amusing was Prock's repeated abortive step towards his video camera to try to record hgfalling's monologue.

I also had a fairly extensive conversation with pygmyhipo about optimal urinal divider placement given an infinite series of urinals in which he claimed (and it seemed plausible) that a divider for every three urinals maximised both urinal use -- if you can't afford a divider for every urinal -- but also urinators per divider.

You can't do better than 66% urinal penetration, but obviously you can do better than 2 urinators/divider that you get in the 3 case just by having fewer (lim->none) dividers. Dividers are worthwhile because they increase the number of urinals in simultaneous use without having to actually install the much more expensive urinals. So I think he overstated his case.

I somehow only made four prop bets for actual money:

1: Dan Goldman claimed (during some hand discussion in an NL game at the Red Rock Casino) that AA is unlikely to win against the field when AA, KK, QQ, and JJ get all in preflop. I thought about it a little and decided it was over 50% on the theory that the situation is very similar to a small pocket pair versus AK: 6 outs with a two out redraw, only the AK makes more straights. So we bet $25 on it (he estimated low 40's for the AA win percentage). I win.

2: Steve Cohen claimed that 2-7 chinese was easier than high, and suggested JP arbitrate. I win (see bottom).

3: prock was humming the alphabet song, or maybe twinkle twinkle little star (same melody). I piped up with a bit of trivia that Mozart wrote the melody when he was a kid. Richard Brodie said it was by Haydn, and went so far as to sing the second movement to his Surprise symphony, which indeed is the tune in question. We agree to bet, and he asks the table if anyone else wants to bet. prock volunteers to take the field, and the bet is on. I am only in for $25 because a) I'm a pussy, and b) at this point I have decided that Richard is probably smarter than I am and therefore I should be careful. I should have asked for odds. They are in for $100 each.

Anyway, Richard gets very excited that he is finally going to win a prop bets ("I never win prop bets! This can be my first one!") and starts googling for the answer. He finds a page that mentions that the common Mozart belief is a myth, doh, but can't find anything definitive. Meanwhile prock is chanting, "Just check wikipedia." Eventually Richard does, and it says that the author is unknown. Richard tries to claim that this means the bet is off since we don't know who wrote it, but doesn't take long to cave and pay up. Guess he'll have to wait to win his first one.

As we leave lunch (thanks Richard!), I compliment prock on his ability to quickly change the wikipedia page before Richard looked at it. I wish it were true; what a great angle that would be.

4: At the same meal, I recount the bet with Dan Goldman, except that I don't say which side I took. I generally offer to allow anyone to take either side and I'll put $20 on it. The person across the table, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten, thinks about it, decides that his first impression that the aces should clearly win half the time is wrong, and bets me. Ding!

5: This wasn't really a prop bet, but gunga_galunga and Patrick Milligan get all in in lowball, with two other people in the pot including me. I win the tiny side pot, but gunga_galunga wins the massive main pot. As Patrick leaves, he gives him the chip committee bustout chip. I point out that I had actually busted Patrick, since he had gunga_galunga covered by one chip. Once I get the chip, though, I toss it back.

Someone at the table makes the obvious suggestion: roshambo! I size up gunga_galunga, decide he's not a super experienced player, and go paper because most people start with rock. I win and I know I have him: paper again, and the chip is mine.

BARGE was wonderful, despite the fact that I had to leave saturday morning and miss the best night of it all.

What I learned from barge is that I pwn at chinese, and suck at basically everything else.

This is odd, because I have played quite a bit of holdem/whatever, and not very much at all of chinese. But I kept making second best hands in the pot limit games, with only one egregious suckout costing me my stack. Not to mention I never once had the roll in bingleha go the way I wanted it to in a big pot. And it's not like there weren't juicy targets in these games, though there were several very good players as well.

But chinese, ah chinese poker. My game selection was excellent -- JP was in almost every game I played, and the ones he wasn't had Grapes or hgfalling, or prock. This may sound like a bad idea, since those guys are among the best in the world, and play for the highest stakes (they frequently play $100/point when games are available, like at the WSOP).

However, I crushed them all, except maybe hgfalling. He got away by not playing very much with me.

The games I played were generally two of the good players, me, and two people who were relative novices or made other obvious mistakes, like surrendering too often. I suspect that my edge against the bad players is higher than the edge of the good players against me in high, but I'm not so sure for 2-7. I need to practice that game a bit more. I think I find most of the candidate settings, it's just a matter of doing the work to get the evaluation right.

Mostly, though, I just got good cards. JP was running terribly, shaking his head and muttering when he turned over his hand and lost (again) to players worse than he is. Actually, he was often muttering even when he won a hand, so maybe he's just grumbly. He definitely lost lots of points though -- good thing for him we were only playing $10/point.

Friday night, hgfalling and prock were playing an excellent game prock had invented: chinese with a flop and a bug. Each player gets 12 cards and a bug (it's an A, or completes straights and flushes for high; for low, it's whichever wheel card you need), and there's a two card flop. Your front hand is the three cards you set along with the two cards of the flop. This makes the front hands much stronger, but has interesting implications since you have to make your back hand stronger as well in order to play a good front hand.

Then Grapes and I joined in. Obviously I crushed that lineup.

Actually, I only played for a short while, but I did pick up $100. That came in handy when I later lost credit card roulette (again!) and had to pick up the tab for dinner. 7 people, only $150, so that was a good beat of sorts. I suppose.

Finally, I won a prop bet on chinese poker. I forget how it came up, but Steve Cohen claimed that 2-7 was much simpler than chinese high. I pointed out that this was clearly wrong, and we argued for a while. We decided to bet $10 on it, with JP arbitrating. Steve said he'd trust me, so I walked over to talk to JP (who was playing it).

I asked the table, and they universally said 2-7 was more complicated. I asked if they wanted to include any caveats, they said no, it was clear. I walked back to my game, and told Steve to pay up. He was so trusting, he went over to check himself, heh.

When he got back, he said that this was one case where JP was wrong. I asked who he trusted more, and he said Bill, so I obviously offered him double or nothing on Bill's judgment when he showed up. Sadly Steve just paid me.

Just registered for barge, whee. Sadly I have to go to some ridiculous wedding (hi random_skeins!) on saturday, so no main event, banquet, or must drink, must toke chowaha for me.