Trip Report
by Paul McMullin
As you've read elsewhere, AtLarge was a blast... Thanks
Goldie and the Taj. Here are a few observations:
Taj accommodations I:
My wife (Edith) can walk a bit, but is very uncomfortable
walking very far, so we travel with a wheelchair. She also
sleeps sitting up most of the time because of her hip and
back; when I made the hotel reservations with Marsha(?), I was
assured that the Taj had been renovating the rooms, and that
each room had a comfortable chair that should be acceptable
for her use. However, at checkin, and again at "guest services",
I was told that the desk-style chairs that were in the room
were all that was available. Edith spent an uncomfortable
Thursday night in one of them, and had pretty much decided
to drive herself home on Friday... but I cornered Goldie
in the poker room Friday morning before the start of the
HOE event, and he allowed me to swipe one of the SIGNIFICANTLY
more comfortable chairs from the hospitality suite (Thanks
Dave F. for assisting me with the furniture arranging!).
Edith was assuaged, and I returned the chair Sunday morning.
[I don't know if they have security cameras in the elevators
or not, but I'm thankful that I didn't have to explain WHY
I was moving furniture between rooms when I couldn't get
any of The Donald's Staff to do it for me.]
Worst overall(?):
As Goldie was saying his goodbyes on the way out of the
card room on Sunday, someone asked about the "best overall"
award, but when Goldie denied any knowledge of the tradition,
there were three people within earshot claiming to have
"AtLarge Best Overall" jackets to verify that it HAD been
awarded in the past. Perhaps it was a computation that
Crunch had been managing. In any case, I've GOT to be
in the running for either the "best" or "worst" overall
performance of the weekend: I finished on the bubble in
Friday's HOE tournament (10th/96?), and made it to the
bubble table in both Saturday's NLH (28th/200) and Sunday's
Stud event (17th/67). Lots of play for no prize money. IGHN.
Is this a great seat, or what?
In the stud event at my starting table, Michelle was on my left.
I'm pretty sure I had both her and Russ Fox on my right last
summer in Barge's Stud shootout event, and turned to Edith
before the dealing started and told her that I expected Michelle
to be the most aggressive player at the table. That didn't stop
me from shoving in a raise on about 1/3 of the hands that came
to me unraised, and she never really seemed to get a chance to
push back much - Edith seemed to think that I had been mistaken,
but I think that the "human card rack" trick that I had going for
the first two hours put Michelle a bit off her normal game - you
just don't really want to mix it up with someone that is going to
show you a flush or boat every time you get to the river with him.
I'm certain that I would have had much more trouble had she been
on my right again. (First raise wins; what a great seat!)
Event structure error(?):
When we sat down for the NLH event on Saturday, there
were T3000 in chips at each place at the table, with the
smallest chip being T25, but the tournament clocks were
showing that the first round would have 5-10 blinds (or
did we start at 10-20?). In any case, the directors scrambled
around selling two stacks of red chips to each table, and
then came back and sold a third stack. It turns out that
someone had agreed to add a couple of blind levels at the
beginning of the tournament as of last Wednesday - which
turned out to be something of a disaster for the Taj because
it extended the tournament into an 11 hour affair! At the end
of the first hour only 10 or 12 people had busted out; we
weren't down to 1/2 the field until about the third or fourth
hour. While this was great for the participants, it was lousy
for the Taj - we were NOT busting out and then playing in
their ring games, and they had so many tables in use for
the tournament, for a short time they were running ring
games outside in their "auxiliary tournament area" because
they didn't have free tables in the main playing space.
Consider that there were nearly 600k tournament chips
in play with four players at the final table, and the blinds
were 10k and 20k without antes. Great for the players - with
100k you could wait for an orbit or two before you were in
real pressure, but it meant that the final table lasted quite
a while.
I am mildly concerned that the fact that the tournament
ran so much longer than was expected may mean that the
tip pool may not have been as generous as had been planned.
I KNOW that the floorman 'Brian' was annoyed about the change
in the structure and how long our tournament lasted.
[GOLDIE: please let us know if an after-the-fact-collection
is in order to make up a shortfall to the tournament dealers.]
Taj accommodations II:
The tournament directors that were handling seat assignments
were very accommodating, allowing me to "randomly" get a table
assignment before each of the three events that was accessible
enough that Edith could sit behind me (in her wheelchair) and
watch me play... she spent about 15 hours between the three
tournaments watching me avoid busting out, and was present
at my two-hand-collapse in the stud event after watching
me dominate the table for the first three-and-one-half-hours.
She used to direct bridge tournaments for a living, and was
quite the bridge player herself before she became so active
in directing, and had a few comments about my play and "table
presence" that may help improve my play in the future. In any
case, thanks again to the Taj staff for making it easy for me
to arrange for her to watch.
The ringing in my ears has stopped now:
After I busted out of the NLH tournament and visited with
Edith for a bit, I managed to snag a seat at one of the
TWO tables of the "pink game". Sitting between LenG and
Dilligaf was a riot, but it wasn't until just this morning
that my ears stopped ringing. One "local" sat down and
played four hands before he got up and went over to the
podium... we watched him "conversing" with the person managing
the board (this conversation included several 'thumb pointing
over the shoulder back at our table' motions) followed by
a shrug by the staff member; the local came back to the table
and stacked up his pink chips to leave without sitting back
down. After he left, LenG declared it a new 3'42" record for
hyper-tilting a local out of the game. Too bad he only donated
a stack or so before he left.
Welcome to California-in-NJ:
I bought in to the pink game for 10 stacks at about 8:00PM.
At 10:30PM I was down to about 3 1/2 stacks, having played
several hands that I've given up playing in the online ring
games, and feeling mildly annoyed at myself for having done
so. No problem, this is the pink game! When I reached my
pre-determined go-to-bed 11:30 cutoff time, I was selling 10
1/2 stacks back to the table and the dealer [keep the pink chips
on the table if you can, to avoid 'fill' problems for the house].
Reminded me of the California games I'd visited a few times
[you're not stuck if you're within 2 pots of your buy-in!].
Taj tournaments:
I played in the Taj's $100+20 tournament Thursday night and their
$200+25 tournament on Friday night. They start you off with T5000,
which seems pretty generous, but the blinds bump every 20 minutes
or so at the start: 25-50, 50-100, 100-200 + 25 ante, 200-400 + 50
ante, ... the jump from 150/orbit to 550/orbit was a bit of a shock,
and then to 1050/orbit again means that the field is down to about
1/3 or 1/4 within about two hours [thanks for coming, now go gamble!].
I suspect that the "locals" have a HUGE advantage here over the
"tourists" because of the adjustments that you need to make for
this sort of structure [lull you the first 40 minutes, then
sock you the next 40], but I *hope* that I could make the appropriate
adjustments if I got to play that structure a few times myself.
Final remarks:
All of the AtLarge tournaments were great fun, with LOTS of play.
Got a "8-2 poker club" chip as a bustout prize. Nice touch guys!
It was great seeing Rev. Holtman outlast Eric in the NLH event.
Also great seeing all the west coasters that traveled - I'll
have to figure out how to get out to Escargo(?) next spring.
Thanks again Goldie! See everyone at Barge!
-prm