Trip Report
by Scottro
Sitting here in my home office and trying to shake off the poker hangover from last week, I decided I'd better record some of the things that I remember from ATLARGE.
Oscar and I arrived Thursday around 1 P.M. As soon as we dumped our stuff and got situated in our room, we headed over to the Taj for some low-limit action before dinner. Played an uneventful $1/$2 NL session and dropped $127 by only playing a few hands and second best a few times. Not a good start, but the trip was young and I had no worries.
We met up with Russ fox and Barry Kornspan and headed off to A.C. Bar and Grill. Russ and Oscar had never been there before, so Barry and I decided it was the best place to start the ATLARGE festivities. John Harkness went with us, and we all crammed into Barry's car. Dinner was great as it always is there (the Crab Pie is not to be missed). John had given me a full set of chips from the set of Tilt (he's a poker consultant for the show), and I reciprocated by covering his dinner. I still feel like I owe him more. Of course, the conversation among 5 good friends made the dinner, and I knew it was going to be a great 4 days!
Got to bed fairly early after getting back to the house to watch The Apprentice and Tilt (I had been up since 1:30 A.M.) and when 6:30 A.M. rolled around, it was time to get up. Russ, Oscar and I went to the local IHOP for breakfast. It was fine when we were there, but the food haunted me for the remainder of the day. It proved to be a bad omen too. During the H.O.E. event, I played some more $1/$2 NL (I decided not to play the tournament). I folded for 2 hours and finally picked up QQ. The table maniac raised to $17 pre-flop (rather high for $1/$2 blinds, but that's how the game was playing out). I re-raised to $40 and he called. The flop came A K x. Normal people with QQ would check and fold here, but not me, no, I had to push it. I bet small, around $30, hoping it would look like a hand that I wanted raised. He just called. On the turn, a T gave me a str8 draw, and I again bet a small $50. He thought for a while and called. I didn't
interpret that small pause as strength, and I think he almost folded, so I wasn't worried. The river was a rag and I shoved the rest in (about $150). He thought for a long time and finally called. He had A4o. No, the trip wasn't off to a good start. I thought I read him pretty good, and I think he made 3 horrible calls, but I'm the idiot who over-played my queens, so I deserve it.
**The above play is NOT in our book. I played the hand very poorly in spite of my reads. Sometimes I do things I know instinctively are incorrect. It's a leak.
About this time, Barry comes over to my table and tells me they're getting a pink game going. for those of you who don't know, the pink game is $7.50/$15.00 hold'em played with all pink $2.50 chips. It's an action game, and a whole lot of fun. I thought to myself, gee, I can make up the $450 I'm currently stuck by playing the pink game with good players! Perfect!
I bought in for 2 racks, and I was NOT the big stack. Also in the game were Barry, Goldie, Oscar, Chic, Steve C. and Heather, Mitch F. and a couple clueless locals. I hate to say it, but Chic was throwing a party. I hope he made it all back later in the week, but at the time, I decided to benefit from it. One hand went like this. We cap pre-flop 4 ways. I have 88. Flop comes 8 4 4. DING! We cap the flop and go 3 bets on the turn and I get paid off in 2 spots on the river. Chic was driving the action, actually. I never saw his hand.
After about 4-1/2 hours of play, I'm up $467 and decide to rack-up. It was the perfect session, and I was actually ahead for the trip. Very cool. We headed off to the excellent PokerStars dinner where we had great food and conversation. I don't recall everyone who was at our table, but I do remember talking a lot to Reilly Matthews (sorry if I spelled your name wrong). He's a really interesting guy and fun to hang out with.
Got up early the next morning (Sat.). Russ and Oscar and I headed over to the Stage Deli for breakfast. It wasn't our first choice. The food was decent but WAY over-priced for breakfast. Within 30 minutes of breakfast, Russ and I got into a $1/$2 NL game. Russ woke up with QQ on the second hand of the session, and he made a nice score from the table maniac (who was sitting behind about $1,500 and raising nearly every hand). This game was an interesting highlight in my poker career. In just under 2 hours of play, I voluntarily entered the pot ONE time. ONE. I had 22 early and limped. Russ raised and I folded. That was the ONLY hand I played in 2 hours. My cards were that bad. (If I see J3o again I'm going to scream)
Off to the ATLARGE No-Limit tournament. We started with T3,000 with small blinds, so we got a lot of play. Let's see, at my table was ADB Timmy, a much thinner Eric Holtman, Paul McMullin, a cool guy from Pittsburgh, a really cute girl named Michelle (no, not Jerrod's Michelle), and a few other players who I didn't know. All were very friendly as well as competitive. It was a great table. Not many hands of note in the 3 hours I lasted. I stole a bunch of pots and had a fairly decent stack for a while, but lost most of it with QQ (I'm starting to hate that hand) vs. Eric's AK when he spiked a K on the river. The one memorable hand came when my friend of Pitt. raised and I looked down to see AA. DING! I re-raised about 3 times his raise. Immediately he shoves in. I expected to see KK, so I called. He had the other two aces and we split.
After Eric crippled me with my QQ hand, I got it in with AT and lost to KJ and that's all she wrote. I was off to find a good side game. I actually ended up in a great pink game with Dilli and LenG and Barry and several other wonderful people. It was another fantastic game, and I had a blast messing with LenG (my favorite target). During the game, the tournament was still going on, and I kept going back to check on Oscar and Russ. Russ busted out a few hours after I did, but Oscar was still going strong. After a while, they got down to the final table, and much to my delight, Oscar was right there with a decent (but not huge) stack. I watched as they slowly busted out one by one, and finally, it was 4-handed. Noelle had a good stack, and another woman who was playing NLHE for the first time had a big stack as well.
Oscar and (Bob?) had the smaller stacks, but no one was out of it. Finally, a big hand goes down and Oscar and (Bob?) get it all in. Oscar loses the hand, and the obligatory clapping commenced. But no one realized that Oscar actually was ahead by T2,000 before the hand started, so he was left with 2 orange chips. With T600,000 in play, T2,000 is not a big stack, but nobody told Oscar. In about 9 hands, he turned the T2,000 into over T80,000, and then he was off. Noelle was the first to go after a deal was refused by the chip leader (I'm sorry I don't remember her name). Shortly after, (Bob?) busted her and heads-up play commenced with Oscar having about a 3-2 chip lead. They made an equity deal and played for the presto plaque. Oscar finished it off in short order and became the 2005 ATLARGE NLHE champ! It was very cool, and I was extremely happy for him. I was especially happy when he bought dinner that night!
I didn't play the Stud tournament the next day. I got into a really good $10/$20 game where I proceeded to drop about $300 after getting 2 sets cracked by runner-runners, but that's poker. Russ has made dinner reservations for us at 7:30 at the steakhouse at the Taj, and we've got some time to kill, so Barry and I head to the Borgata with Oscar since he's never seen it. We check out the casino and the poker room and all, and then head back to the Taj to have dinner.
The steakhouse at the Taj is decent, but not the best I've had. I think we would have been better off going to Old Homestead at the Borgata (which is excellent), but we had over $150 in comps to help us with the bill (nearly $300 for the 4 of us), so we got off cheap. We had a great time and all of us were too stuffed for desert. And after 4 days of constant poker, we called it a night and headed back to the house for some good conversation and relaxation. After reading Harrington's excellent book for a couple hours, I headed to bed.
The trip home was 7 1/2 hours, but fairly easy going. Oscar is excellent with navigation, and we had no trouble finding our way thru Philly and back on to 80 W. heading home. Of course, we had a lot of great conversation about poker and ATLARGE and everything else.
Final Thoughts
Finished the trip at -$417. Not a good result, but it could have been a lot worse. A good chunk of that was my misplay of QQ in the NL game, so I'm not beating myself up about it. I thought I played pretty good during the weekend, and I'm looking forward to getting back to the daily grind of online poker.
It was fantastic seeing all of my friends again. Thanks to LenG, Dilli, Mitch, Dave Fruchter (thanks for the Tenacious D CD), Chic, Reilly, Joan (and junior), Big Boy Bruce, Eric and Kim, Steve and Heather, the 8-2 guys, John Harkness, Action Bob, all the cool people at my NLHE table, and everyone else for making this a great weekend! Special thanks to my good friends Oscar (NLHE champ!), Barry Kornspan and my co-author Russ Fox. You guys make these trips for me! And a s00per special thanks to goldie for putting on another great ATLARGE and for the use of the Goldie Nugget. You rock!
See you all next year, and please, email me and stay in touch!
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scottro
http://www.livejournal.com/users/scottro/
www.scottro.com
