Date: 1/16/2001
From: Jim Geary
Newsgroups: rec.gambling.poker
Subject: JG's Reno Trip Report
day 0
Get hosed by SWA on the seemingly simple task of connecting planes through Las Vegas. While waiting in queue for the next flight to Reno, some weird guy sitting on the floor in front of me keeps raising his Oakland Raiders gilligan-style hat to show me his near bald pate and smiling evilly at me. I almost recognize him, but don't dare make eye contact. After three or four eclipse-style lookaways, I start thinking maybe it's Razzo, but he looks a little too young and mellow to be him. The whole time he doesn't say a word. Glancing at his reading material, I see he's booking up on the legalization of drugs in America. Ah, Paul Phillips. We both get hosed by the check-in clerk who needs some bonus people-skills training. Lucky us, we squeeze onto the last two seats anyway. Of course, this means I have no bags when I get there. We get to the hotel and now not only do I have no luggage, I have no room. They had even charged me on my last Visa statement. Fortunately for me, I had made a photocopy that day at work for just such an emergency. Showing her the charge, they eventually discover that whoever in marketing had taken my reservation several months ago booked me for DECEMBER 9th rather than January 9th. "But there was no poker tournament on December 9th," say I. Their bad. Apparently, the block of poker rooms were all filled up without me being amongst them. A bit of tense silence ensues and I break it by saying, "look, if George Bush came here right now, could he get a room?" She sheepishly admitted yes. "Well, I just talked to him, and he ain't coming, so I think we can work something out." She laughs and five minutes later I'm checking into my 2000-square foot room. Having allotted myself plenty of time to hit the night's super when I planned the trip, I now found myself showing up an hour after it started. I take the last alternate seat, and play my anemic one buyin stack up manyfold eventually getting knocked out in the teens when my AK loses to 88. Out of the corner of my eye, I see an Omaha game built around Tom Weideman, so I drop in for a bit. When it breaks, I go drinking and storytelling at Chevy's with the TW boys, Tyler and Tom.
day 1
Limit Hold'em
400 plus players. I start in seat 1. John Bonetti is in seat 9 and Kevin Song is in seat 10. I suspect that these tournament stars just hate having someone on their left picking off all their shit, so I decided to make a project out of them. Everytime they entered a pot, I popped them. Checkcheck flop. Bet the turn, I raise, J or K folds. Over and over. They were both out within 2 hours. I felt cheated a bit when Bono blamed the dealers for his misfortune. I ran my stack up to about 8000 from the original 1000. One guy at our table is calling raises with J4s and making royal flushes. Seriously. (Hi raydon). I do well for many hours. Eventually a hand comes where I have AQs in the big blind. Folded to the button who raises, sb calls, I reraise. Board is Q rag rag with a different two suit. War breaks out where I get the last word in. Turn blank; river completes the flush and the small blind bets. It made me sick to call, but I couldn't help myself. Now, after being the daddy for so long, I'm the mommy. Some people don't react well to these dramatic changes in stack strength and panic, but I think I have a pretty good handle on it. I continue to pick my spots carefully, but not too fearfully. But nothing much materializes and I eventually go out somewhere in the 40s. I'm pretty sure if that flush hadn't come, I would've made the money. Oh well. You need a couple breaks to win a 400 person tourney. Wasn't my day. I'm still happy with how I played, and my fears that playing almost exclusively online for the last eight months short-circuiting my long-term concentration have proven unfounded.
Hit the buffet where I run into a 6ft-tall blond beautiful woman who happens to be dining alone. Cha-ching. Looks can be deceiving as she dominates the conversation with tales of growing up on a farm and working in a slaughterhouse. Um, I'll just have a salad and the check please. Saved from any temptation, I hit the casino floor looking to avenge my tourney when out of the corner of my eye, I see one older guy who looks like he has money and a couple under the belt sitting down at a table by himself as a dealer and floorperson start a game. Hmm. Pretty soon I'm playing pot-limit omaha heads up, but some British dude and Mike O'Malley show up and we play four-handed for a while. Like Mike said, I didn't play any hands at all hardly. After about an hour, we are up to six handed and some guy puts in a live straddle for 20 and I look down from the button at AQJT double suited. Hmm, I think that this meets my starting requirements. I make it 40 to go, blinds fold, straddler calls. Flop is QQJ. Ding. Check to me. What to do. Well, if I check it might look pretty suspicious so I bet 80. He calls. Turn is a baby. I bet 150. He calls. River is another jack. He checks. I put all my chips out(about another 300) in a manner that says dear god please don't call me. He calls. Ding. I play pretty tight the rest of the way and snap off one bluff with just top pair. End up pretty good. The older guy gets up and eventually we are down to three-handed so I pick up.
One game across the room seems louder than the others so I check it out. Paul Phillips is drinking wine and raising a ruckus. He introduces me to his drinking bud, Ian Dobson, "Ian was in the Poker Million.." "Oh, yeah," I respond, "you overplayed those 3s, right?" He laughed and we hit it off. I told him I defended his play on rgp, tho what I didn't tell him was that I took several diametrically opposite positions at various points in the thread and really have no idea what my last thought was. I helped them drink some wine and concluded that Ian knew a little something about poker. Paul interspersed some lessons as well. For example, he'd show me K972 and explain why this is a good hand in pot-limit as he threw in 3 green chips. Uh, thanks. I shoulda gone to bed at a reasonable hour, but the wine was pretty good, and it's not often that I can leach off of Paul's drugs and not worry about passing a test, so I stayed a bit late as a hangeron. I went to bed around 3, but ran into them at 11am in the cafe after they had polished off 6 bottles of wine as well as the game. I'll let Jim Meehan fill in the bloody details.
day 2
stud-8
Never make anything resembling a hand. Am out in about 3.5 hours. This was the tournament where I was surrounded by smoking tables from the side games and led to my whiny report the next morn.
In the evening I end up doing pretty well in the 30-60 games. Had one fortunate hand. One ethnic player from California seemed to be overplaying a lot of hands when the following confrontation developed. His big blind. A couple limpers and I raise with JJ. Flop is rags. He bets, a caller, I raise. He calls, limper folds. Turn an ace. He checks, I bet, he raises, I make it 180 and he calls. River is a J. Ding. He had Ace-shit, and had absolutely nothing on the flop, so I didn't feel so bad sucking out on him.
Go to the Italian restaurant there, Andiamo, with Tom "there's no dairy, meat, MSG, PCP or CFC's in that pasta is there" Weideman and friends. Have the Saffron Tagliatelli (recommended). Tom explains how the golf simulator at the Reno Hilton would work really cool on the Holodeck of the Enterprise if they could just use the same inertial dampers that allow them to jump to warp speed without tearing the crew members apart. Good thing my friends aren't nerds. At the end of the meal, after we've paid the check, something odd happened. The waiter, an older fellow named Danny, goes to our table and rather than picking up the folder with all the cash in it and walking away, proceeds to open it in front of us on the table, leans over and then counts it TWICE while comparing it to the bill for sixty seconds. All class.
While we're walking out, I realize that I had left my coat at the poker table 90 minutes before. Rushing to the floor, I pull up as I see it sitting untouched on the back of an empty chair. Weird. In Vegas, my coat would already be on ebay.
Played PLO for a while, where I didn't win anything for a couple hours. A couple rebuyins later, I'm in a hand with AA88 one suit and get all my money in preflop against one guy on my right who has AA27 one suit. My luck seems to have turned around as my suit hit on the turn. He is completely cool about it. He gets called by name for something and I learn that it's Randy Holland I've just doubled through. I'm not sure what the social rule is for how long you have to wait after winning a big coinflip against someone, but just the same I tell him that I had a small bet on him the year he finished in the teens at the WSOP. He turns out to be a pretty pleasant guy. I eventually get near even and call it a night.
day 3
Omaha-8.
Nothing much happened to me the first couple of levels. At the third level, I kept getting my raises picked off and isolated by guys with pocket aces. Most of my chips ate it on a pot where I open raise with A23K and get reraised by a rock behind me. Flop is K63. Ding. I check, he bets, I raise. Turn is a nine. I bet, he calls. River is a 6. An abortion. I last a little while longer. Eventually I'm in a hand on the big bling where the blind is half my stack. Someone late raises and I call with KQJT double suited black. Flop is A23 of hearts. Nice.
In the evening, hit La Strada with a couple of my Scrabble friends who were in town. One is my sports guy and he spends the entire meal trying to convince me that the Ravens should be the favorite, but I'm having none of it. "Do you think Tyrone Wheatley is going to carry you guys?" Actually, I thought that Oakland had enough of an overall game that Baltimore wouldn't be able to stack up the middle like they did against Tennessee. Still, he makes enough of a case to interest me in the money line and the under. And we were already in agreement about the Giants being for real and the Vikes a sham.
Go back to Hilton and play some PLH for a bit. One hand I put in a raise with QQ and when the flop comes QQ4, check behind everyone. No one bets the turn, so I make what appears to be a lame bluff, but no one can probably even beat that. Probably shoulda offered some more rope. The same guy who had paid off my queen's full was in the hand so I had been hopeful of making something happen. Later I get JJ and maybe misplay it. A tough hand to play. I lose a small amount, but have something to think about that night as I drift off.
day 4
PLH
Still mulling over the previous evenings PLH play when I awake, I feel ready to go. First table has several soft spots that I do well picking on. It also has Scotty Nguyen who takes the softies apart beautifully. Besides playing great, he also has the nicest table demeanor of anyone I can think of. I stole his blind a few times, but never got into any large confrontations with him. I made one mistake where I went stealing with a 56s and flopped the straight draw. The big blind checked, I bet and she reraised enough that I basically couldn't reraise her out. In PLH you have to manipulate the pots sometimes so that your opponent can't make you blink. Basically if the log base 3 of your stack size to the pot is odd you bet. If it's even you have to be the raiser. In the situation in question, it was two and I was forced to blink. Eventually I get half my money in a pot heads up with aces against an overaggressive player. Flop comes T55. I bet all in. He has 53. IGHN.
Go upstairs and watch a couple DVDs to unwind. Have a nice dinner at Andiamo(can anyone guess my favorite food ethnicity?) with Patri Friedman and Eric Shapiro, and we're later joined by Bob Skutelsky. Danny was our waiter again. I made a point of counting the silver every time he moved away from the table, but I don't think he got it. As I had to hurry out to the super, I missed the bill counting.
Later, I'm doing pretty well in the super when one guy at my table starts talking about rgp and "did you read what that Jim Geary guy said about the venue?" I let him go on for a bit before fessing up and saying that I was having a bad day when I wrote it. Rather than being confrontational, he says "well if you feel differently now, maybe you should say so." Pretty smart guy. He tells me he's Jack Fox and then introduces me to many rgp'rs who were there whom I didn't know. Seemed like half the room. I make it to two tables but never win many pots(not necessarily an objective in supers). Eventually I engineer a hand where I isolate Chuck Humphrey as a 7:5 FAVE and getting like 7:4 on my money, but he hits. Chuck's a pretty nice guy. I hope he put my chips to good use.
After the super, I decide to take off from playing any more and rustle up a chinesepoker party in my room with Tyler, Patri, Jen and Brec. We played KC in the middle and on one occasion Patri accidentally used one of his back cards in his middle hand, so that instead of spreading 3-5-5, he went 3-6-4. The really sad thing is he beat me in both spots anyway. I'm the big loser going off for $5.50 at a quarter a point. I decide to take Sunday off from playing and watch football instead.
day 5
7-stud
Wake up and think, "day off, screw that, I came to play poker." Head down to the tournament to sign up and as I walk by the bar I see the Giants are already up 4137-0 in the second quarter. Nice way to wake up.
Start off at a great table with several players who just aren't very tough. By the time we break 3 hours later, I've tripled my stack to 3k. I feel like I'm playing better this tournament than any of the other four I had played. At the next table, I continue to mow 'em down eventually getting my stack to 8000. With less than 4 tables left, I get moved to another one to even things out. When I get there, I see that TJ Cloutier has a ton of chips and is abusing the table. In one of the first hands I play, I raise the bringin with a pair of jacks and TJ reraises with a K showing. I think for a while and lay it down trying to send a signal that says "I'm not getting involved here, but when I do get involved, you better step down, dude." Somehow, I don't think he got that signal. The next time I raise and get reraised by his king, I make it 3 bets. He calls. Just then, Mike O'Malley walks up, sees my stack, and says prophetically enough, "I didn't think you played stud." TJ, who started with nothing, gets two pair by 5th street, while I end up with 4 to a straight flush to go with my pocket pair. Knowing that he started with nothing, I'm still hammering, but he won't lay down the hand. (heh). I completely miss and end up losing probably 30% of my chips on that hand. A few minutes later, the almost exact same situation unfolds. Once again I miss and at the same time we are breaking to three tables(they pay two). Shit. Had I foreseen how quickly we went from four to three tables(much quicker than should have been expected), I MIGHT have played a little differently, tho I really wasn't shooting for the $515 for 16th place, and it seemed like I was doing what I could to win the tournament. Now I really have a crummy stack, and looking around, almost none of the other players do. I clearly have a bullseye on my chest, but I pick my spots and am actually able to steal at a better clip than I am anteing. Eventually, TJ (who had followed me when we broke) decides to make a stand against my steal and catches a baby straight(!) to my kings. I go out in 18th. Ouch. I shake his hand and wish him luck. Given that I took a large amount of chips and basically handed them to him over the last 20 minutes, I figure he's gonna do real well with them. Instead, he ended up 15th or 16th. Aiyah. Give _me_ those chips. Please. After the tournament, I was too burnt out to do anything but drink beer. Unfortunately the cocktail waittress was too burnt out to bring me beer. It was like pulling teeth. Anyway, I went up to pack defeated but not discouraged.
So, I went 0 for 7 in the tournaments I played, but I still feel I played well in every event. It's not easy. I'm happy that I made enough in the side games to make up for the $2500 in entry fees I Irwined off, but even if I hadn't, I'd be glad I made the effort. In tournament poker, it takes a lot of data points to get to the long run. I'm seven closer.
I also had the pleasure of meeting a number of new people whom I will take the risk of trying to name all at once: bob, jim, raydon, scottyb, jack, wenmax, ian, rod, bonnie, casey, randy, chuck, and _your_name_here_ in case I forgot anyone. Even if I'd been knocking 'em dead, I still would've wanted to come home after a week. I miss my family too easily. Guess I'm just a homebody. See y'all in April.
Last Modified 1/18/01
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