MARCHRON'S FOUR WINDS TRIP REPORTS

[Buzz-cp]

[ QUOTE ]

edit: who's Run? as in Run's house behind the crack/whore houses?


[/ QUOTE ]

I guess it's this. I so haven't watched MTV in 17 years...

[Brain]

[ QUOTE ]

edit: who's Run? as in Run's house behind the crack/whore houses?

[/ QUOTE ]

Run's House

We had, a whole lot of superstars, on this stage here tonight
But I want yall to know one thing-this is....My House
And when I say who's house, yall know what time it is.
Who's house?
Runs house!

Ah, once again my friend
Not a trend for then
They said, rap was crap
But never had this band
Till the ruler came
With a cooler name
Make ya dance and prance and drove the fans insane
Name is Run my son
Number one for fun
Not a gun that's done and get done by none
The others act in fact ya just wack I kill
Why? its fun my son and Run heads the bill

Who's house? (Say What?) Run's house!
Who's house? (Say What?) Run's house!

I'm in the house y'all
I'm in the house y'all
And this is how DMC turn it out yall
I'm in the house y'all
I'm in the house y'all
And this is what DMC be about y'all
Well my name is dmc, the all-time great
I bust the most rhymes in New York state
Reporters cry, producers die
They want to be down with the king!
The wanted man from the wanted clan
Wanted by every fan from across the land
Not a g-a-n-g off the street
R-u-n-d-m-c complete!

Who's house? (Say What?) Run's house!
Who's house? (Say What?) Run's house!

Run, Run, Run, Run
Get on the mic and (MC)
Another time I take for the rhyme I make
Make me mad and sad because the fad is fake
See I do this thing so come persue this king
One minor rhyme is all you can spring
Cause I'm the best I'm def, ask the rest they left
Thats my name my game and we don't need the rep
You get the booze you lose, you suckas close your mouth
I set a trap for rap thats crap
Its run's house!

Who's house? (Say What?) Run's house!
Who's house? (Say What?) Run's house!

Some underestimate and miscalculate
My intent to create what I call the great
Till I make a song that I prove em wrong
See my song so strong it'll make em come along
Come in the door, get on the floor
Hard rock hard hitting hip-hop hardcore
Causing casualties and catastrophes
And tragedies for the sucker emcees
Use your strategies to get the best of me
You dirty rat MCs, whoever you may be
You need to go down south, you need to shut your mouth
Its all about no doubt just shout cause we talkin' 'bout....

Who's house? Run's house!
Who's house? Run's house!

[shuinthehouse]

I saw Run-DMC, Beastie Boys, Whodini, timax social club, couple others in madison square garden in 1985 (sophomore year of college), that's right - before some of you were born, and before most had heard of any of those groups. My friends and I were the only white people we could find in the garden, pretty wild. Then the beastie boys took off and white suburban kids started listening to rap. We started early b/c we played hoop and hung with a lot of black kids.

[marchron]

Part 2 of Trip Report:


FOUR WINDS TRIP REPORT DAY 1

When we last left marchron, he had a shimmying car on the way home from Four Winds, and though he departed $253 richer, this still worried him. So when he awoke Thursday morning, he put every last bit of mechanical know-how to work and discovered that his oil didn't need changing, and neither did his tires, and for some reason he's speaking in the third person . . .

Oh. Where were we?

Yeah, so anyway, I have no [censored] clue what's wrong with my car, and I don't care. With my history with this car, I'd be more worried if things started going RIGHT with it. But that doesn't mean I'll be taking dumb unecessary risks, so not only am I going to pass on screaming down highways hellbent on not missing a deadline I've already missed, I think I'll take the scenic route on some back country roads. Thanks to Google Maps' new drag-and-drop route-changer feature, I can plan it down to each and every country road, and it actually doesn't cost me that much time because the total distance is shorter even though I can't go as fast.

If you've ever used Google Maps or other, similar websites, you'll probably notice a disclaimer somewhere that says that traffic and construction may prevent you from following that exact route. And guess what? It's true. The FIRST off-the-beaten-path road I took: closed due to construction. Turn right for detour. So I make the detour, and suddenly I'm in the middle of some new ritzy subdivision. LOL? Eventually the county forgets to put up another sign, and I come to a T-intersection without knowing which way to turn. Luckily, the two cars in front of me both turn left, so I follow them, and LOL, the road's still closed there, too. So all three of us have to back up the train and turn around, where we go over dirt roads and people's driveways and God-knows-what-all before my internal compass tells me I'm now going east. I wish to go west. [censored] this, where's the highway?

Four Winds' official directions advise that, no matter which direction you're coming from, you should take Interstate 94, get off on Exit 1 and come south to the first light. Since I did not follow these instructions, I was the first person to the light coming north, and there were seven million cars at the light from the other direction, with about fifteen million more still waiting to exit the highway behind them. Christ, this is going to suck. The stoplight's been turned off so Potowatomi Tribal Police and Berrien County Sheriffs can direct traffic, and there's 23 million and one cars trying to jam down onto one road. When we all make it to the entrance, they spread us into three lanes, but again we all have to jam down into one, a task further hindered by the fact that the police sent a tour bus into the thinnest of the three lanes and it scraped two emergency vehicles in its attempt to merge. LOL OWNED. (There will be MS Paint of this, I promise.)

Some comparisons:

Miles between South Bend and the entrance to Four Winds: just over 40
Miles between the entrance to Four Winds and the parking garage: just over 1

Time elapsed between South Bend and the entrance to Four Winds: about 50 minutes
Time elapsed between the entrance to Four Winds and the parking garage: I don't know, because after about 20 I decided to park in the RV lot. [censored] this, it's 95º outside and I have a hinky car that's had coolant problems in the past. Which reminds me:

Number of overheated cars on the side of the road between between the entrance to Four Winds and the parking garage: 2

One of them wasn't mine. Three cheers for the RV lot.

I accosted Four Winds in Part 1 for not having a state-of-the-art waiting list system, and I was wrong to do so; they just weren't using it last night because there was no need. Today, there was, as the place was pretty hoppin'. For those of you curious, these were the games being spread:

LHE: 3/6, 5/10, 10/20
NL: 1/2, 2/5, 5/10
Omaha: 4/8 Hi/Lo Kill, and I think someone was trying to start a PLO game.

And they had $50 "Tier One" sit-n-go's to a WPT satellite and $100 cash sit-n-go's ready as soon as 10 people signed up, plus the 4 HU tables. To put yourself on the list, you scan your W[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] card on a half-kiosk/half-podium looking doodad, select all the tables you wish to wait on, and it tells you how deep the list is. To check where you are, you look at the large flat-screen over the cashier cage. The poker room manager has a foldover laptop, and when you're up, they check their display to find your seat. A pretty efficient system, just missing one thing: a microphone. Seriously, nobody had any clue when they were up unless they were milling about the big screen, and since that's in a high-traffic area, nobody was milling about there. It can't be that much of an extra burden to put another screen outside the poker room, or use a microphone to broadcast just in the small portion of the back of the casino around the poker room. But heaven forbid we upset the Three-Card Poker players.

Now, the tables. In the center of each table there's what appears to be a Microsoft Surface interface, though nobody in the room was geek enough to know for sure. This is the playing area, and it shows everyone's actions, bets in play, and bankrolls behind. It also keeps track of the pot and the rake, and more good news: THE RAKE IS THREE DOLLARS. In front of everyone's seat there's a smaller touch-screen setup. When your name is up on the list, it will reserve the seat for you, so you know where to sit. You scan your card, enter a PIN, select how much you're bringing to the table, and you're off. On your screen you see the nicknames of everyone else at the table, as well as their bankrolls, who's the button and who's still in the hand (though these are also on the main display), and who the action is on. At the back of your display is a little light that kicks in when it's on you. When it's your turn, you look at your cards by touching the area right above them; by cupping your hand into a C-shape you prevent others from seeing, and the corners of the digital cards peel up so you see what you have. On a couple of occasions, I had to blink for a second because it really did look pretty lifelike. No pictures obviously inside the casino, but there's still-pics and promotional video at their website: playpokerpro.com.

How do I like it compared to standard B&M? It's . . . different, and that's really all I can say about it. Next time you play live, try to keep track of all the things that happen that waste time: the shuffled deck replacement, deal, the players who don't bet right, the dealer having to drag the bets into the pot, players (or dealers) who misread their hands. The machines eliminate all of that, though there's a slight learning curve for players who are unfamiliar with the technology, of course. It's not a perfect replacement, though; the tables aren't programmed for live straddles or blind-chopping, though there's no reason why upgrades couldn't put those in.

However, there's something to be said for the ambience. Don't laugh, but the one person who did more to get me hooked on the whole atmosphere of poker than anyone else was . . . future "The Price Is Right" host Drew Carey. Hey! I said no laughing. Seriously, his short story "The Royal" in his book Dirty Jokes & Beer: Stories Of The Unrefined is really a magnificent description of a poker room (in the story, the Horseshoe in Vegas) and the thrills and excitement that go into playing just one pot. With all the aesthetics you lose out on through electronic poker, I can't see myself playing at Four Winds exclusively, though the lower rake and tournament juice will certainly bring me back (and the short distance doesn't hurt, either).


I put myself on the waitlist for 3/6 and got sat with two Mikes. When the table broke up, I did two things: go to the registration desk to change my screenname to "Irish Mike" (someone else named "Mike," though not at my table, followed suit and now he's billed as "Assassin Mike"), and, since I just couldn't stand it anymore, went on a quest to get some real chips. Since there were 23 million people there and ONE cashier cage area (duhhhhh), the line for that was seven miles long. So I found a nearby Pai Gow table, and requested to get change broke, and they told me they couldn't do that. WTF? I'm going to play, you goobers, I just want $10 in white chips when I'm done. I went to the end of the cashier cage line, dejected, where I met a helpful staff member. For the life of me, I cannot remember her name, which is a damn shame, because she was gorgeous, and not just because she recommended doing a check-change at the craps table. Whoever you are, I'm sorry, I'm bad with names. Call me.

At craps, I decided to juice my karma by donating a yo for the house and putting $5 on the hard 4 (2+2, LDO). You jerks didn't come through for me, though, and I lost that bet but broke even on the rest. Thanks, Mason Malmuth; if you would have called your company Four Plus Four Publishing I would have made $135.

Back with shuffling chips, I got a seat at another 3/6 table. On my left was Hector — not the guy in Part 1 I called "Hector," but someone actually named "Hector." On my right was Hector's wife, Angela, and between them they contaminated my seat. It wasn't either of their faults; Angela was a self-confessed newb and Hector, poor Hector . . . he was a poor swimmer and could never survive the river. Seriously, that guy took some ridiculous river beats and dropped three $60 buy-ins in rapid succession, and I followed him to the rail. To Hector's left was a bad-beat artist who looked like William Hung, and was to poker what William Hung is to singing. To his left was Anthony, who cracked my QQ with 74s. To his left was Rafael, who was all-in twice, hitting runner-runner to win one of them, and then proceeded to run it up to $180 or so. Nice work. And to Rafael's left was Jeremy. Many of you may know that I am an alumnus of the University of Notre Dame, so when someone shows up wearing a Michigan Wolverines jersey, even though we're in the state of Michigan, I tend to not like them. Jeremy was awesome, playing off of me like we were Martin and Lewis. I mentioned drinking, he mentioned my "Irish Mike" screenname, I mentioned that I'm really Polish, and he whipped out his ID. Jeremy is very obviously of Latino descent, but his ID reads "Jeremy Liewjuerozakowski" or something just so awesomely Polish. He's adopted. And he was kicking ass, raising on absolute air and taking down pots left and right. I knew the beats were getting to me when he raised and I iso-3-bet with AJo, not even concerning myself with the two opponents caught in between us. Hector capped and I wound up in it deep. When the smoke cleared, I had $19 left at the table. Total loss -$81, total on the day -$69, total for the trip +$184.

I guess my theory was right: electronic poker does make you more loose.





A postscript: the buffet was expensive, but outstanding. However, if you're from the Midwest and are used to Japanese/Oriental restaurants that serve only bland, tamped-down wasabi with their sushi to suit the wimpy palates of white people, I'd recommend you tread lightly near the sushi portion of the Four Winds buffet. The wasabi greeted me with a firecracker to the sinuses and then ripped its way down the usual path, reaching its real target zone about halfway through dessert.

The sad thing is, it was so good I may have it tomorrow. Just with less wasabi.

[JavaNut]

[ QUOTE ]
Jeremy is very obviously of Latino descent, but his ID reads "Jeremy Liewjuerozakowski" or something just so awesomely Polish.

[/ QUOTE ]

What do polish women get on their wedding night that is long and hard? Their husbands last name. Ta-daaa [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[Buzz-cp]

Buzz's Notes:
comparisons: awesome
SNG setup: awesome
cupping: no comment
also: ha i was going to suggest changing SN. nh!
Question for anybody: Would you rather sit at a table where you can sit down and get dealt in without posting, or one where you are required to post or wait for BB?
iso'ing michigan dude: standard

re:[ QUOTE ]
Next time you play live, try to keep track of all the things that happen that waste time: the shuffled deck replacement, deal, the players who don't bet right, the dealer having to drag the bets into the pot, players (or dealers) who misread their hands. The machines eliminate all of that, though there's a slight learning curve for players who are unfamiliar with the technology, of course. It's not a perfect replacement, though; the tables aren't programmed for live straddles or blind-chopping, though there's no reason why upgrades couldn't put those in.

[/ QUOTE ]
I dunno..I like this stuff. It makes the game very animated and fun, although I can see an increased WR playing at these table, i.e. online speed / cheap rake / live players = $$$$$. I like to interact socially though, so I'm curious about how much of this is cut out. LOL at phil laak in the video.

overall:[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]

[MrWookie]

Live, I prefer to sit down and get playing w/o posting. The pace is slow enough that I'd rather not have to wait to post my BB or be faced with a somewhat -EV proposition. Well, hmmmm. I suppose if I'm forced to post, everyone else is forced to post, too, if they want to play right away. Would the EV I gain their posting be good enough for the cost of my hands lost waiting to post? That's tough to say, actually.

[Bona]

At the Gold Strike you come in the game in any position (except the blinds of course) w/o posting. The dealer I asked about that said "yeah it is different we want people gamblimg not sitting."

I haven't considered all the ramifications of that and you do have to make up a blind if you miss one (think smoke break) during play.

[marchron]

Off in a few to meet up with CrMenace @ teh lovely Four Winds, but until then I just realized something:

[ QUOTE ]
Four Winds' official directions advise that, no matter which direction you're coming from, you should take Interstate 94, get off on Exit 1 and come south to the first light. Since I did not follow these instructions, I was the first person to the light coming north, and there were seven million cars at the light from the other direction, with about fifteen million more still waiting to exit the highway behind them. Christ, this is going to suck. The stoplight's been turned off so Potowatomi Tribal Police and Berrien County Sheriffs can direct traffic, and there's 23 million and one cars trying to jam down onto one road. When we all make it to the entrance, they spread us into three lanes, but again we all have to jam down into one, a task further hindered by the fact that the police sent a tour bus into the thinnest of the three lanes and it scraped two emergency vehicles in its attempt to merge. LOL OWNED. (There will be MS Paint of this, I promise.)

[/ QUOTE ]
And about a month later, I deliver:


Here you see the general situation. (I didn't put in all the cars coming off I-94 and M-239 because I didn't feel like putting 23 million dots in.) The only way to get into the casino is off Wilson Road, which leads under a canope and then to the neverending trail to the casino entrance.




And here's how traffic was directed at the entrance. Instead of two lanes in and two lanes out, the police put their cars and a bunch of cones to make it three lanes in and one lane out. Presumably, the cops directing traffic were the owners of the cars, which means the first one was a moran.




And this is the result.

[marchron]

RETURN TO FOUR WINDS: MARCHRON'S TRIP REPORTS, VOLUME TWO (bitches)

PROLOGUE: The Plan

So BobbyShaftoe drops me a line in the NC Thread about how he can make it to Four Winds on Labor Day weekend. I was planning on going somewhere to play on Labor Day, perhaps Four Winds, but I also wanted to check out Resorts since I hadn't been there in a while and maybe it improved with new competition nearby. Meanwhile, CrMenace has had a standing offer to meet me at Four Winds, since job requirements means he spends a lot of time about a half-hour north of there. Hmmm, I smell a 2+2 Takeover! Unfortunately, CrMenace can only make it Monday night, Shaftoe can only make it Saturday or Sunday, and I really only wanted to go Monday but I can swing Sunday, too. Grrrrr. Oh well, I guess I'll go two days instead of one, meet both of them, and tell each of them about the other or something.


PART ONE: Shaftoe Sunday

Since Saturday is bad for me, I arrange to meet Bobby on Sunday. He wanted, in his words, a "late-night session," so I don't bother getting up at the buttcrack of dawn because I plan on being there a while. I roll in at about 5:30 or so and discover that the other sports team I have much love for, the FIRST-PLACE CHICAGO CUBS, had rallied back to being down 5-4. When they fell behind 5-1 in the fifth, I kinda gave up on them a little, preferring to listen to some good hard rock 'n roll to psych myself up for the e-poker ("Ace Of Spades" by Motörhead is a really good selection here). Okay, I'd like to watch the end of this game; if by chance Bobby shows up I've warned him about this possibility ahead of time. Unfortunately, while my backup plan was, as before, to watch the game while playing Pai Gow, all the Pai Gow tables were either a) packed to the gills, b) had $25 minimum bets or higher, c) were in front of TVs showing worthless NFL preseason games instead of the FIRST-PLACE CHICAGO CUBS, or d) some or all of the above.

I wander around, looking for tables that fit my cheapo bankroll requirements and also have a view of the game. Lo and behold, I find the one $10 blackjack table in the entire casino on probably the second-busiest day they've had (only August 2, Opening Day, was busier), with one available seat at "second base." It doesn't have a direct view of the game, but if I set my chair at an angle I can see the giant projection TV at the C-Level Lounge, and just as I notice that, at that very moment, the Houston pitcher decided to adjust himself while the camera was focused on his mid-torso. LOL twentyfootnutscratchaments. FIRST-PLACE CHICAGO CUBS first baseman Derrek Lee comes up to bat with one man on base in the bottom of the eighth. I'm basically not caring about blackjack; I think I hit a 19 once, but it doesn't matter because D-Lee hits a drive to deep left field. I shout "GET OUT!" loud enough so the entire casino hears me, and it was evidently heard in Chicago, too, since the ball lands about four rows deep in the bleachers and the FIRST-PLACE CHICAGO CUBS take a 6-5 lead, which they hold through the ninth as I was standing on a 7 and not splitting Aces and doubling down on 16. When the FIRST-PLACE CHICAGO CUBS win, I bolt, somehow finishing up $10. Thanks dealer, give me ten whites for this, I got poker to play.

I scan in for 3/6 and notice that there's some beginnings of interest in a 5/10 table. Since I never got the chance to do that 15-BB challenge last time I was there, I decide to give it another shot this time, putting myself on that list, too. I make it five deep. I put $90 on my card and sit down at a 3/6 table in Seat 10. As I approach, I think that there's a young Asian man in Seat 9, but it turns out to be an older Asian lady named Lin. She was wearing a Cubs hat. I like her already. Whenever she's in a hand, and this was fairly often, she looks like she's doing aerobics in her seat. I don't know if this is a reliable tell or not. She'd limp in with T6o and the like, basically anything that could make a straight and/or flush. If she raised, book her for AA. She had 'em four times, winning twice; hey, .500 is a pretty respectable batting average for AA in live 3/6. (A little while later we did get an Asian guy in Seat 4 whose name was K and then thirteen letters that were either H, O, U, A, N, or E. The instant he sat down, I told him I'd respect him and his heritage by not even attempting to pronounce it. He understood. I called him K-Dog.)

Seat 1 was RONALD, an older fellow who was skeptical about the e-poker. When he found out I'd been here before, he asked me questions, and my well-rehearsed spiel of "faster play, smaller rake, no dealer tokes" was as just as sharp as it had been a month before. He still wasn't impressed. A little later on, his buddy comes up, who'd been playing 1/2 NL, and RONALD asks his buddy how he liked the e-tables. "Oh man, it's great," his buddy said, "the game moves so much faster, and the rake is only $3, and you don't have to toke the dealer! I love it!" RONALD looked at me and I shrugged and winked.

But the coolest guy was another old dude in Seat 5, with the name "HYDRO." I have no idea why he picked this name. Maybe he worked at a dam; maybe he thought "AQUAMAN" would look dorky. Either way, he was killing the game, with a stack in the high $200s as I arrived and rising pretty steadily.

Some nondescript hands go by; I win some, I lose others, but I'm up a little. After about an hour or so, I get JTs on the button after just one limper. My implieds suck, but since the game's not too aggressive I can very often see four or even five cards for 1 SB, so I limp. RONALD raises us all from the small blind (dammit), the big blind, the limper and I all call and the flop comes 889, giving me an OESD and a BDFD. It's checked to me and I make a freecard bet; RONALD calls and the other two drop (dammit). The turn's a 7 and RONALD check/raises me, leaving him with $7 after his $12 raise (dammit). I call and call the river, he shows the obvious 99 and I lose. Dammit.

I play a few more hands, and as my big blind approaches I'm becoming aware that I can hear music being pumped through the PA system. On Opening Weekend, that was one of the glitches Four Winds had yet to resolve; the volume was either set to "Nonexistent" or "Ear-Splittingly Loud," with no in-betweens, and it varied from one to the other seemingly at random, though how often Nickelback was playing when it was "Ear-Splittingly Loud" makes me think it wasn't just variance. But today it was just faint enough to be good white noise for me to focus on to drown out all the clatter from the seven trillion slot machines. I could make out the beat, but that was all. It comes my turn to post and I opt out for a bathroom/cigarette break, and as I stand, I don't know whether that extra two feet between me and the ceiling mattered, or whether the casino had just suddenly hushed up, but I finally heard some words: "Inside we both know what's been goin' on / We know the game and we're gonna play it / IIIIIIIII just wanna tell you how I'm feelin' . . ." DAMMIT. Four Winds just rickrolled me. Son of a bitch. I walk away from the table laughing, probably getting weird looks from everyone else.

I come back, make up most of my losses from that boat-over-straight hand I lost, then pick up AA. The hand before, HYDRO had them and won, so I'm a little worried since we've already established about a 50% winning percentage for AA due to Lin's results. When I had them, I had three opponents, and on every postflop street one of them donked into me, but somehow I managed to win UI and scooped a pretty sizable pot. I notice I'm up to $151 and opt out of posting my BB again. I've made it to 5/10, sweet. I go back and check the list and it's still five deep with me at the end of it. I ask a host how many people I'd need to open the 5/10 table and he laughs. "Man, that list is probably four hours old, most of those guys are probably gone by now." Pricks. If you're leaving, why not unregister yourself so I don't get my hopes up? It can't be that hard.

I notice it's about 9:00 or so, so I decide I should quit 3/6 and head to the buffet since I don't want to have to leave whenever Bobby shows up, and maybe when I'm done eating the 5/10 list will fill up again. I get to the buffet and they're slammed; I have to make reservations for 10:30. Grrrrr. When I get back, they've broken the other 3/6 table and combined it with the one I just left, and the waitlist is two deep to get back in. Grrrrr. I wait for an hour and fifteen minutes and move up only one spot. I suppose if I'd wanted to, I could have sat at any of the five or six tables running 1/2 NL; that's quickly becoming the game at Four Winds. I also could have sat at the O8B 4/8 Kill game that was also running, but I suck at lolmahahaha, and besides Four Winds always puts them alllll the way in a table in the far corner, as if to say hey you weirdos, we're sticking you out here so you don't freak out all the Hold'em players, capisce?

The buffet was excellent, as always, but I was bummed because they were out of sushi. On the other hand, I guess that removed the danger of me overdosing on wasabi again (in a PM to Bobby I said that if I'm in the buffet, look for the guy who's sucking on a fire extinguisher because I tried playing with that fire again). When I get back I discover that four more names appear below mine on the 5/10 list, so I ask a host if he'll attempt to find out if even one of the guys above me is still here, since that would bring us up to six players and they can open up. In the meantime, another 3/6 table opened, so I sit there and — surprise! — it all falls to hell. I should have known it would be a rough go when, of all people, Michael showed up. That'd be the iPod-wearing guy from Part IV of my original TR who three-bet a flush draw and I suckered myself into folding QQ on a K-high flop. (After thinking more about that hand, I realized he was correctly pumping that draw for value, but after watching him play more, I discovered that was just accidentally optimal on his part; he loves donking it up with suited cards that flop flush draws.) It was like an Opening Weekend Reunion when Charlene sat down. I met her on Day Two but she didn't make the TR cut because she donated to everybody but me. Then Jim showed up, of thanks-for-folding-your-live-one-outer-here-let-me-buy-you-this-beer fame from the finale.

Amongst the people I don't know, to my right is a lady named Mildred who was way too classy for us, since she was drinking merlot. I mean, wine at a poker table? Go to the baccarat pit where you belong. To her right is a backwards-cap youngster named Joshua, who provided the humor for the night when he just called Charlene's river bet HU holding 9[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] on a 8[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] 7x 10[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] J[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] 7[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] board, not realizing he had a straight flush. The LOLness was that Charlene had the lone A[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img], and she would have paid off her entire stack $6 at a time. I made sure to mention this as often as possible, first because it's hilarious, but also because I was missing flops like the Notre Dame defense missed tackling Tashard Choice, so I needed something to entertain myself. The best hand I had was KTs on a KQT flop. The turn bricked but the river A wrecked my hand; I bet, Michael raised and I folded. Much as I didn't want to bet/fold anything against him given our history, he's never raising anything less than Aces up there. He had the Jack at least 95% of the time.

The clock is ticking past midnight and there's absolutely no sign of Bobby. I realized sometime during the night that I have no idea what he looks like other than he's, in his measurement, 5'20". So I was beginning to just walk up to random people who looked like they were in the 6'8" neighborhood and making small talk. Here's the thing: I'm not good at just making idle chit-chat with strangers, and poker players, as a rule, don't like being bugged. And there I was, bugging them. I couldn't just say "sup bro?" because that's really kinda personal, don't you think? So I had to find some point of conversation and try to work a 2+2ism in it somewhere. Here's the other thing: most guys who are 6'8" can probably kick my ass. I nearly caught an asswhoopin' from a big, kinda mean-lookin' dude who was short-stacked in the midnight MTT Four Winds was running. I basically ripped on his hat. It was brown with an orange Superman logo (as opposed to blue and red), but I had to bag on it so I could say "Meh, I don't know, I guess I'm kind of a nit about that," making sure to emphasize "nit." No response from him, unless you count his internal dilemma on whether or not to kill me right then and there or wait until going BUSTO first.

I decide I'm giving Bobby another half-hour. I get back to my table and notice I'm getting down to around $50. Four Winds flips my boomswitch, though, and suddenly when I'm playing two cards bigger than 10, I turn Broadway. Michael, Charlene, Jim and a few other nameless people eventually leave, K-Dog shows up and quickly leaves, and I bolt too, back to the other table, where RONALD and HYDRO are still there; RONALD was back near $100 and HYDRO was north of $400. I win a couple more pots to get me to $92. W00t, back in black again, I'm bolting. Wherever you are, Bobby, it's too late for me. I leave $2 ahead at about 1:30 AM.

Halfway home I realized I never took my name off the list for 5/10. Whoops.


(I later learned that Bobby brought a friend who lived too far away to make a trip to Four Winds feasible, so they went to . . . Resorts. [censored]. Why the hell didn't you tell me, Shaftoe? I would have gone there as a Plan B. We really need to start coordinating this [censored] better, bro.)



Tomorrow: I actually do meet CrMenace. Chedda shipped, LOLZ abound. Stay tuned.
<font color="white">Sorry about the rickroll, but since I got had I have to pass it on.</font>