ATLARGE 2017 - Trip Report - Jhiym
Wednesday:
Pre-Atlarge. I decided to take my truck to the Wash Haus to get washed and have the interior vacuumed and cleaned as there was a chance of rain on Thursday. Looked like new afterwards! A few days earlier Rich Bremer had a ride lined up from the Borgata to MD Live with Paul M., but Paul M. decided not to play the Sunday event, which Rich won last year so I offered to give him a ride home so he could defend his title on Sunday and then visit MD Live and fly home to LA from BWI.
Thursday:
Sleep in and then packed while checking the news to time my drive in between red waves of rain on the radar for minimal rain impact. Finally leave my house around 11:30, stop and get gas, and I am off in just a drizzle!
11:45: I come upon a car accident delay on 97 near Millersville that closes two right lanes. Takes another 30 minutes to get through that. Just enough time for the heavy rain to catch up and join me all the way to the Borgata. It was like driving inside a brushless power car wash for the next 3 hours, but I got there without incident and the rain kept the chances down of the Jersey Devil from finding me on the way.
I arrive at the Borgata around 3:30. Get checked in and unpack.
I have my poker/slot money sealed in an envelope in my wallet as I count that separate from food/drink/rooms. I head down to the casino and insert my Borgata card in a slot machine and discover I have $100 in free slot play. So I play for a little while and manage to hit a small progressive on the Hot Shots slot and win $150.
That takes care of my buy in for the 7pm NLHE tournament at the Golden Nugget. I start walking to the poker room at the Borgata to catch the Jitney to the Golden Nugget. On the way I see one of my favorite Asian slots. I forget the name but I decide to play for a few minutes and I win another $190 on the free spins.
Ok so now I am off to catch the Jitney bus to the Golden Nugget. The bus pulls up and I ask the driver if he is going towards the Golden Nugget or towards the Trop. He says the Trop but he can let me off by the stoplight in front of the Golden Nugget and to get on, so I do. We drive around towards Harrah's and the Golden Nugget and he gets a call on his cell phone and just keeps driving past the light where he was going to let me off. We get down to the Taj almost and then he remembers and tells me another Jitney is coming in the other direction and to hop off and run across the street and he'll wave the other driver down to pick me up, so reluctantly I do, thinking what else can go wrong. And it does work out as he said and I arrive at the Golden Nugget.
The Golden Nugget was been remodeled a bit. Me and Cactus Kev went here years ago and were going to play in a tournament but we ended up being the only two signed up so it was canceled. This time there are about 30 players so game on. $70 buy-in NLHE. I draw Table 8 Seat 2 thinking it must be good luck! I get one decent hand the whole time and bust out pretty early about 20th. I play slots for a while and some Let it Ride and then head back to the Borgata to play more slots where my comps help with the room. I win a few small jackpots here and there to finish the night still up a few hundred using just my free slot play so far.
Friday:
Sleep in till 9am, then head down to the Buffet and get a nice ham and cheese omelet and some French toast. Then it's off to the poker room to get my ATLARGE badge and coin and register for the TOC event. Chat with Goldie, Maverick, Aardvark, COC, the Beckers and Uncle Al. Then the tournament begins. TOC (Omaha8, Stud Hi, Limit Hold’em - rotational) I get a few good drawing hands in Stud that never quite make it. Nothing in Hold’em and Omaha is losing too. I begin thinking I could be the first one out and in Level three. A few people bust out, but I am not far behind them and I lose to Lleww. Oh well, more time for slots! Rich Bremer ended up winning the TOC tournament! So two ATLARGE wins in a row for him going back to the Sunday event last year.
So tonight I plan to play in the 7pm at Bally's Wild Wild West but it is only around 1pm so I have time to play slots at the Borgata for a while. So I walk around and find my favorite super times pay 3 handed video poker. I play for a bit not really winning or losing and then I get quad 3’s and win 400 quarters ($100). A few hands later I get quad Kings on a 3x times multipliers hand and win 750 quarters ($187.50). I play for a while and the machine goes cold so I move around and play some slots here and there. Then I find another Asian themed slot I like where sometimes these three giggling Asian babies show up on the screen before your spin finishes to let you know something good is about to happen. Sure enough a few spins in and there they are and the giggling begins and when my spin finishes I have three free games symbols and get 10 free games. With those spins I win about $200. A few spins later, I win a small progressive for $100. Then another, then another.... After a while I am up to $1,164.05 in slot winnings on this machine so I cash out before I get to the magic $1200 mark where the machine locks and they have to come pay by cash and give you a W2 tax form.
This should pretty much pay for my trip now, hopefully.
I head to the Jitney pick up again to head to Bally's. I register for the 7pm $70 NLHE event and then go find some dinner. I end up getting a BBQ beef sandwich from Guy Fierro's sandwich place inside Bally's.
I then play slots for a little while to kill time before the tournament and manage to win a few hundred more. Another freeroll and then some.
The tournament starts and I am winning almost every hand the first two levels. Unfortunately there are only 4 people at our table and the pots are small, but the chips are building and the stack is heading in the right direction after being card dead in two tournaments. I have a guy to my right in his 70s and his friend to his right also in his 70s. As we are playing this amazingly pretty girl walks past the poker area to go up the escalator nearby. As she walks by, the old guy next to me says, "Wow. That girl looks exactly like my second wife." His friend then looks at him kind of puzzled and says "I thought you've been married to Vera for 50 years and she has been your only wife?" And the first guy replies, "Yeah, That's right." and they both have a chuckle.
Late registration lasts for about 6 levels and during level 5 a new guy shows up at our table with one of the poker room personnel showing him his seat and he sits down. This guy looks a bit rough but when you close your eyes, his voice sounds just like Denzel Washington and he's well spoken. The dealer asks him for his entry paperwork and he says the lady who brought him to the table kept it. And the dealer says well you can't play till you have it, but he can't remember which lady so they start arguing about it. The guy empties his jacket pocket and has a whole pile of tournament entries from other days but not this one so they argue some more and then they start asking for each lady to come by to see if they have it, all the while our game is stopped mid hand and the guy to my left is a young player and is getting more aggravated the longer it takes as he is in the hand. A few more minutes go by and the new guy says well it's not like I can just reach into my pants pocket and have the receipts magically appear, and he tries it to be funny, and low and behold there they are in his pants pocket. So he gets his chips and says I am 5k short, and the dealer says the other 5k comes with the $5 add on, did you do that? If so I need the paper work and the guy only has the yellow copy and not the red copy the dealer needs. Now the young guy beside me starts getting all worked up and annoyed. Turns out the red copy was still stuck to the yellow copy so it was resolved quicker this time and we play on.
We have an aggressive guy at the far end of my table who always seems to raise big when everyone else limps or we have a board that it's unlikely to help many people. After a while I get A5 suited in spades, three limpers in front of me so I also limp in. 5 players total for the cost of the BB. And the flop comes all hearts. Everyone checks and the Ace of hearts comes on the turn, everyone checks. The river is a rag and the aggressive guy bets 50K which is double what's in the pot. Everyone folds around to me. I call and show my Aces. And the aggressive guy says good read and just folds.
I order a hot chocolate and get moved to a new table. For some reason I seem to do well when I get a hot chocolate and that continues to be the case. The new table is kind of quiet except one drunk lady at the end of the table. The lady keeps going on about being pushed off of a hand in the morning tournament by some other lady and how she's not going to be pushed around any longer, in a drunk Otis from the Andy Griffith sort of dialog. I look down at my BB cards and see I have an A2 suited of clubs and call. It's me, her and one other guy. The flop comes all clubs so I bet the size of the pot. She calls and the other guy folds, the turn is a rag. I bet again and she calls. The river is and Ace and I bet and she says, I told you I wasn't going to be pushed around and says I am all-in. She has a tons of chips so it seems this has worked for her all night, but I have the nuts so I instantly call her all-in and take most of her chips.
The next level I am the BB again and look down to see I have pocket Jacks! Woo-hoo! But before the action gets around to me a guy makes a big raise and a guy after him makes an even bigger raise, so I decide I like my current stack and feel I am behind and just muck my Jacks and give up my blind. Turned out to be a good move as they both had better pocket pairs than I did.
I get moved to another table as we are down to two tables. I have about 200K in chips now and feeling pretty comfortable but the blinds are also going up. I win enough to stay above 200k in chips and we eventually get to the final table. The drunk lady must have gotten knocked out after I moved as she was not at the final table, but Denzel and the young guy that was aggravated are both there and we are reunited. The young guy gets knocked out and one other leaving us with 8 players. And the tournament pays 8 so we are in the money! We play for another 45 minutes and all 8 of us are still in. The Blinds are now up to 15/30k and we are at Level 17. So the chop talk begins and we all agree to an even chop except one lady who has over 500k in chips who wants more than an even chop. First place pays 1800, so someone offers to give her 1000, the next 3 stacks 600 and the remaining 4 players 500 each.
We all agree as that's better than 3rd place money and it's around 2am. So I ended up with $500 for a $70 buy-in. I'll take it!
Saturday:
Up at 9am and tired but functional. I head down to the buffet for another ham and cheese omelet and some French toast and then go to the poker room to register for the NLHE tournament. I chat with a few of the regulars and a few new folks and I tell one guy how I have been doing pretty good on the slots so far. He tells me he just played some Walking Dead slots on the way to the poker room and won enough for his buy in. I have never played that one as I don't watch that TV show.
I draw a tough table, well aren't they all at an ARG event. I have HOJAX, FLOWERMAN, COC, and David Kuznick all in a row to my left. I get some hands and am doing ok for a while but get bored and start to play too many connectors that aren't connecting. After a few hours I am down to about half of my starting stack and decide to shove early so a double up would be more chips. I get QT of hearts and go all-in. Flowerman instantly calls and has Aces. I do manage to flop two hearts but no help on the turn or river and I am out. He is dressed in his tux and attached flower to the front and looks as eccentric as ever but turns out to be a really nice guy while talking with him all day. Rich Bremer ended up winning the NLHE tournament too! So both events this year and three in a row going back to last year!
So it's off to play some slots before heading back to the Golden Nugget for the 7 pm tournament. After my cash at Bally's, the Golden Nugget is the only casino left in AC that I haven't cashed in a poker tournament, so I want to give that one more shot this trip. While still at the Borgata, I play some slots and keep winning some here and there. I find a neat dragon themed slot that I play for a few hours and end up with a little more than I started with when I sat down and then decide to take the Jitney again over to the Golden Nugget. I register for the 7pm which is NLHE and also a $25 bounty tournament. Then I go to the Buffet and have a nice turkey with all the trimmings dinner.
Seems I have about 30 minutes till the tournament so I go play some slots. And there it is a brand new slot I've never seen and it's amazing! Playboy's Don't Stop the Party featuring Pitbull, the rapper. Its colorful, good music and two stunning playmates in bunny outfits that randomly change pictures of them with Pitbull at the top while you play. I play for a while and somehow get into a bonus game so the screen changes to 3 smaller slot machine grids which has a third playmate who dances while the slot machines spin. She is absolutely perfect. I can't even look down to see what's happening on the slot machine and just watch her dance. I then say "I love you". And the lady beside me starts to laugh.
I can play this game and never win a dime and be happy, but as it happens I win $100 on that bonus game so I have enough to keep playing with their money anyway.
A few spins later and my spin gives me two columns of random symbols and then three full columns of wilds. I think if only those wilds where the first three columns instead of the last three, I would have won. Then there she is, the third bonus bunny pops up on the screen winks at me and walks across the screen and changes the first two columns to all wilds. Now I have a whole 5x5 grid of wilds. The bells sounds and the screen starts flashing and suddenly I have won $1200 and they need to come pay me by hand and give me a W2 tax form. Woo-hoo!
I then go to play the 7pm tournament. It's a turbo and bounty so the levels change every 15 minutes. I have a guy to my left who looks like Tony G, but he is Russian and thinks he's a pretty good player. He does play pretty well. We get in a hand after a while together. I have AK and K rag rag comes out on the flop. I bet 2k and he calls, blinds are 400 800 at this point. A rag on the turn so I bet 5K which is about a third of our starting stack and he calls. Another rag on the river so I bet 5k again and he stews for a long time and then angrily folds. He keeps mumbling for a few hands about what I could possibly have had to push him off his hand so I tell him I had AK which gave me Kings on the board. Then he gets all mad for folding because he also had AK. Then he says he must just be a better poker player than I am to give up the hand. So I just answer I guess so, which he didn't like either. Whatever comrade!
Things settle down for the next hour or two and I collect a bounty along the way and have a decent stack. The Russian has since won some pots and also has a decent stack, a little bigger than mine. I am the BB again and he is under the gun. He raises pretty big and everyone fold around to me. I look down and see I have Aces. Finally! So I go all-in and he instantly calls. He has Kings and says “yeah, classic hand” like Ivan Drago would. Then the flop has two hearts giving him a flush chance, and heart on the turn and a heart on the river and I am out. He does shake my hand as I am leaving and said I played well, so I still have that going for me.
So I take the Jitney back to the Borgata and decide to play some more slots for a while. I go back and play the dragon game which wins a bit more, then as I am heading to my room I see the Walking Dead slots and remember what the guy said this morning about winning on them so I figure why not. I start to play and the first spin I get the three bonus wheel symbols, so the bonus wheel comes up and starts to spin and it just misses the jackpot wedge and the free spin wedge and stops on the $6 wedge. I won twice what it cost me to play, $3 a spin. The screen says touch here for second spin, so I do and the wheel changes to a different wheel with better winning wedges to hit. It starts to slow down and gets to the Mega progressive wedge and I think yeah it's going to barely go by that and stop on $5, but it doesn't it stays on the progressive wedge and I win over $800 on that!
So I call it a night and go back to my room. I finally break the seal on my bankroll envelope, but only to add my winnings to the envelope. I leave enough out for breakfast and the Sunday ARG tournament and tolls and I count the rest, which comes out just over 3K added to my envelope!
Sunday:
Sunday I woke up around 9:30, packed, checkout, and took my luggage to the truck and then went and had another omelet and French toast and then went to register for the Sunday tournament. Only 23 entries in this one as most people make Sunday a travel day that live further away.
Today's tournament: Six handed Pot Limit BigO High Only / Pot Limit Super Stud Hi/Lo Mississippi style ( 4 down cards 1 up card, discard two down cards, betting round, two up cards, betting round, one up card, betting round, final card up and one more betting round).
Today, I have Kuznick at my table again and sitting across from me so we can chat and catch up a bit and Kevin Conlon at the other end of the table. I didn't know the other two guys and one empty seat. One of the guys I didn't know had no idea how to play either game yet was betting the pot every hand and every bet within the hand. So I just waited till he had eliminated himself before mixing it up too much. Kuznick told me to take off the skirt and play, but I didn't. Soon the other guy was gone and play returned to normal. Kuznik's stack had taken a few hits and he found himself all-in with a really good Omaha drawing hand, but he didn't catch what he needed and was eliminated. Rich Bremer is also eliminated at the other table, so no hat trick in one year for him.
The other David K, Klutchman, and his wife were both moved to my table as we were down to three tables. At FARGO last year his wife and I were in a hand in NLHE where we got to the river and she suddenly went all-in. I had Kings but the board could have given her a lot of hands to beat me so I folded Kings and she showed Jacks which I would have crushed. So I was ready for her to push with hands that could be beat. Sure enough we get into a Stud hand and she is betting the pot, I have 344 showing and I have 34 as my down cards so I let her do the work and call as the hand progresses until I take most of her chips.The next hand I eliminated her.
A few hands later I get A9J of clubs in Stud. Klutchman completes and I call. My next two cards are also clubs. He bets the pot and I call right down to 7th street where I am all-in and win most of his chips too. Then I get moved to another table and get to play with COC and Uncle Al and Flowerman again. Klutchman and Kevin Conlon get moved to the other table as we are down to 12 players.
Not much happens at the new table for me. But at the other table, Klutchman rebuilds his stack and then gets in a big hand with Aardvark (Tom Hummel). Klutchman wins, but it's because someone told Tom that in BigO you play either only two of your cards or all 5 of them and he was holding a flush with his five cards. So David's pair won since no one else was playing BigO using all 5 cards in your hand. So Tom was knocked out and went on tilt over that for a while. And Klutchman was the new chip leader.
Eventually we get to the final table and we play 7 handed for a while. And then down to 6. I still have some chips but Klutchman is on my left and Kevin Conlon on my right, both with really big stacks. Pete Segal is also at our table and has about the same stack as I do. I forget who the other two players were.
So we are back to Stud and I have A235 after discharging two cards and getting two new ones on 4th and 5th street. David has a High Pair showing and Pete looks like he's going low. David bets the pot, Pete goes all-in behind him so it's down to me, I decide to go all-in since a 4 gives me a scoop and any low give me half since Pete's two low cards he has showing are a 6 and 7. A good chance to triple up and get us to 5 handed. But my next three cards are all cards higher than 8, so I miss everything and am out in 6th place. Pete would finish 3rd, Kevin 2nd and David Klutchman would be the winner.
So I found Rich, we drove to Harrah's where he was staying and he checked out and we headed back to MD. I dropped him off at MD Live and then went home to crash and see Tessa again.
Recap:
4 days, 6 tournaments, 1 chop, $525 in Poker tournament cash, $2.5k in slot winnings. The only event I cashed in was the one where I got the Hot Chocolate, which I also got when I won the Dover Tournament and finished 3rd last year at ATLARGE. Best ATLARGE ever!
Moral: Hot Chocolate matters!!