Lou Krieger's MARGE Trip Report, Part 2
I'm in my room now, the third room and second hotel I've been assigned over the past two nights, and have just watched the sun set over the barrier islands right located just off the edge of land here on the Mississippi Gulf. I took advantage of two days at the 'lower-than-MARGE' Internet rate, but moved into some MARGE rooms today because that online reservation program was only good for the past two nights.
Tonight we have our Tournament of Champions format event, and it begins in 40 minutes, at 6:00 PM. Today was fairly quiet. Although many MARGErs played in the Grand's daily tournament and I arrived at the poker room just as the tourney was about to commence, I chose to pass on it so I could get something to eat. Allknight Adam, D'Jack Klingler, and I went off to the buffet for lunch. What can I say: I suppose I'll never learn. With some notable few exceptions, buffets are buffets, the food is unremarkable at best, lame much of the time, and the general inclination is to eat far too much of it, which I did.
The Grand's buffet is right next to the poker room, so it's convenient, and if you're fortunate enough to get a window seat as we were, you have a terrific view of the water and barrier island, and you can watch the shrimpers and pleasure boaters cruising back and forth as you eat.
After lunch, I sat in a $10-$20 hold'em game that was fairly uneventful, except for one local who called almost every hand and had a propensity to go all the way to the river unless there was some obviously huge hand on board. Unfortunately, I could not pick up a hand against him, and hemorrhaged away a couple of hundred bucks. But hope springs eternal for poker players, and tonight is, to paraphrase that quintessential southerner Scarlett O'Hara, '…another day.'
Fast forward to Saturday morning and imagine I'm writing this in TIVO format; you can skip the commercials and dull stuff, and read it when it suits your fancy. Although the weather is supposed to cool down significantly today and the local forecasters are saying it may even rain, from my window the beach is white, the water calm and clear, and the sky filled with light clouds.
All in all, it looks like just the kind of day the Chamber of Commerce orders up for the tourists. But I don't care. I haven't been outside since I arrived, and probably won't make an exception today either.
Last night's TOC format event, featured rounds of limit hold'em, Omaha/8 and 7-card stud, according to time limits designed by J.P. Massar. The time lengths for each game varied to ensure that players would theoretically play the same number of Omaha/8, 7-card stud and hold'em hands per round. Since hold'em plays so much faster than the other games, the hold'em rounds were shorter. It was a format used at BARGE.
Once the tournament had advanced into the later stages the format switched to no-limit hold'em. During the limit rounds my table was unique in that no one had many chips, everyone seemed to last indefinitely, and the money just went ‘round in circles. Toward the later stages of this event everyone at our table was short-stacked in relation to the blinds and betting limits, and it you were unable to steal the blinds or antes once an orbit or so, there would have been no way to survive. In fact, even before the event switched to no-limit, it began playing like a no-limit event in the sense that once a player was committed to a hand, all his chips were likely to go into the pot because the cost of wagering had become so high.
I managed to survive and hang on for quite sometime, although I was all-in more than a few times when we were down to two tables. With a bit of good fortune, I made the final table and stealthily wiggled my way all the way up to fourth position. Given the few chips I had, it was a higher finish than I really had any right to expect. At that point I was short stacked and raised all in with a hand I think was K-7. But the big blind had posted eight chips, and my all-in raise only forced him to commit four additional chips, and that's precisely what he did, and Ice, who was holding Q-3, caught a trey on the turn and I was done for, unceremoniously eliminated in fourth place.
Ice was the next to go, and the heads up battle for first place didn't last too long as Peter Secor eliminated Old Bear to win the event.
An unofficial event, called 'Midnight Madness' was set to start once the TOC event ended. It was played with real chips, not the tournament variety, with everyone buying in for $100, and committing to play until there was a winner, or they all agreed to stop. I wanted to give it a go, but was just too damned tired (perhaps someone else's trip report will cover the 'Midnight Madness' event) and so I went up to sleep, knowing that tomorrow, for the first time, I would not have to change hotel rooms. Sometimes simple pleasures are the sweetest.
More to come. Stay tuned. Today at noon we play no-limit hold'em
|
