I heard that some drivers had trouble getting
to the Pokerfest in Chicago. As for me, the trip couldn’t have been easier.
All we did was get on the interstate, set the
cruise control at 75 and the alarm clock for 11 hours later, and when the
alarm went off, we exited the interstate and
there was the motel room we had reserved in Chicago.
Well, it wasn’t actually Chicago. It was one of
its suburbs ? all of which seem to be named either Something Grove or
Something Park. Our motel was in Downers
Grove, which despite its name is a pretty pleasant place, if you like suburbs.
Downers Grove is about 30 minutes and about $120
per night from downtown Chicago, where Bart and most of the other
Pokerfest participants were staying, acting like
a bunch of Republicans.
I made phone contact with Bart on Friday evening
and he mentioned the gathering on the rooftop lady’s rooftop that night.
But being as we were staying so far out and being
as how I had to conserve my vitality for the blood pit the next day, we
demurred.
Next morning, BC gave us directions to the poker
hotel over the phone and warned us it would be difficult to find and
impossible to park near. But I immediately had
a bit of good luck and missed the onramp I was supposed to take.
This caused me to decide to drive all the way
downtown on the surface streets instead. Not only did this provide an
interesting trip through Something Grove and
Something Park and Cicero, it also wound up saving us time. Because,
as we later discovered, the freeways were at
that very moment beginning to back up from traffic headed to a Cubs
game.
The surface streets, though, didn’t seem to be
any more congested than I usually am. The only problem with the streets
is
that every once in a while, some of them would
start going by aliases.
ha ha
As a consequence of my screw-up, we found the
hotel with no trouble or delay. And almost as soon as we immediately
spotted the normally hard-to-spot hotel, we also
spotted an empty parking space less than a block away! I needed to get
to the poker table – I was leaking luck fast!
So, unlike some of the other players who drove to the Pokerfest, we never
encountered anything that looked the least like
a traffic jam -- until I started to park.
See, all the parking was parallel, which may not
seem worth mentioning, except that I’m from Arkansas, where parallel
parking is something a driver only has to do
once in his or her entire lifetime, on their first and only drivers’ exam.
After that,
neither the need nor the subject ever comes up
again.
My first drivers’ exam was a looonng time ago,
so I had a nostalgic experience trying to implement what I could remember
of parallel parking theory. Meanwhile, drivers
near the intersection of Clark and Diversy got an impromptu opportunity
to
exercise important virtues like patience, tolerance
and acceptance -- which are emphasized by all religions, and which will
hopefully make these people calmer and less angry
one of these days.
Then it was across the street, past the doorman,
into the lobby, hang a quick left, then a quicker right, then a last left,
and all of a sudden we’re at Pokerfest!
It was a long room, in the center of which were
two parallel, but offset, cloth-covered, rectangular tables capable of
seating 10 each, There was also a Schwarzeneggarian
sound system, a counter enclosing a small fridge stocked with
cokes and beer, a solitary fifth of Jack Black
sitting atop one of the tables like a centerpiece, and one, two, three,
four,
five, six, seven – two whole baseball teams of
BartCoppers! – including the ever bouncy Bart and the ever sweet Mrs. Bart,
both of whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting
a couple of times before. (I want to say more about this later).
Besides the Barts, I remembered Buckwheat and
Poker Queen, whom I’d met at VegasFest. There were probably other
people there whom I’d met at previous Bart-related
gatherings, but the CIA has since wiped their memories from my brain.
Late in the day, we were joined by Zomar from
the Upper Pennisula, whom I remembered from Juliefest, and whose memory
even the CIA can’t wipe away. (If you’ve seen
Zomar, you know why.) Zomar claims he has to drive over 200 miles to find
a group of liberals to talk to. (I want to say
more about this later.)
Pretty quickly, Bart stuck a nametag on me, which
was a good idea, as almost all of us were strangers. Even so, it seemed
that we all immediately felt comfortable – actually
comfortable – with each other, strangers or no.
One of the benefits of being on the right side
politically is that you often run into smart and charming people who
completely agree with you. That was true of the
players at the Pokerfest. We enjoyed each others’ company like
old friends and laughed all afternoon. I liked
everyone so much, I even felt happy for the people who eliminated me.
One person I didn’t interact with, though, was
Sam, who was a cool and efficient presence the entire day.
Without her, Bart would have been even busier
than he was – which still was too damn busy. (I want to say more about
this later).
I didn’t introduce myself to Sam because she’s
so pretty that she scared me. Girl power gets me every time.
I was afraid that she’d meet me, learn my name,
and then see me trying to parallel park. I couldn’t stand that.
ha ha
Right away, Bart made us aware that we had to
be out of the room by 7PM and we had a lot of poker to play
before then, so we’d better get started.
So I sat down at one of the tables, which filled up about as quickly as
the tournament tables at PartyPoker.com do, and
the thing got underway.
Bart wanted everybody to start with lots of
chips in front of them, like on the World Poker Tour, so he arranged
for everybody to start the game with the chip
equivalent of $355,000. That’s easily the most I’ve ever been worth
in my entire life. If I could have, I’d have
cashed out right then.
These were fancy poker chips, too! One of the
other players (Tom? Jim? Dave? Me?) had brought them. They were
gorgeous! Real poker chips, not plastic imitations.
Made of baked clay -- hefty, reassuring, clacky, stacky, pretty
– the kind of poker chips you really hate to
lose.
But the chips also presented a problem. Specifically,
there weren’t enough white ($1000) chips for two 10-person
games to start simultaneously. So the folks
at the second table had to wait a little while to get started, and they
also had
to wait for white chips to become obsolete at
our table so they could be exchanged for larger denominations from theirs.
This caused Bart (ever the anxious host) to spend
as much time going between tables to swap out chips as he did playing
his hands. Since he was constantly using at least
half of his 64 IQ just for counting chips and remembering his way back
to
his chair, he only had an IQ of 32 left to play
poker with. Consequently, I believe Bart had less chance of winning than
the
rest of us, and maybe less fun than he otherwise
would have, too. (I want to say more about this later.)
As the first hand began, we all shared one goal
– to not be the first one eliminated. I knew that would be especially
difficult
for me, for I knew a dark secret about myself
that my opponents did not yet know: I am an unusually poor poker player.
Just terrible.
I’m afraid to bluff or call anyone’s bluff.
I’m often too timid to stay in until the last card, even though I’ve wound
up
tossing away hundreds of winning (online) hands
that way. I bet too much when I don’t want people to call, but they call
anyway. I bet too little when I have a great
hand, but my opponents get wary and fold anyhow. I guess wrong when
I’m
guessing what hole cards people have. I figure
odds wrong. And even worse, considering what a chickenshit player I
normally am, I’ll sometimes bet largely and impulsively,
without a reason in the world for it, as if I had some form of Poker Tourette’s.
So as we sat down to begin the long-anticipated
BartCop Pokerfest, I was thinking to myself, “Ray, the only way you’ll
stay in this game more than 20 minutes will be
pure, dumb luck.”
So that was my plan: Pure, dumb luck. And I followed it. And it worked!
I won the very first hand of the Pokerfest – with
an Ace-high heart flush. I won enough on that hand to lose small and steadily
for a quite a while. Every so often, I’d have
some pure dumb luck and win a pot, which usually came as a complete surprise
to me.
I was glad to see that Poker Queen and her husband
Buckwheat were two of the people at the first table with me,
because I remembered them as being very nice
people who would certainly take it easy on me. But I remembered wrong.
Although she’s by nature a wonderfully cordial
woman, Poker Queen is a true poker predator at the table. All game long,
you could sense she was getting ready to pounce.
And she often did. I soon decided to stay out of her way. Her husband,
Buckwheat, was almost as dangerous. I decided
to stay out of his way, too. I decided to stay out of everybody’s way.
I only bet when I had a hand so good I could
use it as collateral, or when I got tricked into it.
The game went on: Poker Queen, shoving them out
there, daring, challenging; Vegas Dave, dealing and making things go;
Corey, saying (as if with regret) “Well, I’m
afraid I’ve got to come over the top and raise you to…”; Ally, taking
her first,
tentative steps toward becoming a major-league
bullshitter; Buckwheat, floating out of the poker graveyard like Dracula,
to start sucking chips from the rest of us. Ray,
meekly sliding his cards back to the dealer time after time.
Except for a few twitches of Poker Tourette’s,
I managed to stick to my plan of not taking any kind of a gamble under
any
circumstances for quite a while. Although my
stack slowly dwindled, I was able to survive until I was the fourth-to-last
player
to be eliminated from game one. Since fourth
place was only one place away from third place -- which counts -- I considered
this to be an immense victory on my part. But
I think I was the only one who did.
Bart, being concerned that we might dilly dally
too long to get all the games played, had brought along a small alarm clock
that seemed to go off every ten minutes. And
every time it did, the amount of the blinds doubled.
That can get out of hand pretty quick. For example,
in one of the games I survived a while in, the big blind
got up to $400,000 each hand. That’s a lot of
chips to have to put in before you even see a single card.
We all grumbled about the increasing size of the
blinds because they killed us off like flies, but if Bart hadn’t set
them so high, some of us would still be sitting
at those tables, rubbing our chins, thinking over whether we should call
or not.
Between the start of game one at table one and
the start of game one at table two, there were a couple of mini highlights.
One was the arrival of Larry-by-the-sea, whose
reputation as a poker player preceded him. Bart and veterans of previous
pokerfests welcomed him warmly but warily. Those
of us who were already playing were glad he was at their table and not
ours.
As it turned out, when the game at the other table
finally got underway, Larry was forced out very early. That meant a lot
to me.
Obviously, winning wasn’t all skill. Pure, dumb
luck played a part. And as long as it did, I still had a chance.
The other big event, although I’m not sure exactly
when it occurred, was the arrival of Flagstaff with a pristine bottle of
Chinaco,
a sight that pleased Bart almost as much as the
sight of seeing Bart seeing that surprise bottle of Chinaco
pleased the rest of us.
Having had my North American drinking permit revoked
long ago, I did not sample the Miracle of Canaan, nor the bottle of
Jack Daniels Bart had brought along as a poor
substitute, nor the beer so generously supplied by Chicago Jim. In a spirit
of true
fellowship, however, I did do all I could to
encourage all the other players to imbibe as freely as possible.
That was the only
contribution I made to my own success that day.
It probably amounted to about one-half of one percent – let’s say
.056%
– of the reason I eventually finished in the
money. (And by money, of course, I mean points.)
The other 99 and 44/100ths percent was nothing but pure dumb luck ? ask anybody.
Five games were played that day. Most folks
played in three of them, the last being the BIG game in which
everybody played. I finished fourth in
my first game (Poker Queen finished third), second in my second game
(Poker Queen finished first), and third in the
BIG game (Poker Queen got knocked out early, ha ha!).
As the clock ticked past our pre-agreed exit time
of 7PM, the hotel staff started hinting to us, as if we were a dotty
grandma, that we’d be much happier living somewhere
else. So we finished the BIG game quickly and arranged to
reassemble at a place called the Tequilla Roadhouse.
Having no nearby hotel room to retire to, my friend and I decided
to head on down there. We offered Corey (alias
LRB from Minnesota, first-place winner of TWO of the three games
he played in) a ride, and the three of us managed
to find our way down there with very little loss of life.
The Tequilla Roadhouse is located across and down
the street from Second City. Better still, it is located only a block
or so from a parking garage that only gouges
a reasonable amount. No amazingly convenient parking space for us this
time, no sir! And Lord knows we looked
for one.
We drove down street after street, as slowly as
perverts passing a playground, before I finally gave up. Being from Arkansas,
I just hate to pay to park my car, especially
when the amount I have to pay to park it is nearly equal to what I paid
for the car in the first place.
Once inside the Tequilla Roadhouse, which looks
like a great place to be 22-years-old and well-employed in, we discovered
that other Bartcoppers were already there. Some
were players from the tournament and some (like Disasterman) had just
stopped by to meet Bart. (I want to say more
about this later.)
Eventually, just about everybody from the Pokerfest
showed up, and, augmented by the Bart-curious Chicagoans who’d
dropped in, we proceded to party in a responsible
but energetic manner, in accordance with each person’s age and energy level.
Having too much of the first and too little of
the second, I figured I needed to party less than anybody, and so I did.
As our little group left the Roadhouse and were
on our way back to the parking garage, we literally bumped into another
BartCopper I remembered – a fellow named Pete
(whose last name I remember as being something like “Fascistan”),
whom I’d met at Juliefest and who is a cyberwarrior
on BartCop and other forums. Like the others, Pete had dropped by
just to see and say hey to Bart, Mrs Bart and
all us Bartstards.
And that concludes my review of the Pokerfest and brings me to what I had more to say about later.
As a longtime BartCop fan, I think I understand
the very real affection and admiration we all feel for him. I know I am
not
the only person who has travelled to Washington
DC, or Las Vegas, or Fort Lauderdale, or Chicago ostensibly for one reason
(such as supporting Julie, or playing poker)
but actually for an entirely different reason -- honoring and supporting
and thanking
Bart personally for his efforts. And contained
within that goal has always been another – the chance to socialize and
get to know
other people of like mind – especially the kind
of people who support BartCop.com.
I believe most of us want to give Bart a big and
official round of applause. I believe that most of us would enjoy
a chance to
meet and converse with him and other coppers
in an atmosphere that is casual, comfortable, congenial and conversationally
convenient. I think a lot of us would like to
learn and talk more about the history of the page, the radio show, etc.
I think a lot
of us would also like to meet and talk with and
thank the many contributors whose work makes BartCop.com the best blog
on the web – folks like the great Bruce Yurgil,
for example.
What I’m saying is that I think it’s time for
a BartFest that isn’t secondary to some other purpose – one that is about
nothing
but BartCop.com. And I don’t think Bart should
have anything to do with running it, other than to show up. I think this
event
should be planned by we fans and structured enough
to make sure we provide ways for one another to meet and interact,
times for introductions and testimonials and
such, etc. Most of all, though, this should be an event that doesn’t
make
BartCop feel responsible for “looking after”
things.
As for me, I’ve no idea how or where an event
like this could happen.
I’m just acknowledging the need for one.
Perhaps we could discuss this on the BC forum.
Ray from Arkansas