The Funny Farm

The Big Wiener

^{Saturday, 21 Promise (AfterLithe), 2005}

We apologize for being away these last few days. But we've been busy - we managed to make it (for the second year in a row) to the Chicago Pokerfest held by Bartcop over the weekend. It was refreshing to see so many of our fellow Bartcop readers once again.

We were also able to make it to the final rooftop party held by Bartcop fan Lisa last Friday. She's moving out of the property in a couple of weeks, and we hope that all goes well with that job. And whoever it is that will be moving in has a real treat - a beautiful view of the city from the rooftop garden, a wonderful living space to go along with the rooftop zone, and a spot right in the thick of a trendy part of Chi-town.

After a wonderful Friday evening spent checking out the Chicago skyline, drinking fine tequila and other assorted refreshments, it was time to get some rest in anticipation for our acting bull$hitting image alteration management at the poker tables. After a tip from fellow pokerfester Dave, our first trip of the day was to Binny's Beverage Depot, where we purchased our first ever bottle of Chinaco Anejo. Once we returned to the room and stashed our treasures, it was time to go and find another highly recommended Chicago establishment.

We were trying to get to a place called Nancy's Original Stuffed Pizza for Saturday lunch, but we were slightly ahead of schedule, and the place wasn't open when our hunger was ravening. So we settled (cough) for the fare at La Creperie - banana rum crepes with whipped cream and vanilla ice cream on top. Yum! This place has a beautiful back patio with open air seating. It was very nice to kick back with some excellent coffee in the noonday sun and stuff our tummy with good victuals.

Then it was back to the room for our traditional Saturday afternoon nap before getting ready to meet our fellow gladiators of the poker tables. We were a little surprised to find that there were so few of us playing - we figured that this would be a much bigger draw. But you have to go to the tables with the poker players you've got, not the poker players you'd like to have. Or something like that...

There were a couple of others who had committed to playing, but who never made it to the tables on time - so there was an empty seat feeding mandatory bets into the pot for most of the first round of play, and two vacancies in both rounds. We managed to come through with some big wins in the first hour, and so were playing with the big stack for a large part of the first round. It got whittled down over time, though, so when we got down to the final three in the first round, we were still in possession of the most chips - but barely. Chicago Jim and (formerly from) Vegas Dave had their killer concentration and hold'em skills in overdrive, and our concentration, focus, and patience started to flag at the end of the first round. We stayed in a couple of pots that we should have avoided like the plague, and we got bluffed out of a couple more that we should have won. All in all we were relatively fortunate that we managed to hold on to third place and a stake in the winnings.

After a slight break, the contestants were ready to go at one another for the second and final time of the tourney. We managed to catch a couple of huge breaks (including a pot were two others went all in, and we just couldn't figure out why: there were two kings in the common cards on the table, and we had one of the other two kings in our hand. Turns out that one of them was bluffing, and the other had the fourth king in his hand, but a lower kicker than we did. So for all intensive purposes we blew away two other players and scooped a lot of chips in one hand) and were sitting with the big stack for most of this round, too...

We couldn't help thinking about how we lost it in the first game, and we started to get concerned about that as time went on. We made a couple of calculated gambles (and probably held on to some four-flushes* and some open-ended four-straights** longer than we should have, especially when they both happened in the same hand), but for the most part just tried to remember what the book says about playing as the table's resident four hundred pound gorilla and stick to that.

Amazingly, we held on to our chips, our cool and our patience long enough to be the winner of the final round. So now we can proudly claim props for at least a year. And of course now we have to make plans to visit Chicago again next summer (at the very least)...

Thanks to Lisa for hosting us on the rooftop on Friday night, Chicago Jim and his lovely wife Christine (the host and the hostess with the most and the mostest), BartCop savior Sam Dent, Dave no longer of Vegas, Rich, Bob, Trevor, Jim P, Corey, Lance the Young Space Cadet, Mrs. Bartcop for her support and patience, and especially Bart, for taking the time to inspire, support the endeavor, put this together, come to the gathering, and enjoy themselves for a day in Chicago. Thanks also to the others who we have managed to overlook in our list above. It was revitalizing to find a place where ditto monkey was not only not spoken, it was officially frowned upon as a means of communication.

Our regular bile-laden screeds will be returning once we get the insufferable grin off of our face in a couple of days.

* - The Funny Farm defines a four-flush as four cards of the same suit. It is very bad to bet on one of these once all the cards have been turned up unless you're pretending it's a real flush and the others at the table believe you.

** - The Funny Farm defines a four-straight as four cards in sequence (but not necessarily of the same suit***) with at least one card of lower and higher rank - such as 6-7-8-9. The possibility exists that a straight could be achieved at either end of the run. In our example, either a 5 or a 10 could fill the straight.

*** - which would be a four-straight flush in our mangled lingo and considerably more valuable, with more chances to catch either (or both) possible winning combinations.

Posted by (: Tom :) at July 18, 2005 06:41 PM