Interestingly we had about 30 newbies, who will undoubtedly swell the ranks of BARGE and ATLARGE next year. Two of them won tournaments. (In fact Mark Oldenburg won twice . . . in the "pairs" tournament and the Hold'em tournament.)
The Smoker on Friday night, held in a private room at the elegant Cedars Steak House, arguably Foxwoods' best food venue, was a great success. Thanks go to Don Perry, an attorney from Long Island, who ran the entire event without a hitch. (An important "more" about Don will be in the long version of this report.)
Tournament winners were:
PAIRS. Bruce Kramer and Mark Oldenburg.
NO LIMIT HOLD'EM. Mark Oldenburg
LIMIT 7-STUD. Tony Goldstein.
Winners were awarded a jacket which we feel is quite distinctive (not your casino rayon special) which will be suitably embroidered. Most of us hope the jacket will become a FARGO ritual in future years. Crunch Daniel, who got a lot of help from Greg Pappas on Sunday, will soon publish a bust-out list and the Best All Around Player award (also a jacket) will be determined by Crunch as well. (I believe it was Mark, even though the Pairs tournament didn't count toward the award, but Crunch has the final say.)
We were pleased to have quite a few people come quite a long way to participate. Among them were . . .
Chris ("Ploink") Straghalis, who came the longest distance . . . all the way from SOCAL.
Dave ("ADB ICEMAN") Trinidad from Phoenix AZ.
Dave & Sue Giles from Fort Lauderdale FL.
Pete Caldes from the Chicago area.
A bunch of people from Canada.
Sadly, Jane ("NewJane") Barnstuble had to cancel out. Janey's Mother passed away last week and there was much unhappy talk at FARGO about the fact that she had to be in Durham, NC, saying farewell to her Mom rather than in Ledyard, CT, saying "WooHoo" to all of us. We send you our love and our deepest condolences, Janey, and we will all look forward to seeing you next year. (Janey, for those few of you who don't know her, is the preeminent FARGO player by virtue of the fact that she hails from FARGO, ND.)
Forgive me if I failed to include other long-distance travelers. The usual "sleep deprived" excuse applies.
These, I believe, were the essentials of FARGO '99. If you care to you can read the details in my Long Version, which will be published when I find time to get it done.
Those who believe I write too much should feel free to kill-file the latter. Thanks to all for making FARGO '99 a great event. In the final analysis it is the fun-seekers who make an ARG event a success . . . not the organizers.
Finally, I urge all of you to publish your own trip reports. They make a good time better.
And so I must live with . . .
- Comments from my local purveyor of Wild Turkey such as "What the hell are you doing buying all this beer?"
- Comments from the check-out lady at my local supermarket such as "Looks like you're having a big party. Can I come?" as I wheel through with a full shopping basket of chips, nachos, those curly yellow/orange cheese things, dips, peanuts, cashew halves, etc etc.
- Shopping at "Party Stuff" for cheap plastic glasses, bowls, cocktail napkins, etc. while the place was full of snotty-nosed kids getting their act together for Hallowe'en.
- Packing all of the above in boxes and disguising the beer . . . cans, not bottles 'cause bottles are too heavy for me and my threatening hernia to deal with . . . in a couple of old suitcases to thwart the Foxwoods people who would like to sell us beer at five-times-packy prices.
- Remembering to bring stuff with me that I really don't, but probably might, need.
- Forgetting to bring stuff like the quart of clam dip my patient wife made just for the Hospitality Suite, and later being faced with the sickening certainty that Marcelle will be eating clam dip sandwiches for the entire long weekend while I'm gone.
- The likelihood that I will be libeled again by a certain lawyer (who should know better) as I pack my bottle of Wild Turkey 101. Pot-Kettle-Black.
I swore an oath when I was invited to become an ADB several years ago and I will, I am determined, live up to it. (A.D.B., for those few of you who don't know it, stands for Alt Drunken Bastards.) Oaths are important.
I live about 65 miles from Foxwoods so the trip was short and uneventful. I checked into the hospitality suite at Cedars Tower about 2 PM. Arti Santella was to join me the next day, but I had the entire two rooms to myself for tonite.
One small bummer. Someone screwed up and the bedroom had only one huge bed, not the double queen I had requested. Well it won't be a problem since Arti always brings a large jar of vasoline with him.
I had two huge boxes of munchies, plus enough beer to take care of the 82nd Airborne to stash away. The suite came with a small fridge, and was soon filled with Heinies. This is as good a time as any to invite comments from FARGO people on the hospitality suite since it takes a fairly serious chunk of the $13 ($15 this year) you pay when you register. Foxwoods gives us this $250 space for the FARGO rate of $99 and I pay $77 of that personally because that's what I would pay at Two Trees if I wasn't organizing FARGO. But many of you never got your money's worth since you never visited the suite for free beer, snacks, pizza, and various goings-on which never end. (Fold'em, Arti, myself, and a select group of fun-seekers were quite active there until about 5 AM on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings) We can never know who (or how many) will use it so we can't make it an "optional" for those who don't.
n.b. Foxwoods, probably because Indians are troublesome drinkers . . . as all of us who have seen "B" movies know . . . shuts off the bar at about 1 AM.
Those of us who are hard-core late night people would probably bankroll the suite ourselves if a vote resulted in not having it available, but you'll have to buy your beer & munchies from us . . . at greatly inflated prices . . . if we do.
Tell me what you think.
Down to the poker room at about 4 PM after a Jaccuzzi & a shower. Fold'em was there, of course, as was Nolan, Jaeger, and about 25 other FARGO people. I started out at the $10-$20 hold'em table with a $500 buy-in. This, like most hold'em games at FARGO, was played with a kill but it was a pretty tight non-FARGO table. Still I ended up + $400 or so when the game broke about 2 hours later.
(Hint: At Foxwoods you get $1 in Wampum points for each hour of $10-$20 play. You get only 50 cents an hour for any lower-stakes game. So, even if you intend to play mostly lower stakes, sign up initially for $10-$20 and play tight for an orbit or two . . . then go to the game of your choice for the rest of your session. When you check out you will be given $1 an hour in points for the entire session. Of course you can get even more points if you sign up, initially, for a bigger game.)
After the $10-$20 game broke up I wasn't ready to move up so I bought into a $5-10 hold'em game with several other FARGO people. ("Are you signed in on your Wampum card sir?" "Yes, sir, I am.")
Memories fade, but I think it was during this session that Jaeger put a hell of a move on me. It was one of the more interesting hands I have ever been involved with. Eric is probably younger than all 5 of my children, which means that I have been playing poker at least 40 years longer than he has. But he is a better player than I am, not just tonight but every time I play against him. I am not good at remembering fine details but the hand went something like this:
I'm on the button and I'm dealt a medium pair and I call along with maybe 5 other people in the hand. The flop is all spades, and all medium to small cards, but it gives me a set. Eric smooth calls from middle position. When it gets around to me I raise. Someone calls between us and Eric smooth calls the raise. The turn doesn't help anyone. Bet, bet to me. I raise again and only Eric calls the raise. Now I have to worry about the river and I am saying to myself: "No spade; no spade". It comes a harmless ???. Neither of us has a decent visible hand, and since Eric doesn't raise on the flop I have to put him on a smaller set. (He wouldn't have played for a small straight after the flop.) So I come over the top of him. He comes back at me, I come back at him, he comes back again and finally I call.
Eric had flopped a straight flush and played me as well as anybody ever has over all these years. Thank Godness I didn't river a full house or . . . heaven forbid . . . quads. The stakes didn't matter. Both of us plays every hand without regard to them. He just played me perfectly.
Some of us use the phrase "Well played Sir" as a polite way of saying "Up yours". In a very long time I have never had a better occasion to say, truthfully, to another player . . . good friend or stranger . . . "Well played Sir!"
It's now dinner time. (We call it supper time in New England.) So 5 of us get together and try The Bistro downstairs. It's not open on Thursdays and we're all going to the Smoker tomorrow night so we don't want to go to Cedars. So myself, Eric, Fold'em, Pete Caldes and Jason Sheedy head for the Deli near the Bingo hall.
We all have drinks, mostly beer except for my xtra dry Saphire Martini. (The only time I deviate from Turkey is just B4 a meal, when a cocktail is indicated. It's a bit more ceremonial than plain whiskey.)
Have you ever read Ogden Nash's Ode To A Martini?
"There's something about a Martini.
A tingle remarkably pleasant.
A yellow, a mellow, Martini.
I wish that I had one at present.
There's something about a Martini
Ere the dining and dancing begin.
And to tell you the truth, it's not the Vermouth.
I think, perhaps, it's the Gin."
Everyone orders sunstantial stuff except me and I entrust the chef with the greatest of challenges in a Connecticut deli. I order the corn beef sandwich on seedless rye and a glass of Dr. Brown's celery. This is a NY deli is it not? A menu full of stuff like latkes, blintzes, matzo ball soup.
How can a person go wrong here?
Well Foxwoods' idea of hot corn beef is not the same as the 2nd Avenue Deli's in NYC. (I should have known when I saw "warm".) They probably use a microwave, not a steam thing. My sandwich has only one thing in common with a NYC corned beef sandwich: It is hugely overstuffed.
More the pity, because I ate only one bite. The pickle, at least, wasn't bad.
But the Dr. Brown's was diet. For shame.
I literally drowned my dismay with another excellent Martini and we headed back to the poker room.
We introduced a new game to Foxwoods after dinner . . . the yellow chip game. Foxwoods provides their lower stakes dealers with yellow $2 chips to simplify the rake. We each bought in for hundreds of dollars worth of yellow chips and the dealer stripped his tray of everything else. Chip runners were kept busy.
The game was $6-$12 hold'em with a kill to $10-$20, which was promptly christened by Glenn, the floor supervisor, as a 2/3 kill . . . possibly unique in the entire world of poker.
Soon another yellow chip game was called right next to us. Fold'em was toke captain at Table #2 so we could toke the other dealer as well as our own. Whenever a pot was won we would toke our own dealer with a yellow chip and send "incoming" to table #2, for which we kept a small stack of $1 chips. This worked well until someone at our table realized that nobody but Fold'em was reciprocating.
It was easy to understand why. Table #2 was full of people who were confused enough by the yellow chip deal and were not about to toke the dealer at the table next to them. So that part of the fun died out.
Eventually I got called to the one pot limit game in play but I managed to take about $200 out of the yellow chip game. Actually, quite a bit more, but the toking got out of hand. Not much happening at the pot limit game, which was very tight. An all-FARGO game would have had bigger pots but of course ring games at ARG events cannot be limited to FARGO people. I believe I left this game about even, but I stopped taking notes a few hours earlier.
There were no Rocks'n Beers games (which really shouldn't be played in a friendly card room anyway) and, because it is not yet approved by the Foxwoods CCC, no Chow-A-Ha. (n.b. We should clear this game right away so it CAN be dealt at FARGO 2K. I didn't see a single table of H.O.R.S.E. either.
Strange for FARGO.
Moths to the flame. Fold'em, Jaeger, and I made our nightly foray to the dice pit about midnight. Jaeger, who only plays the don't, was standing next to me and I didn't make a single point for about an hour. Of course this meant that "Darkside Holtman" was making EVERY point. Uncle Mike taught me how to play this game and the first thie he said to me was "Don't 'don't'". Anyway, Hotlman (who, by this time, I wasn't speaking to) decided to cash out winners.
True story: The dice got hot. The guy to my left held them for about 40 minutes and I was with him all the way. I got well quickly and ended up about $450 to the good. When he finally sevened out I colored up and went to find Fold'em.
Not surprisingly he had gone up to beer heaven in Suite #481.
I went up myself because I had to get up early the next morning to pick up Chuck Weinstock at PVD . . . laughingly referred to as an airport . . . in Providence.
Silly me.
I stayed up with Fold'em and a few others until 4 AM telling (mostly) lies. But I remembered to order room service, to be served at 8 AM, then getting into bed and sleeping B4 I was horizontal.
I was kind enough, the next morning, not to tell Chuck he was riding with a man who had a meaningful problem dealing with the essentials of operating a motor vehicle.
"Providence" indeed.
End of day one.
I am scheduled to pick up my close friend, Chuck Weinstock, at Providence Airport at 9:52 this morning.
I am rudely, yet correctly, waken up by the robot at 8 AM. Scarcely 15 seconds later a quite attractive room service wench arrives at my door with my breakfast. She looks a little bit like my daughter so I dismiss all impure thoughts . . . as if they would do me any good anyway . . . and proceed to drink all of the coffee (black) and eat everything on the table. Bummer: they neglected to bring my orange juice, which may well be the only healthy beverage I might have consumed this day.
Mind you, I had been up until 4 AM or so exchanging snappy stories with Fold'em et al.
Sleep deprived, but quite sober, I got my car from valet and proceeded down Route 2, carefully noting every Dunkin' Donuts & other such along the way. My car had plenty of fuel; I needed plenty of negative-sleep liquid.
Chuck's plane was, as planes usually are at PVD, on time.
In my early life I had come in contact with a great many important people. In my current life I prefer important people who are not SELF-important. Hence my fond regard for Chuck.
We had a neat conversation on the way back to FW, details of which don't matter much . . . except to me.
I semi-dropped Chuck off at Two Trees. "Semi" meaning that his room wasn't cleared and, by prior arrangement, I waited at the portico to drive him over to the casino, told him how to get to the poker room, and valet-parked at Cedars.
A LOOOOOOONG Jaccuzzi and a short nap later I was ready to play cards.
Raydon was my partner in the "pairs" tournament and, of course, he showed up about 30 seconds B4 the cards were in the air. Always alert to such things, I had Bill Turner lined up as my playing alternate . . . but Ray did show up as the green flag went down.
Ray played the stud leg and he carried the two of us for about 4 rounds. I got diddly in the way of starting cards in the hold'em leg and . . . as we had agreed . . . I played accordingly.
We were in good shape at the first break, but things happen. I don't have notes on Ray's stud leg, but he always made some money for us. I may have screwed myself when I agreed to play the no-limit hold'em leg, but I had given the choice to Ray . . . the best no-limit player I know . . . and he had opted for stud.
I think we finished somewhere in the top half, but not B4 I witnessed Bruce Kramer (ADB BigBoy) go on a terrific rush from the 1 seat. When you combine a very superior player with good cards there ain't nobody but him going to rool the table. His stud partner, Mark Oldenburg, won the Saturday Hold'em event . . . which means Mark probably played well in the pairs, even though it was not his main event.
Cards is cards. A flush still beats a pair. Mark, obviously, knows all of this.
Bruce & Mark go on to win the pairs tournament, cashing in for about $650 each and a winner's jacket.
But the tournament, which began at 2 PM to accommodate late arrivals, was still going at 6 PM, when I was scheduled to host a cocktail party in Suite 481. Ray & I had busted out by then . . . thanks, mainly to me . . . but I wanted to see the finishing round. Arti had arrived, too late to be in the pairs tournament, and he kvetched enough about drinking and dining to break me away. (As organizer, I had denied myself any Turkey all day.)
So off we went, Arti & I, to Suite 481. While I took a shower and changed my shirt . . . no time for a shave . . . Arti made me one of his patented Vodka Martinis, which involves nothing other than distilled potato juice and an olive or two, and we were on our way to the Smoker.
Good for me, there was a seat available next to Warren and across from Kathy Raymond . . . whom I would park my Hog next to any day. (See the current issue of Poker Digest to fully understand this cryptic phrase.)
I find it incredible that Foxwoods' Poker Room has improved so much in the last year, ever since Kathy was handed the supervisory job. Without Kathy, there would never have been a FARGO. Various people had nixed it in '97, but a conversation with Kathy outside the poker room at The Sun gave it new hope and, eventually, we had a tournament in November of that year. Kathy, back then, was a step down the organizational ladder at FW but she apparently pushed the right buttons to make FARGO '97 a go. And she has been immensely helpful in making it an annual event ever since.
We had made an experimental move this year to see if a toke pool would find favor with our people. It was completely optional, yet about ¾ of our players sent in a contribution. This made it possible for me to present Kathy a bunch of money ($600) at the Smoker, with more to come as I get to the accounting later this week. My read on this was to build good will with Foxwoods, which may come into play whenever the Mohegans get their hotel built. Quite frankly, and speaking as a player . . . not an organizer . . . I want to keep FARGO at Foxwoods in years to come. But we must do the best deal we can for everyone's sake. Perhaps the '99 toke pool will encourage Foxwoods to sweeten the pot in future years. For example, a lower room rate will more than compensate players for a $5 or $10 contribution to the toke pool.
The dinner was superb.
I had told the maitre 'd earlier that I would personally send back my beef it it came to my table looking like it had been kept warm under a McDonald's heat lamp . . . that if my Lobster Bisque tasted more like library paste than lobster I would send IT back too.
I hope everyone got the same consideration I did, as my dinner was excellent. If not, please let me know.
We had 3 tables, ranging from 4 people to 10. Our table (10) split its check, which cost me $57, including T&T. I have often spent over $80 for dinner there, all alone. So I encourage "whoever" to do the same deal again next year.
It was now about 10:30 PM. Nobody in their right mind would play poker for serious money if they were as disadvantaged as I was at that point, so I went back to the yellow chip game. It was not as much fun as last night, probably because Fold'em wasn't in it to liven up. Still I made about $200.
Damn. I wish I had kept better notes.
I drifted around a bit, but it's now Friday night and the tourists are here. The hotel is sold out on rooms and the poker room has long lists. If you have a seat you had better hold on to it.
But I wanted to take a break (chips still on the table . . . they would protect my seat for 45 minutes). So I went up to Suite 481 to relax and check my messages. It was then that I got the best news I had received all weekend.
My Son, Tom Hafey, had decided to break away and be there the next night and play in the stud tournament on Sunday.
Tom, who will be 41 in December, is my middle child out of 5. When he was still in high school, in 1975, he helped me get our small family business launched . . . after I had decided, at age 45, to quit the advertising business. Tom worked with me for 3 years and then decided to enroll at Boston College . . . at my insistence . . . to see if he wanted to pursue anything else.
He didn't.
And Tom now runs Hafey & Sons, selling architectural hardware to (among other customers) Foxwoods. I continue to be involved with the "paper" end of the business, but Tom Hafey makes it work.
Anyway . . . Tom regularly works a 6 (often 7) day week and seldom takes any time off for anything but his children (One of whom is a 3-year old named William Alan Hafey II). He will be, once his 3 kids are paying their own bills, a regular fixture in poker/gambling . . . just as I have become.
The knowledge that Tom was coming truly made my weekend.
Knowing I should not play any more games that required intelligent decisions, I spent a couple of hours in the crap pit . . . holding my own . . . until I went on a monster rush. Since I don't know how to play video poker craps is the only casino game other than poker I will risk any substantial money on.
I use a very simple betting plan. (Not a "system". There is no system that can beat a negative expectation game.) I simply get as much value for my bets as I possibly can. To me that means playing only line (or come) bets with the maximum odds allowed.
But, in almost any casino, they will allow you to squeeze a bit more in the way of odds than simple "double" odds.
You simply play 3 units on the line when the dice come out and back them up with full odds. (Same thing with come bets) When a point is established they will allow you to put 10 units on a point of 6 or 8 and 8 units on a point of 5 or 9. Those bets are going off at the best odds available on the table.
Anyway . . . I took a huge amount of money from the game because I got lucky. I ended up winning more than $4,000.
Plus I witnessed the greatest, funniest, happening I have ever seen in a casino:
A guy vomited and spread most of it all over the table. Without missing a beat the boxman announced . . .
"No action on the puke!"
Absolutely the greatest one-liner I have ever seen or heard. ROFL.
They had to move a huge number of bets over to a free table next to ours and get them right B4 the game could go on.
So . . . time to go to bed again.
You have never seen a bigger shithouse than Suite 481 when I arrived there that night/morning. We had ordered pizza earlier and there were parts of it spread all over the room, including the carpet. A $20 toke for the maid may not have been enough.
The Usual Suspects were there, of course, and we told more snappy stories until about 4 AM. Arti had arrived and crashed earlier. I forgot to order room service so we had to do without the next morning.
Turned out we had a guest. Some kid from Staten Island had asked me to pair him up with somebody and I was unable to do so. So I told him he was welcome to sleep on the hide-a-bed in the living room part of the suite, which he did. Next morning, with no room service available for 40 minutes, we all went down to Java Hut for a totally unacceptable breakfast. He allowed Arti and me to pay for all of it.
It all reminded me of that line from "Streetcar" . . .
"I have become accustomed to the kindness of strangers"
Here's one I really blew.
I got to the final table, but only after doing my imitation of Pete Segal at ATLARGE '99 . . . a truly miracle comeback with maybe 3 tables left.
I was down to my last "come & get me", with only $150 in chips, when I got carded to a new table. Jerry Gerner was on my right and Warren Sander on my left and I had to go all in on the very first hand. As I've stated B4 I don't keep very good notes so don't look for fine details, but it came down to a case of me getting seed money from Jerry and then doubling through a couple of times to get back in the game. Much of it came from Warren, one of the more solid players in our group. Sorry Warren . . . I wasn't targeting you, but you were unlucky enough to get decent hands against my rush.
I went from the $150 to being essentially tied with "Big Al" Stuart when the final table was set. The blinds were not big enough yet to hurt me if I played only quality hands for a while.
But the ADBs had a $10 last-longer bet going with the WNPG (or some such group from the Boston area) and only myself and Dave Tahajian were left to defend our groups.
You know what happened. I got stupid and focused more on the $10 bet than I did on the tournament. Dave was rather short stacked so I made a lot of dumb bets early on trying to put him all in and I soon found myself with a crippled stack. He and many others began to feed off my huge stack. "Feed" is the wrong word; try "fed", which is exactly what I did.
I don't remember ever playing worse tournament poker . . . certainly not at the final table. I went from chip leader to IGHN in short order, finishing 7th for $196. Mark Oldenburg played brilliantly and won the jacket and first place money. Big Al finished a very respectable 3rd, which is about where I should have been . . . if not 1st . . . at the end. Crunch will publish the rest of the final table results. I was too crushed to take much notice. I had to get out of the poker room to kick my own ass for awhile so I went out to the pits again and had another decent run at the crap table (+ $550) and then went back up to the suite to take a much-needed nap.
Tom Hafey is due to show up about 8 PM so I get back down to the ring games looking for a seat where I could check the incoming crowd as they incame. I got a seat in a yellow chip game and played about dead even for a couple of hours with one eye on the table and one looking for Tom.
Meanwhile I began to form up a dinner group of some of my closest friends so they could meet Tom. The group included Nolan, Arti, Chuck, Fold'em, Ken Butler, Pete Caldes, and myself. We wanted to go to The Bistro, which doesn't take reservations and one of the guys reported that there was a wicked long line. Kathy Raymond came to our rescue, acting as a human line pass to get us in quickly. Tom had parking problems and was a little late but we were all together by about 9PM.
I may be one of a short list of FARGO players old enough to have a Son in the game. Believe me people, there is no finer form of male bonding. We all love our children but there is something very special about showing them off at an ARG event.
After drinks & a great dinner we all went our separate ways. Tom, with 3 young kids, limits himself to lower-stakes stud, which I never play so we split up for awhile, but met again a bit later at one of the rare $5 crap tables in play that Saturday night. Tom did quite well and I held my own, but there was no repeat of my Friday night triumph.
Later Tom went back to $1-$5 stud while I joined 17 other people in a "Midnight Madness" session of NL Hold'em. We each ponied up $150 plus $15 juice and the game was winner take all. I played decently but the cards never came and I didn't make it to the final table consolidation. Don Perry outlasted everyone and, after a deal at the end (where those who had any chips left simply kept them) I heard that Don toked the dealers more than 10% of his huge win. WTG Don!
I go up to the suite hoping to get to bed early so I can be in good shape for tomorrow's 7-stud event.
Of course it didn't happen.
(Fold'em . . . You do have a room of your own, do you not?)
Then I reached into my closet for my clothes
And found my cleanest dirty shirt,
And I brushed my teeth and combed my hair
And stumbled down the stairs to greet the day"
Kris Kristofferson
"Sunday Morning Coming Down"
Arti, Tom, & I really pig out with room service breakfast.
Since I have to be in the poker room an hour B4 the 11 AM stud tournament, Tom graciously agrees to pack up all the un-drunk beer and uneaten snacks and give them to the bellman to hold. (The leftovers from the Hospitality Suite are the one honorarium I allow myself for running FARGO.)
I promise myself one thing: If I make the final table today there will be no repeat of yesterday's dumb play on my part.
I hold my own, but no magical all-in heroics. Correction . . . I did have one all-in experience which kept me going for awhile. I draw J-J for hole cards and I push in my few remaining chips then leave the table to go outside the smoker's deadline. (While I am perhaps the stupidest of all the stupid smokers I had organized FARGO as a "no smoking within 15 feet of any player" event.) So I'm puffing my life away and a cheer goes up. "Bill Wins It!" In absentia I had tripled my small stack through and lived for another half hour of unplayable hands. I bust out in about middle place.
So I spend the rest of the tournament monitoring things with Greg Pappas, who had volunteered to do the bust out list for Crunch. Greg & I have a spirited discussion about who's the best player in the group. He opts for Steve Delborrel. I won't mention my choice because it would be bad form for the organizer to do so, but then we agree that it's a dumb question since the answer requires parameters . . . Which game? What stakes? Etc Etc.
Tony Goldstein, a FARGO newbie from Philadelphia, took the honors. (Again, look for Crunch's post which will contain the complete bust-out list.)
There was a message in my in box when I got home late Sunday night from Tony, who was concerned that he had neglected to leave a dealer toke and wanted to know how to go about it now. Tony had already contributed to the toke pool, yet still wanted to leave a personal toke. This is a class act, folks.
Tom Hafey lasted longer than his old man. Watch out for him some years down the line when his 3 kids are paying their own bills.
Tom & I spent the rest of the day at our own favorite tables. I happened to be next to Ploink for quite a while and we talked a lot about the different mindsets between east coast & west coast ARG players. I learned a lot.
I believe this was the best FARGO of the three we've played. Once again I experienced a phenomenon I have never experienced before outside of an ARG event: How do you get together with nearly 100 people, 1/3 of whom you have never met before, and not find one asshole in the group. I am in my 70th year and, prior to my first ARG event (ATLARGE '97), I have never felt this level of bonding with strangers.
Tom & I agreed to leave for home rather early, about 7 PM. But I made one last foray to the pits.
Now the script says I am supposed to give back all the money I won at the crap table over the last three days. It didn't happen. I picked up another $500 or so. I believe my poker winnings at FARGO '99 ended up on the plus side at about $300, but the dice gods smiled heavily on me and I went home with more than $6,000 for the weekend. Nice.
I may even use some of it to go to MARGE.
Bill Alan
Don Perry, who practices law on Long Island and is a frequent Foxwoods player, and a hell of a nice guy has tentatively agreed to take on the organizer job next year. Don had responded to my request for a Smoker organizer this year when it appeared that Bruce couldn't make it and he did what every committee chairman should do, taking the matter completely out of my hands. In short, Don is organized . . . which is not a bad quality to look for in an organizer.
I leave you in good hands and I cannot wait until next year so I can be just a player. But I also leave you with one request: Please send in your registration check early next year. It is very difficult to plan on anything unless you know you have a budget figure to work with.
When I get the math done I will see if there is anything left over and I will forward it to Don as seed money for FARGO Y2K.
Be kind to him.
B.A.
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