Elements of Style: How to write a successful RGP trip report

Now you need to tell the reader about the hotel/casino. For the most part the accommodations will be just fine. After all, that is why you chose to go there rather than some God-forsaken backwater of humanity like Upper Volta, or worse, Louisiana. Still, if you really give it some thought you should be able to come up with some minor criticism, just to give the hotel management something to improve upon. You might say, "The room was very nice, with a great view of the strip. In fact, it would have been perfect except for the festering corpse under the bed."

About now you'll decide that you had better insert some poker content. The average RGP reader has seen every possible poker situation thrice, and quite frankly doesn't give a rat's ass about the poker content. He's already skimming ahead, looking for anything involving strippers. Still, if for no reason other than tradition, throw in some poker content anyway. Introduce it with a humorous little jab poking fun at the fact that the introduction had no poker content, such as "Warning! Actual Poker Content Ahead!" Ha ha! I am laughing already!

First describe the low limit ring game you get seated in. Assign verbal icons to each player, such as Clueless Newbie, Drunken Lout, or Unscrupulous Foreigner. You'll want at least one ultra tight and one maniacal archetype at the table so you can explain how you adapted your strategy to 'play the player.' If you don't feel up to the effort of describing actual hands, just copy and paste some content from the trip report archives. Nobody is going to read this part anyway. In fact, if you checked Deja News you would find that the hand descriptions in *every* trip report written since 1994 are actually repeats of Jay "Sippy" Sipelstein's KK over Pepe's AK.

Since we're all going to skip this section anyway, put your bad beat story here. Trust me, we all feel bad for you. Who would have figured that in thousands of hands of cardroom poker you'd ever see a 1 in 44 shot come through?. Also, somewhere in the ring game you should encounter an RGPer. If you don't actually encounter an RGPer, just make one up. No one can verify it (Remember for every Usenet poster there are 27.2 lurkers[1]). Just make up a clever, poker sounding nickname by randomly choosing one element from each of columns A, B, and C and concatenating them, and claim to have met that person.

A	B	C
Alligator	Poker	d00d
Vegas	72o	guy
Two racks	Reraiser	123
Raising	Ace	boy
Drunken	Stud Player	Of the Apocolypse
New	Joey Joe Joe	From Hell
Stone Cold	Chipmonger	r00ler
Texas	Shark	bot
Infected	Igneous	bitch
Six Pack	Slim	bitchbot

[1] Source: Texas Chipmonger d00d.

Now back to the good stuff. The reader wants to hear about your night life. The first rule here is that "mature behavior" is synonymous with "bored readers." The traditional route to generating entertaining reading is to become increasingly inebriated as you recoup poker losses at negative EV games, comporting yourself in an escalatingly antisocial manner. Throw in the magic words "the last time I checked you were still allowed to have fun in [the place that you are at]" and the readers will automatically forgive all social infractions short of aggravated assault. If you've got real writing talent, you'll manage to work in an encounter with a hooker somewhere in this section.

Now its time to hit the hay. It had better be 5 AM or later, or the reader will dismiss you as a lightweight wannabe. Describe how you stagger into your room, besotted, and collapse to catch a few hours sleep before the early tournament tomorrow. Actually use the word 'besotted,' which is intrinsically funny.

Time to wake up! Engender low tournament expectations by describing how awful you feel. Worse is better. "I woke up stiff as Tutankhamen from sleeping on the floor, where I had passed out in a putrid puddle of my own vomit" is good, but it's not going to get you into the Trip Report Hall of Fame. Try, "I slapped a makeshift compression bandage on the sucking chest wound I suffered when that crack dealer let me hold a round from his 44 magnum, took two aspirin, and headed for the tournament area."

Now on to the tournament. It is *mandatory* to begin by complaining about how tough your table is. (Bitching about your table is steeped in RGP tradition, and actually dates back to ancient Persia where, in 1216, the game of As Nas (precursor to Poker) was developed. The inventor of As Nas conceived the game, fashioned a crude deck of cards, and immediately dealt out two hands. And just who sat down to play against the inventor? Yep, Scott Byron.) So, first describe the genuinely tough players, if any, then be creative describing the others. If there's a guy who has played in 317 tournaments without cashing, he's 'a savvy veteran,' if there's some lady who is completely clueless describe her as 'unpredictable,' if they wheel up a brain dead crackhead on a life support gurney, he's 'impossible to read,' etc. Make it clear that nothing short of reanimating Stu Unger could make the table any tougher.

The reader now expects that you either cashed (which is why you're writing the report in the first place) or played gallantly, getting busted by an egregious suckout just short of the money, but surpassing your goal of (not busting out first / finishing in the top half / lasting past the break) anyway. Don't disappoint them. No one really wants to hear the story of how you finished 208th out of 257, ok? That would be like going to a movie that ends with James Bond saying "Bloody hell, I give up. I just can't solve this one." Just too anticlimactic. Be sure to mention your extremely limited experience in this style of tournament.

By now the reader is tired of the "lessons" that you "learned" as a result of making "plays" that were "boneheaded." If you want your trip report to stand the test of time, here is where you better serve up a second helping of interesting or useful material. If the story you insert here contains the word(s) 'arrested,' 'stripper,' 'drunken bastard,' 'hooker,' or 'cocktail waitress' you are probably on the right track. If not, your reader following will vanish faster than Greg Norman's hope on a Sunday.

Finally, feel free to drivel on about traveling home and then tie it all together with some quaint anecdote that has a deeper meaning. We won't mind, because we're already skimming the next post looking for stripper stories.

Keep 'em coming,

BobbyD

[ Editor's note: I said to the author, "A great trip report. You get the Dave Barry Newsgroup Post Award. By the way, I really do think the type of trip report you describe here is an excellent one."
He replied, "Me too. :-) The post was mainly a spoof of all RGP trip reports, including my last one (BobbyD Does Boston) which does, in fact, feature many of those elements."]

Published with the permission of the author.
Reproduction without the author's permission prohibited.