Two Plus Two Older Archives - OT: Trip Report, The Bike

So around 5:45, microbet swings by the hotel, picks up my lazy ass, and we head off to The Bike, to meet up with SFB and Newt.

As we hit the road and say our hellos, I sit there mostly thinking about how little microbet looks like what I would think microbet would look like. In fact, I had no mental image of him at all prior, but he just doesn't look at all like an internet poker player. The rest of the car trip was spent mostly talking amazingly about drug policy reform in the US, and basically not at all about poker. micro's, how do you say, a libertarian - not that there's anything wrong with that. (As a sidenote, the beauty of being absolutely right about something, as the drug policy reform movement is, is that when properly phrased, your position makes sense and is agreeable to everyone, regardless of political sentiment.)

We also talk about micro's work and family and such, and I learn that micro's not only done a whole lot of different stuff in his life, but also is currently actively involved with same. There was something about blueberries, which was fairly intriguing, but some googling says they grow in bogs. This ruined my idealized vision of owning a vast awesome location with mountains and such, and replaced it with visions of a bog.

So we walk in to The Bike, and the place is HUGE! So I say to microbet:

"Hey, this place is HUGE!"

and he says:

"eh, it's not that big, Hollywood and someplace else are bigger."

and I'm like:

"killjoy"

I'm guessing he hasn't seen the tiny [censored] rooms that they call poker rooms in East Chicago.

So yeah, the place is mammoth, he doesn't know what he's talking about. And so we go off in search of SFB, who I'm told to look for as "an old guy wearing a red hat." We find him not much later, an old guy in a red hat. He's playing stud, but apparently thinks it's cooler to be friends with the people in the game than to take their money. He gets us a round of drinks. Ain't nothing wrong with the drinks except that apparently this place serves Newcastle, and when I said "beer" SFB defaults to Heineken. Must be a family thing, or something.

We do a brief scouting expedition to find out that the $100 tournament that was supposed to run has been cancelled, much to SFB's chagrin, as he had bought out 1/4 of our action at the steep discount of only 50% of the buyin.

micro calls up Newt, who's apparently been in the room a while, playing some cash game where he's inexpertly taken a small amount of money off some chumps.

SFB works some connections and gets us comped a dinner at the place's restaurant. We meet his friend Tim who did cool [censored] like bring omaha and stud8 to the realm of LA. We eat some food, only about half of which Newt drops on my lap. We chill, SFB tells me I'm a [censored] moderator, and only a little bit better poster. I die a little bit inside.

We drop a tip for the waitresses, and head out to play, and say goodnight to SFB, whose bedtime we've already past, as the sun's down.

We go to get on the list for some cash games, and Newt gets carded. Or should I say "Aaron" gets carded. They card me too, as I've apparently just walked in to a card room with a 12 year old. They don't card microbet, as his walker is good proof that he's like, old. Satisfied with "Aaron"s ID, we go up to get on a list to be told that a new game is starting and we can all sit together.

Sweet.

I sit on their right in a "nice" 3/5 nl game, with a max buyin of $200, if you bust you can rebuy for $300, $.5 rake if you don't take a flop, $4 rake if you do take a flop, and a bunch of idiots.

Newt and I bust, and micro gets very short, in say, 10 minutes.

Two of us rebuy while laughing, one of us stubornly refuses to rebuy, and decides to grind it out.

We miss flops for a while, the two of them refuse to play my patented low stakes cash game strategy of "Any ace, Any two suited, Any pair, and Any two T+," though they do joke that I should be playing connectors too.

Newt leaves, because he has somewhere better to be. Something about rock climbing incredibly cool rocks, or something. I think he was just pissed we weren't on the Live at the Bike table, and that none of us had seen a waitress naked yet. It is worth noting that SFB's friend said if we got a few people together we could just ask to have the Live at the Bike table for ourselves.

At the table with us are these 3 or 4 friends, all in their early 20s, and a rotating crew of other people.

All the friends are terrible.

Amongst the rotating group are a middle aged dude who sits down, raises his first hand to $50 (this wasn't one of those games where that's the norm,) wins the blinds, and then the next hand gets it all in on a Txx flop or a JTx flop with AT against AA, sucks out, and goes on a long expletive filled shouting rant about how "you try to suck me in I suck you out" when the loser of hte hand says "nice hand." He then leaves the table, sits out, and goes to recount the great story to his friends at seemingly every other table in the casino.

A girl sits down.

The crew of fairly pathetic men work on her.

Micro makes polite conversation.

The girl is Armenian.

We joke about telling her that the other guys are Turkish.

The girl plays much more competently than the guys, as expected. Though she at one point says she would have made a fairly absurd fold against me, had I bet, which I didn't due to dealer error.

Eventually, a beer or so later, we leave with more chips than we came with.

I learn a bit more about micro on the ride home, and he is a cool guy.

So, rundown:

Newt: Seems pretty cool, hope he has a good time climbing, needs to carry a fake moustache or something.

Micro: Seems pretty cool as well, needs to play more hands preflop.

Bob: Is less funny than Jman, since Jman's humor was brought up earlier. But he's a pretty cool guy too. One day I'll give him some lessons, and he'll win, instead of just playing. He's a bit wiser than he lets on though.

Hope to see them all again sometime.

c