Trip report: Daliland

[johnnybeef]

Over the last few weeks dali has been asking me to come out and visit him. So, thursday I decide to book a flight to Chicago just to shut him up (yes Slacker, I realize the irony here.) Upon arriving in Chitown yesterday at noon, Dali picks me up and we meet his boy (who looks exactly like milfhunter) for lunch at Fuddruckers. At the restaurant, Dali makes himself a creation that is half pico de gallo, half cheddar cheese sauce, and will heretofor be known as regular sauce. Dali keeps on telling me how much he loves his regular sauce, although I never would have realized as he was hardly eating it; but then again, I suppose that it is rude to talk with your mouth full. To make a long story short, it takes him 38 minutes to take down a burger, fries and regular sauce, while it takes milfhunter and me only 10 to finish our meals. Lunch ended around 2 or so, and we had about 3 hours to kill before we went to a poker/world series party at another one of his friend's house. At about this time I am looking for some action as I hadn't gambled in about 10 hours, so we decide to go to a nearby TGIFridays to play some trivia and have a beer (or in Dali's case a mudslide.) The drive from Fudruckers to TGIFridays would normally have been about a 10 minute drive, but the regular sauce had started to take its course on Dali, and as a result, we had to stop twice so he could keep himself regular. At Fridays, Dali layed me 2:1 that he would beat me in NTN trivia. I happily accepted his wager for $20. The action was very close, and it came down to the last question, but the good guy prevaled, and was $40 richer because of it. Two Guinesses, one mudslide, and another trip to the john later, we leave Fridays for the party. The party seems like a nice little setup with three casino quality poker tables and a 42 inch bigscreen with the most recent WPT event running. We are told that there would be about 30 people there, and that we would be playing a $75 tournament while the Sox game was on. While waiting around for a while, I get the itch for some action again, and I suggest that we play some chinese poker while we wait on people to arrive. Dali and milfhunter happily agree, but since we don't know the exact point structure of the game, we decide that we would award 2 points for the bottom and middle hand, 1 point for the top hand, and a bonus point if we could win all three. We decide on $1 a point, and have a blast playing for about 30 minutes until the host of the party tells us that we were ready to commence and there would only be 10 people playing. The structure of the tournament was 20 minute levels with 1200 in chips and blinds of 5/10, 10/20, 20/40, 25/50, 30/60, 50/100, 75/150, 100/200, 150/300 etc. The tournament started right about at the same time the first pitch was thrown, and since the table was full of calling stations, I devised the strategy of limping in with drawing hands, and value betting big pairs. My strategy worked just well enough to bust me out in 5th place when my AQ loses to Dali's 77. After I bust out, I decide to deal for the remaining players, and much to my chagrin, Dali wins the tournament for a score of $350. We end up playing another tournament after this one, but it is slightly different as it is 8 handed and the structure has been altered to hurry the game up as milfhunter has to get home. By this point in the night, I am starting to get a little toasted, and I really don't care how I do so I push 7bb over top of an utg minraise with Jd3d and get called by the button whose queens hold up despite me flopping a straight draw. Dali follows suit and busts relatively soon after I do at about midnight. We end up teaching two of the other guys who busted how to play chinese poker, and we play that for another three or so hours until we leave. We leave the party at about 3 am and take the 45 minute drive to Dali's house. Upon arriving I fall instantly asleep as I had only had two hours of sleep the night before and had taken down at least 12 beers at the party. Today was relatively unexciting in comparison, but cool never the less as I got to spend a good amount of time with his wife and son (both of whom are very nice.)

Stay tuned for updates....