Poker can be a lonely game. Unlike, for instance, softball, there’s nothing that requires you to get together with other people of a like mind or intent. You go down to the casino or card club, play poker, and then leave. Too often, when a poker room “acquaintance” approaches you, it’s for one of three reasons:
· He wants to tell you a bad beat story
· He wants to borrow money from you
· You’ve borrowed money from him and he wants you to pay it back
These aren’t necessarily the criteria for great personal relationships. Topping it all off, people in the poker profession are often there because they prefer to work alone – on their own hours, thank you very much. The idea of being in an *ffice, with a j*b, and reporting to a b*ss… Well, it’s more than they can handle.
But among those of us who fancy poker as an avocation and recreation, there’s nothing quite as fun as getting together with fellow poker fanatics to share stories, tell tales, and put bad beats on each other.
Probably one of the most long-lived gatherings among the poker community is “BARGE” – an every-August gathering in Las Vegas that got its start in the early 90s when a bunch of poker-playing geeks found themselves all attending a graphics conference there. They had met over that new-fangled “internet” and agreed to meet in person at the graphics conference to talk and play poker and blackjack. The first BARGE poker tournament was actually played on a hotel suite bed. Fast-forward almost two decades and BARGE is still going strong. In fact, it has spawned offshoots, including FARGO, held every fall at Foxwoods.
I recently got back from my first FARGO and it had all of the key requirements for a BARGE-family event:
· Lots of poker tournaments with unusual (bordering on weird) formats
· Meals and drinks shared and stories told
· Excessive tipping of dealers and generally positive and classy treatment of all poker room staff
· Dinner reservations missed because the reservation-holders were “in the best $4-8 HOE game you’ve ever seen in your life” and/or deeply stuck. But usually all of the people who were supposed to have dinner together were in the same $4-8 HOE game anyway.
I even managed to cash in the rather vanilla No Limit Hold’em tournament, although there are few tournaments in which you can reveal pocket fives winning without a showdown and have most of the table shout “Presto” en masse.
We had a great buffet at Custy’s restaurant nearby, literally taking over the entire establishment for the evening. It was just as well there weren’t any civilians in the place; they’d have been run over as FARGO participants bounced from table to table shaking hands with and hugging friends they hadn’t seen in months or years. In fact, one of the mottos of the BARGE community is, “There are no strangers – just friends you haven’t met yet.”
From there, it was straight back to the Foxwoods poker room (“Why are we sitting here talking over coffee? There are poker games going on and we’re not in them!”). I actually had quite a buffet of poker over the weekend, playing $10-20 Limit Hold’em, $1-2 No Limit Hold’em, $1-2 PLO, $1-2 PLO-8, $4-8 HOE, and a PLO Shootout that resolved to an Omaha-8/Stud-8 final table (no, I’m not making that up). I even cashed in that event in absentia, cleverly making a save at three players on our first table (two advanced; I did not).
The absolute antithesis of “grinding,” this poker buffet provided me with an opportunity to stretch different poker muscles at every turn. I also had mind-bending events such as looking at the pot, deciding how much I was going to bet, and recalling that if I were going to bet, it would be $4 exactly and nary a penny more nor less.
Also, through sheer serendipity, I discovered a completely different side of Foxwoods. A friend and I went for a power walk on Sunday morning. It’s amazing how different you feel if you get a solid workout of some sort, take a shower, and eat a healthy brunch before heading to a poker tournament. You look at the people operating on four hours of sleep slurping coffee and eating doughnuts and think, “I have a huge advantage over you already.”
Anyway, we headed out of the Cedar Hotel and randomly turned down the hill past the parking garage in what seemed to be a forest-ward direction. A couple hundred yards down the sidewalk along the edge of the forest, we saw a sign: “Pequot Museum Nature Trail Entrance.” We laughed and high-fived each other – we’d stumbled onto the power walk jackpot. Turning right, we were instantly in a beautiful forest and a million virtual miles from the casino. The path snaked through the forest and around behind the museum – we even did step-reps on the park bench halfway along.
Forty-five minutes later, we were back at the hotel and ready to crush the PLO/Omaha-8/Stud-8 tournament.
Anyway, it was all over too soon as everybody returned to their regular lives, careers, and families. The games at Foxwoods got quieter (and probably worse), the $4-8 HOE and $1-2 PLO high-only games vanished, and things returned to card room-normal. Until next year.
If you ever stumble onto BARGE, FARGO, or any of their cousins, we’ll welcome you with open arms and probably throw some plastic fish at you. Or you can create your own gathering – round up the denizens of your home game and make a pilgrimage to Las Vegas, Foxwoods, or any destination that offers poker. You’ll find that poker doesn’t have to be a solo experience; it can be the centerpiece of a fantastic social gathering.
Lee Jones is the Card Room Manager for Cake Poker and is the author of “Winning Low Limit Hold’em,” which is still in print over 15 years after its initial publication.