BARGE ... always a winning play

Another BARGE … another madcap, wonderful time, punctuated by too much poker (that’s me at the tables), too little sleep, too much fun, friends I see all the time, friends I see once a year, and friends made anew as happens each and every year at BARGE.

For me, this BARGE had an additional challenge. It was production weekend for Poker Player Newspaper, so I had to get to bed at a reasonable hour in order to get up at 6 a.m. and edit the paper. I also had to go my room earlier at night than I’d really like to in order to do more editing.

Editing is a job I like, but editing a publication that comes out every two weeks is a relentless treadmill, and regardless of where you go, you have to make room to edit—and production weeks are more relentless than the weeks in between.

We’ve held BARGE at a few places other than Binion’s over the years, but when push comes to shove, there’s no place that gets us better than Binion’s. They are right in step with our sense of humor, our willingness to go far beyond what most poker rooms are willing to put up with, and each year dealers and floor personnel make their requests to work as many hours as they can during the BARGE weekend. Yes … It’s that much fun.

This might have been the largest BARGE yet. I’m not sure of the registration but I’m guessing there were close to 240 people attending. Downtown, for all its tawdriness, is the only place to hold an event like BARGE. We blend in there, and the location makes it easy to walk from place to place.

I drove there and did not move my car from the parking garage the entire weekend. My furthest trip was down the street to the Golden Gate, the oldest hotel in downtown Las Vegas, and an art deco wonder that has shrimp cocktails for a dollar apiece. But if you like the bigger, tastier shrimp as I do, you can get a huge cup full for about three bucks. I generally scarf down three or four at a time while I soak in the Golden Gate's unique vibe—the casino and café are somehow evocative of New Orleans, even down to the occasional ragtime piano player who pound s out tunes while you eat.

BARGE is always this time of year … the first weekend in August, but you have to register online to attend. If you mark your calendar and ping me sometime next June or early July—registration usually cuts off mid-July—I’ll give you all the registration details.

I’ll even guarantee that you’ll have more fun than you’ve ever had in a poker room. That’s a promise.