Wine & Whine O' the Week (v. 1.9)—Beaching a Drunken Whale

During my Festivus '09 trip to Vegas, I found myself in a wild late night 1/2 NLHE game at Bally's.  Shocking, I know.  Although Bally's often features loose-drunk action after midnight, this was a special occasion.  Driving the action at our table was a well-lubricated gambler with a seemingly endless bankroll—a drunken whale, if you will.  This gent would call any preflop raise under $200 with almost any two cards, and if the pot was unraised when it reached him, he would grab a random stack of red chips and blind raise $30-$80.  On the flop, he would go all-in with any pair or any draw.  Needless to say, this gent saw some monstrous variance, running up his stack to more than $1,000, then busting out and peeling another $300 from a fat wad of bills.  He took this all with a great deal humor, and a great number of beverages.

My strategy was to wait for solid starting hands (pairs 88 or better, or two Broadway cards), then see flops with the drunk gent.  I managed to take down a couple of nice pots, and was licking my chops for more.  Then, a mousey little 50-ish guy in a tweed sportcoat and precious little half-glasses (looked like Hollywood's idea of an English professor) decided it was time to tap the glass.  While drunk guy stepped away for a smoke, the professor began whining about the large preflop raises: "It's just not poker!"  I quietly said, "If this guy is going to play like this, until he's broke or passes out, he is the funniest and nicest guy you've ever met, and he can play his cards however he wants."  A couple of other players agreed, but the professor continued to stew (it probably didn't help that the professor had been sawed off a couple of times by the drunk's improbable suckouts). 

Sure enough, when drunk guy came back to the table and pushed all-in against the professor's preflop raise, the professor showed Queens and mucked.  The professor then began to berate the drunk guy, whining about how he "wasn't playing right" and "was ruining the game".  Although I tried to lighten the mood, the damage was done.  Within a few hands, drunk guy stands up and leaves, saying, "Time to go play blackjack. At least I play that the right way."  So, drunk guy walks away from the game with at least $5,000 still in his pocket.  I still weep for all the missing Benjamins.

This tragic tale reminded me of a saké I once enjoyed during a dinner at the now-defunct Social House at Treasure Island (TI) (although the Social House website states it is reopening in the Crystals shopping center at City Center in three months).  Like wine, saké is a complicated beverage with a lot of styles and differences in quality.  I don't know much about saké except that a good, cold saké tastes great with a lot of Asian cuisine, and it apparently contains alcohol.  So, our group asked our server for a recommendation, and she suggested the Suigei "Drunken Whale" Tokubetsu Junmai.  "Suigei" refers to the brewery, while the words after the English name refer to the quality and style of the saké.  All I know is that the Drunken Whale had a crisp bite, reminiscent of a tart green apple, but dry, without any noticeable sweetness.  A little research after I got home revealed that the Drunken Whale is regarded as a "Champagne of Saké"; yet another hat tip to the fine Social House staff.  The saké went well with our meal, including sushi, Kobe beef sliders, and a couple of fish dishes.  At 15.5% alcohol, the Drunken Whale likely could get a whale a little tipsy.  If you like crisp, refreshing white wines like Champagne, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio, Albariño, or Vinho Verde, a good saké like the Drunken Whale is well worth a try next time you serve light fish or vegetable dishes.  At around $20/bottle retail, this might be more of a special occasion beverage, but it would be a worthy option to consider in lieu of yet another bottle of overpriced, overoaked Chardonnay, especially come summer.

Saké Bombed

With Friday work scheduled for eastern Iowa, I had the perfect excuse to head over to Cedar Rapids for the IMOP home game Thursday night. Since I'm not playing in the home game winter tournament series, I had a couple of hours to kill early evening, so I swung by the Meadows ATM for a quick session on the way out of town.

My session was short, but eventful. Early on, I got the Grump and managed to give away $200 semi-bluffing with my OESD that whiffed. But I rallied with a weird hand. Guy who was short-stacked with $40 was in EP, and pushed, a move he had made a few times, obviously looking for a double-up. A terrible ET flat-called with about $250 more behind (he was easily $1K into the game according to the guy sitting next to me).  I find AsQd on the button, and I figure I am way ahead of these two guys' ranges.  I decided to raise, hoping to drive out ET and get heads up with short-stack guy with ET's dead money giving me a nice overlay.  ET thinks a bit, then suddenly pushes!  Aaaiiiyyyaaahhh!  I think a bit, then decide to trust my read, so I call.  Flop is three spades, giving me the nut flush draw, the turn adds a small card to give me a wheel draw, and the river totally blanks.  I turn up my Ace-high, short-stack shows KK for the main pot, and ET shows ... KQ offsuit!  Donkey Kong!  Ship.  It.

Despite misplaying Yaks horribly, I found myself with $325 profit around 7:30 pm.  With the home tourney starting at 8:00 pm, I assumed the cash game would start no later than 9:30 pm (given the degenerates in the game), so I booked the win and hit the road for the two-hour drive.  On my way out, IMOP pledge Mr. Chow stopped to say hello; he was in Des Moines for business, and was planning to play the Meadows tourney (predictably, he was out in under 30 minutes). 

Fast forward two hours, and I was stopping off at a Cedar Rapids grocery store that has a nice wine and beer section.  I picked up some special request beer for the guys, a bottle of wine for me, and some kettle chips (my snack food weakness). That's when I saw it—a nice bottle of premium saké.  Impulse buy!

Santa Claus was hosting the game, which was convenient for me, as he was also providing Wynn-quality room and board for me.  All the usual suspects were present, and the cash game got going upon my arrival.  There really weren't a lot of hands of note, but there were a ton of laughs.  If this game was any indication, Vegas' poker rooms will have more hilarity than they can handle three weeks from now!  I personally played about as poorly as possible, running AK into Bonnie's AA (when did he start playing those cards?), and later running my AK into Bonnie's K3o on a J-J-3 flop (that's the Bonnie we all know and love!).  I also managed to win and lose a couple of big pots against Santa, but I didn't mind since I was playing off Santa's home game account.  Fortunately, I rallied at the end so I didn't completely bankrupt Santa's poker roll.

Now, I'm not one to drink at the poker table.  I might have one or two drinks toward the end of a session, but usually I am booze-free.  Even during IMOP most of my sessions are spent drinking green tea or diet soda.  But for some reason, the IMOP home game brings out my inner degenerate.  After some wine early, I soon switched over to saké, drinking it straight from an over-sized lowball glass.  The saké was quite tasty, but had some unexpected effects, such as rearranging the space-time contiuum to eliminate the period from 1:30 to 3:30 am.  Saké also causes flop death and chip stack erosion.  Thankfully, Mrs. Claus had a tasty eggs and sausage breakfast waiting for me, which proved a great antidote for the residual saké tremors.  So, new rule for IMOP-V:

"Friends don't let friends drink saké"