Trip report: Horseshoe Casino, Hammond, IN 8-9-08

After the big trip to New York, I wasted in no time in setting off for another trip. Up next, a trip to Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Indiana. The casino underwent a gigantic renovation recently, costing half a billion to complete, and the grand re-opening was scheduled for August 8. As it turned out, the Smashing Pumpkins were brought in to play at the new theatre called The Venue, which is conveniently located only up a staircase and down the hall from the casino. As a Pumpkins fan and gambler, this was a fortuitous combination I could not pass up. So, I hooked up with my boy Q and we were off.

I got to the casino and easily found my way to the poker room. Wow! This is the closest thing I've seen to a Vegas type poker room outside Sin City. 34 tables in all, a very nice front desk/brush area, and a two tiered room (with the upper tier reserved for nosebleed stakes), this place was very nice. Of course, everything was brand new, including the tables, a commemorative set of chips for the grand re-opening, the electronic waitlist, and (unfortunately) the dealers.

The wait list process was a little cumbersome. I didn't call ahead to get on the list and by the time I got to the room there was a wait of about 2o people on the 1/2 No Limit game. Most of these were call-ins though so I was able to get a seat in about 30 minutes or so. Not bad, but they could have easily opened another table or two while I was waiting and there would have been no wait at all. I'm sure that is something that will be worked out with a little more experience.

The dealers weren't so good. Many of them had a very difficult time keeping the action moving, making decisions when a card was inadvertently exposed, etc. One cool thing was that the room has chip runners, meaning the dealers were not selling chips, which kept the action moving. Once the dealers get some more experience, the play should be pretty quick at Horseshoe. There is a lot of space in the room, as opposed to most of the other rooms I've frequented. This is a very good thing!

I sat down about 1:45 pm or so and started playing. I didn't have much in the way of hands for most of the session. In fact, the entire 6+ hours I played, I only wound up showing my cards on two hands. I'll dissect a few hands here for your reading pleasure.

Hand #1. Guy 2 seats to my right has been splashing around quite a bit, raising with a lot of garbage. He likes to talk a lot and is generally your typical table captain. He pops it up to 12 preflop. I look down at pocket sevens in the small blind. I might consider folding here since only one other person had limped into the hand and I'm out of position. But, given the aggressive nature of the captain, I decided to call. Other guy calls. Flop comes down 678 rainbow. Not a perfect hand for a set but beggars can't be choosers. I check, the limper checks and captain bets 25 into our $36 pot. I've got the captain covered and think he's likely on an overpair or just pushing around. But I'm not taking any chances. I push all in for another 100 or so. The limper folds and the captain goes deep into the tank. After a minute or so, he decides to call me and turns over pocket nines. He has an overpair and open ended straight draw. Rag on the turn and the river is an eight to fill me up. Nice pot and suddenly I'm up about $200 or a buy-in.

Hand #2. I'm on the button and about 5 people limp in to me. I look down at A8 off suit. I don't usually play this kind of hand but since I'm on the button decide to see a flop. Small Blind completes and BB checks. Flop comes down A88, bingo! SB leads out for $15 into the $14 pot. I'm disappointed as it folds around to me. I smooth call, wanting to extract as much as possible out of senor SB. The turn is a rag and he bets out another $20. Again I smooth call. River is yet another rag and SB bets out $30. This time I think about it for a while and raise another $90, figuring with $158 in the pot any eight and any big ace are likely to call me here. He goes into the tank forever and finally (argh!) mucks his hand. He shows an Ace as he folds. Dang it, I guess I raised a little too much. But, I've added to my growing stack.

Hand #3. Shortly before dinner, I finally look down at a premium pair in late position, spying AA. I'm in late position and there are four limpers in ahead of me. I raise up to $12 and get 3 callers (yikes!). Flop comes down T73, 2 diamonds. Checked to me and I bet out $20 into the $52 pot. Guy in 3rd position raises it up to $60 and it folds around to me. Did he hit a set? Maybe but I'm putting him on something more like pocket Queens or Jacks. This guy isn't a very good player and the only set I saw him play all night he slow played all the way to the river. I re-popped up to $120. Guy has about $300 behind, a nice sized stack. He fairly quickly calls me. Turn is a beautiful, wondrous, glorious Ace, I'm now sitting on the nuts. Dude checks to me and I bet out another $75 into this $300 pot. He fairly quickly calls. River is another seven, pairing the board and giving me a full boat. The only hand that beats me here is pocket 7s, which I thought was a possibility but I tell myself that's monster-under-the-bed type thinking. He checks to me and I fire out another $75. He's got about $150 left behind and the pot is already around $450. I think I've bet little enough for him to call, especially with such a big pot. He thinks for literally 3-4 minutes before finally folding. ARGGGGH! He was either on his Kings, Queens or Jacks, or maybe a flush draw. Later he tries to tell me he had pocket 2s, meaning he folded twos full of sevens. I don't believe that for a second. I lose a little on a couple speculative hands and finish the night up $430, up over two buy-ins. I like this poker room!

As an aside, the place also features 2 Poker Tek tables, which basically is an automated poker table, meaning no dealers, no chips, etc. It's basically playing computerized poker but you're playing against other people that are sitting at the table. The advantages of this are quicker games, no tipping the dealer required and lower rake taken from the hands. The disadvantage is primarily that there are no real cards, chips, etc. I'll try it out next time I'm there.



Q and I also checked out dinner. The line to the buffet was unbelievably long so we headed for a little Asian noodle shop. It was ok, they had a few dim sum dishes that I am especially fond of. So I snagged some of that and scarfed down dinner. This place could use more smaller restaurants besides the buffet and definitely could use more seating. Next up, The Venue, for Pumpkin-time!

The room was interesting, it was a gigantic theater. I'm sure that the set-up varies from show to show. The night before the Pumpkins played, Bette Midler opened the room. I'm pretty sure the general admittance area didn't exist for her show, hard to see all the boomers moshing it up to Wind Beneath My Wings. I digress.

For the Pumpkins, the entire downstairs was standing room, GA. It probably could have held somewhere in the neighborhood of five thousand people in the downstairs alone. Pumpkins didn't come close to filling it though. In the upstairs, there was a balcony area with what looked like fairly limited seating, although to be honest I didn't really take a good look. The balcony was quite a long ways back from the stage, those seats would not have been good for this show. Interestingly, the floor itself was concrete but during the show when everyone was jumping around you could feel the floor bouncing, almost like it was made of rubber. I kept envisioning the pulsing mass of people collapsing through the floor and landing one story down in the middle of a roulette game or something!

Pumpkins put on an interesting show. They were on stage for 2 1/2 hours and played a few of the hits. They also played a couple of really long songs that literally lasted about 50 minutes or so between the 2 of them. Here is a review of a similar show done the night before that seems like it had a very similar setlist. Highlights of the show for me included classic Mayonnaise, the previously mentioned long rock out to America, and from way back Rhinoceros. Unfortunately, there were some lowlights. First, the sound really sucked. I don't know if it was the room or the band, but at many points you couldn't hear Corgan's guitar and often couldn't hear his vocals. Huh? Second, I wasn't very into the lengthy Floyd cover they did. The acoustic set in the middle of the show was fairly average and the final encore, when the entire band stood front stage and played kazoos was sublime and a little too much for me. Overall, I'm glad I saw the band but it left a bit to be desired.

On the other hand, Q has been a big Pumpkins fan for a long time. He's been a little grouchy the band hasn't played Chicago once since their reunion last year. I don't think this show really helped the cause. I really don't want to be to blame for his dissocation with his favorite band but I think it may be too late for that. Bummer!

Song lyric of the day: "The world is a vampire / set to drain" Smashing Pumpkins

Until next time.

Ace

Trip Report: Pomme grande

The big trip is over! Here's my recollection of the affair.

We started out on Friday night, headed from the midwest to the Big Apple. The plan was to drive out overnight to minimize the "are we there yet" factor. So, we got in the car and off we went. 7 minutes into the trip, we made our first stop, a turnaround to head home and retrieve our forgotten camera. Not bad! So, eight minutes later, we were seriously on the road, right around 8 pm.

The kiddies were entertained with a movie for a while, which helped, finally dozing off as we crossed into Indiana. The great part about this trip was that we primarily only had to take one interstate virtually the entire way, the toll-infested I-80. We got about 2 1/2 hours in before our first pit stop. From there, we were in business, getting a long ways and deep into early morning hours before our next stop. The driving overnight plan was a good one but had a few drawbacks. One, I should have gotten more sleep the night before - I was up quite late due to some work stuff. Two, it really threw our sleep patterns off on the day of our arrival. I made it through most of Ohio before needing some relief at the wheel, turning it over to the better half.

We ran into a Noah laughing his butt off in the Ark rainstorm in Eastern PA as what eventually turned into dawn approached. It was hair-raising, going up and down the mountains (the very beautiful Poconos) in this stuff. I took over at the wheel shortly into the deluge. We cruised into New Jersey and were on our way to our hotel, getting into the area by about 9:30 in the morning. Crazily, this was nearly to the minute the amount of time MapQuest told us it would take.

Our hotel was quite nice, it seemed like it was pretty new and the room we got was very big, with plenty of room for all of us and a separate room area for our youngest to sleep without worry of being bothered by us. Unfortunately, my head nearly exploded trying to find the place. It was securely nestled on the backhalf of a frontage road on a non-existent highway that you had to know a secret password to enter. Ugh! So, instead of finding the hotel, we headed over instead to check out the Statue of Liberty.

I've seen Lady Liberty while crossing a bridge or two in NY and was suprised at how small she looked from that vantage point. So when we took the ferry over to Liberty Island, I was dutifully impressed by the size of the statue. It was a very cool, but brief, experience. Unfortunately, it started pouring so it was a little soggy making our way back to the ferry. But once on board, we were fine inside the boat.

We finally did find our way to the hotel and were happy to have a resting place. We took the kids swimming in the "heated" indoor pool, which felt like it was not heated at all. This would be the case through the remainder of the trip but the kids didn't seem to mind much, except the littlest, who shrieked a little when entering but quickly numbed to the pain. Thankfully, there was a sufficiently heated spa to make up for the trouble. So, Saturday was essentially spent at the Statue of Liberty and hanging out at the hotel, having dinner delivered in.

Sunday was game #1 on our doubleheader trip, a trip to Yankee Stadium to see the Bronx Bombers battle the Angels. The plan was to leave super early and get to the stadium in time to visit Monument Park, an area beyond centerfield where there are tributes to many of the great Yankees to play at the stadium (think Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, giants in baseball history). Unfortunately, horrid traffic, children's appetites and a food court lunatic conspired to delay us beyond the time limits that would allow us to visit this portion of the ballpark. I was disappointed but it wasn't the end of the world. BTW, the Bronx was really not a very nice place.

Now for Yankee Stadium The place is very old but felt really comfortable. Our seats were in the right-centerfield bleacher area, a non-alcholic seating section. And even though we were in one of the furthest rows back, we felt very close to the field and action. There was history dripping from the place, it was really awe-inspiring to think of how many bombs the Mick hit into our area back in the day. It was also fun that in our section, the fans chanted for each player in the top of the 1st innning, earning an appreciative wave or nod of the hat from each player while the game was in progress - cool little tradition. Alas, the #2 & #3 were getting feisty and wound up bumping heads and leading to a bloody nose for one and an early departure for the rest of us. Oh well, at least we got to see the park. We finished the day with some more swimming and a trip to the drugstore to get some ointment for a heat rash #3 had picked up.

Monday was a hole in our schedule so we decided to go check out Central Park. Now I generally am not too concerned about driving in lots of traffic, even if I am not familiar with the area I'm in. But I have to say, driving around NYC was pretty damn stressful and there is not a lot of parking in the whole Central Park area, at least not easily found for us. But we did manage to find a garage and spent a few hours checking out CP. It was okay but I wasn't overly impressed. One of the highlights of the trip was dinner Monday night, where we checked out a neighborhood Portugese restaurant we happened across during our stay. Very authentic, very good, and fun to try something new and different.

Tuesday was check out day and the second half of our doubleheader, although the game wasn't until 7:05. So we slept in a little, packed up and headed to the ballpark area, figuring we'd find something to do near there. We managed to find a movie theater and took the monkeys to see Wall-E, an interesting Pixar/Disney flic. It was a pretty depressing vision of the future but well-written, very imaginative and the kids seemed to like it. Afterwards, we headed over to the stadium early and got there right about the time the park opened.

Shea Stadium was about what I expected. The place has a reputation for being a dump. I don't know if I'd call it a dump but it doesn't really stand out. Built in 1962, it is in the same concept as many of the cookie cutter flying saucer designs that many stadiums of that era were. But since we were there so early, we got to hang out down near the field for a while and walk around a little bit. We spent a little time up in our seats, which were in the upper deck, which made Mount Kilimanjaro look like an anthill. Crikey! The better half couldn't even move once we got up there. We hung out for a bit and decided to head for the road. I would listen to the game on the way back home that night.

The ride home was pretty uneventful, save for some more torrential downpour for the better half to navigate as we came back. I gratefully slept through much of the deep night hours - I would have never made it without dozing off. We got home around 8:30 am on Wednesday morning, where we all proceeded to pass out for several hours (or at least I did, not sure about everyone else).

All in all, I was glad to see both stadiums, being much more impressed with Yankee Stadium, primarily due to the history. I was not impressed in the least with NYC, finding the areas we were in to be mostly rundown and dirty, unremarkable otherwise. We probably just weren't in the right areas but I doubt I'll make much of an effort to get back anytime soon. And the kids seemed to enjoy themselves, as usual marking swimming as the highlight of the affair!

Song lyric of the day: "I'm in a New York state of mind" Billy Joel

Until next time.

Ace

Trip report: Seven Mary Three weekend 6/27 & 6/28

This weekend saw a fun-filled journey to visit one of my very favorite bands.

Friday night was a trip to Rockford, aka Little Nashville. Never mind why, it's a stupid story but I enjoy calling it that nonetheless. I gathered up 3 of the fellas, Joe, Duch and Q, and off we went. After a fun filled trip to our old greasy food hangout Nicky's for gyros (what a horrible idea with four people on a roadtrip), we were on our way. Thx to Q's iPhone, we were able to peruse hotchickswithDbags dot com on our way (great site that lives up to its name) and even actually figure out where we were supposed to go for the show.

After a $174 drive, we finally arrived at JTs or TJs or whatever the place was called. As far as Rockford goes, it actually wasn't too bad. The place was decently sized, with a bunch of different areas, including a stage with a dance floor type area. Strangely, the band had to walk through the crowd to get onto the stage, thus no encore type scenario, which I actually kind of liked. Unfortunately, the crowd was abysmally small despite a pretty staunch showing from area band diehards. There were roughly fourteen opening bands (actually 3) so the fellas didn't come on until about midnight. The setlist was filled mostly with greatest hits but had four songs from the new record and a sweet cover the band has been playing lately called Big Bird, although I can't for the life of me remember the name of the original artist. During some of the hits, the people who know one or two songs gravitated towards the front and I made new buddies with some high-fiving mother f'ers.

Funny story after the show, it was about 1:45 and the bar must close at 2. So, several of us were standing around chatting with a couple of the guys from the band when the waitress starts trying to hustle everyone out of the joint. I asked if she was going to kick the band out and she replied "Oh no, they're all downstairs". With 2 of them standing right next to us talking. It was worth a chuckle but I couldn't argue with her logic, could I? Trust me, in little Nashville, you don't argue with the waitresses. So, off we went and the band members actually did wind up going downstairs. Long drive back, with lots of inebriated and horrible singing and I rolled home about 4 am.

After some recovery time and way too much homework, it was off to beautiful Round Lake, IL for the village festival, where 7m3 was headlining the affair. This place was a haul from the homefront, much further than I expected. I was excited because it was an outdoor show that started early in the evening so I was going to bring the 2 oldest kids (6 & 4). As we're pulling out of the neighborhood, the oldest says she's not feeling well and wants to go home. She was up super late the night before and spent all day swimming at the neighbor's pool party so she was just physically wiped out. Fortunately she wasn't really sick, just tired but it knocked her out of the trip. That left me and the four year old for her first concert experience.

After the lengthy drive, and nearly being run over by some numbskull walking over to the stage area, we met up with Wudchuk and were ready for action. The stage was quite large and like most of the area village festivals, was set up in a parking lot area, surrounded by beer tents and food booths, etc. The weather was really perfect, about 75 degrees or so. However, the mosquitoes were crazy!!!! Fortunately, one of the big fans of the band was willing to share his bug repellent and it was very helpful.

This was a free show so there were a LOT of people, probably 500 to 1000 people overall, with 100 to 200 around the stage once the music started. Again, a nice turnout from the band faithful with a few different faces than the previous night. The setlist was quite similar to the evening before with a couple of differences, including favorite Southwestern State and swapping cover songs. Instead of Big Bird, the band finished the set with Neil Young's Rockin in the Free World. Always a great performance, this was enhanced by the fireworks display beginning while the song was being played. Very cool, they should do that at every show!

The four year old did pretty well at the show although she was wiped out by the time the show actually she started. The music was too loud so we moved WAYYYY back by the sound booth. She stayed on my lap for the remainder of the show and nearly fell asleep. We crept back up towards the front at the end of the show and she seemed to really enjoy it (or so she tells me!). All in all, it was a great time.

This concludes today's lengthy broadcast.

Song lyric of the day "You've got no taste in music and you really love our band" Local H

Until next time.

Ace

Trip report: Milwaukee Brewers at Houston Astros Wed June 11 - PUMA SIGHTING!

With a free night in Houston after a spectacular performance at a meeting today, I decided to check out a ball game at Minute Maid Park (seriously?). It was a beautiful and record breaking 95 degrees in temperate Texas today so the roof was closed on this beauty of a ballpark.

Built in 2000, this stadium was another in the well conceived line of throwback stadiums that have all the modern amenities but still keep a lot of the charm of older baseball homes. The aesthetics are really striking with dark green and maroon throughout, with a lot of brick throughout. Above the left field wall and running out past center field is a railroad track with a train that moves and blows a whistle when the 'Stros make a big play. Pretty fun.

The sitelines are great also and the field level seats feel very close to the action. I was 6 rows back down the third base line and the view was fantastic. A couple of strange items I noticed. First, out in left field beyond the seats there are huge windows which allow sunlight to still come in when the roof is closed. The only problem is, for an evening game, this puts the sun directly in the eyes of most of the fans down the first base line. That would be very annoying! Also, I've heard a lot of hullabaloo around the Crawford boxes, which are essentially seat backed bleacher seats down the left field line. I arrived early and hung out in the boxes for batting practice and didn't think they were anything special. Also, the seat prices throughout the stadium seemed very exorbitant in comparison to the prices I'm used to seeing in Chicago, where I've seen the majority of my games. And the food sucked.

Batting practice was fun, although I only got to see the Brewers hit. My impressions of the players were interesting:

Player who just shows off in BP without working on his game - Prince Fielder
Player with the most prodigious power - Corey Hart
Player who looks like he should be a lot better than he really is - Mike Cameron
Player who is specifically working on his game and hitting line drives to all fields - Ryan Braun (and this guy can absolutely mash)
Player who is a jackass to the fans - Guillermo Mota (so glad the Mets dealt him!)
Player who seems like a nice guy - Salomon Torres

Once the game started, I made a lot of interesting observations. First, because this ballpark is so small, it seemed like many of the players were swinging for the fences. Apparently this was justified as there were a total of 8 home runs, including 2 by Hart, cashing in on the power showcased during BP. But it also lead to a lot of lazy flyball outs. Very interesting to observe. And just to give some perspective, Jason Kendall hit a home run and almost hit another. This is the same guy who has 4 homers in the last 488 games over 5 seasons! Strangely, the two catchers in this game, who are among the worst hitters in all of baseball (Kendall and Brad Ausmus), combined to go for 4 for 8 with 4 RBI. Sick.

Other player observations:

Ty Wigginton is quite slow afoot, especially in the field.
Carlos Lee is fat, slow and lazy but the man can hit some bombs.
Miguel Tejada still has some lightning left in his bat.
Russell Branyan = lightning in a bottle for the Brew Crew, with 6 HR in 40 at bats, a Ruth-ian pace.
Ausmus is a major fan favorite, getting the largest applause of the evening, especially when he got ejected for arguing a call that went his team's way in the sixth inning. It was quite bizarre. Manager Cecil Cooper got run out of the game shortly thereafter.

And then there were the fans. Ah, the fans. Well, we all enjoyed the two toothed 90 year old woman barking out to us all to buy cracker jacks. I almost bought some just to shut her up - but that's not how I roll. These Texans, they REALLY seem to enjoy doing the wave. It was attempted several times, finally gaining success right around the time that Coop got tossed. Stay classy, Houston! It was pretty quiet for a lot of the game. I'm not sure if it's because the home team was getting spanked or because the roof closure made it an indoor game. I've always found the indoor sporting events to have a little less ambience and this was no exception.

And I would be remiss if I failed to point out the overwhelming enthusiasm during the 7th inning stretch. In New York, they go pure patriotism and start with God Bless America before hitting Take Me Out to The Ballgame. But not here in the People's Republic of Texas. Oh no! Instead, it's a very heartily joined rendition of Deep in the Heart of Texas. I haven't heard so many people clapping their hands and singing along since the last cheesy Baptist church scene in an Eddie Murphy movie.
Crikey!

And last but not least, I must address the topic of Lance Berkman. Berkman, you see, is the fat man pictured up at the beginning of the post. Apparently his nickname has been Fat Elvis. Now, I'm no Elvis historian, but if you're being called a fat version of Elvis, that's sort of like being called a deep version of the Grand Canyon. Anyhow, the lithe Berkman apparently has taken umbrage with the Fat Elvis moniker and dubbed himself the Big Puma. Insert wide-eyed smiley icon here.

Look people, no one loves a good nickname more than this trusty blogger. Believe me, I've given an unhealthy number of them out in my day. But the number one rule of nicknames is that they cannot be self-appointed. Okay, maybe this is the number two rule, number one is that you really are not supposed to tell people how you got your nickname, you had to be there. Anyhow, let's stop quibbling over the order of the rules and focus on Berkman's self-appellation. I hereby refuse to refer to him as the big puma. However, I might be able to be convinced and call him something like the Cougar. I'll have to think about that. Check back later for the final ruling.

OK, not sure how that just happened, but this seems like an appropriate point to end this post.

Song lyric of the day "I've been dazed and confused for so long it's not true" Led Zeppelin

Until next time.

Ace