The Flying Saucer is bringing back its $2 mystery beer tub for its Halloween party tonight. How it works is simple: You pay $2, you stick your hand in a tub filled with bottles and cans of beer, you pull one out, and whatever you get, you drink. You might get a super-premium beer that normally sells for $10; you might get crap like Schlitz or Lowenbrau. You never know.
My advice, having done the mystery beer for several years: Avoid the cans. I’ve never seen anything more premium than Tecate come out of the mystery beer tub in a can. On the other hand, Schlitz comes in cans. Old Milwaukee comes in cans. PBR comes in cans and I wouldn’t mind pulling one of those, but I worry they’ll cart in some PBR Light from the Fish down the street. Your expected value is much higher when you stick to the bottles.
I’ve had very good luck with the beer tub. One year I made 5 trips to the tub and pulled out almost $40 worth of beer. Then again, there have been a few times when I’ve come away with swill. At least I’ve never pulled out the ultimate bad beer, Turbo Dog.
Flying Saucer and Silly Goose are my main planned stops tonight. FYI, the Goose will be charging a cover… probably not much I would think. They handed me a get-in-free pass when I was in there Thursday night. Saucer is free for UFO members, $3 otherwise, same as any Saturday.
In order to prepare for Halloween, I am not going out to the bars until 8 PM. I want this to be a late night and I’m going to prepare for it. My only trips out today will be for lunch and to Shelton Clothiers to pick up a couple of shirts for next week. I’ll spend today cleaning the apartment and playing poker online. There’s a $4 + $0.40 No-Limit Hold’em tournament on PokerStars at 9:40 that looks like it’s calling my name. 8-max tables, so I can play a little looser than full 9- or 10-seat tables. Slow blinds (10/20, 15/30, 20/40, 30/60, 40/80, 50/100, 60/120, etc.) I’m a big fan of slow-blind tournaments when I have time to play them. So much more room to play real poker than at tournaments where the blinds double every round.
To those who I ran into at Trolley Night who asked if I’d blog about upcoming events: Shoot me a reminder to paul@paulryburn.com. Also, please note that my blogging schedule will be very irregular from Thursday-Sunday of next week.
Check back – will probably get bored and post more today.