Ok, it's Kris' turn! Kris was the second man in on the Vegas plan (I'm the third). Kris went to the same high school as BAJ and I. Him and BAJ have been homies for a long time. Long before high school even! I didn't get to know Kris all that well until University. Oh brother, here we go... Edward St.

Since this is a public blog, you guys get the PG version. Not to say it won't be interesting, just not complete. So, after high school we all ended up at different universities around Halifax. Some of the guys ended up renting a house downtown. BAJ and Kris were part of that. Along with 3 other guys, mostly from our high school. At some point me and a couple of other friends rented a house not far from Edward St. But the stories always happened at Edward St.

If you've been to university, then you are aware of the typical attitudes of the typical university students. We were no different. The crew at Edward St. were a bright and diverse group of people. People that mostly challenged each other and the energy in that house was created by the unique cross section of personalities involved.

I first got to know Kris better during his time at Edward St. I remember times there when just when it seemed that things were goin to get out of hand, Kris had a way of keeping things within reason. Not that Kris didn't like to party, in fact the opposite! No one knows how to party like Kris! It's just that he was able to walk the fine line between keepin it real and keepin it fun. Anyhow, I won't go into the details of the parties at Edward St., but I remember (mostly) waking up there many a Sat. or Sun. morning and just looking around at the bodies crashed everywhere and thinking, damn that was a good time!

Kris really became a "brother from another mother" after we both landed in Ontario a few years back. I was living in Ottawa and working at Nortel and just when life seemed to be slowing down a little for me, Kris moved to Brockville and we started checking out the club scene in Ottawa,Montreal,Toronto and even landed in Vancouver one weekend. Most of our friends were (and still are) scattered around NA, so it was a small crew, but we had some fun. It was about the time I met Maureen and my boy Jon met his gf. Good times. ;) Again, no details, but we knew how to get into trouble.

Some memorable nights... there was Halloween at Atomic in like '99. Damn that was a good time. Stereo in Montreal a few times were up there. But the trip out to Vancouver to visit BAJ was a really ringer. ;) We had been talking about taking the party to Vancouver for some time and finally pulled the trigger. We flew out for a weekend. First night there we found our way into a dance club with tons of beautiful women!! And they were all pawing at each other like a bunch of cats in heat. We had found nirvana! We didn't even notice the fact that then payed no attention to us. It wasn't until the next day when we found out it was actually a Lesbian bar. So after we left there around 2am, we wandered around downtown for a bit and got talking to some people and got ourselves invited to an afterhours party at a really cool condo type place downtown. It was a pretty big party for a condo, I'd guess about a couple hundred people. A few DJ's, some cool lights and lots more beer! We stayed there until the sun came up.

Then there was WEMF! World Electronic Music Festival. The big ass rave they hold every year in southern Ontario. The first one we went to was the best, but the second one was the one that gave us the Kris story that stuck. We were lost in Peterborough, a caravan of 2 vehicles with a bunch of us looking for the remote site where WEMF2003 was being held (or was it 2002?). Anyway, I didn't think any of us had ever been to Peterborough before, but in classic Kris style, he got er done. ;) Out of the blue, Kris pipes up and starts barking directions, "turn left up there, now right, down that street, pull over." I thought he was totally talking shit, but sure enough we get out of the van right in front of the head shop in downtown peterpatch. In we go for quick directions to the party and we're on our way. Kris is the party GPS!

Well, a couple years ago the party ended when Kris had to move to Georgia for work. We've hooked up a couple times since then, but we've been too busy to really get out for a good party. That leads us to Vegas! Do you get too old for this shit?? I hope to hell not!

Some poker thoughts for today...

I've been reading Harrington on Hold'em. It's a great book, very well written. It advocates a very tight style of tournament play. So I started playing a little tighter in my online sng's. I noticed I wasn't doing as well as I was before trying this strategy. Then it occured to me that I play mostly turbo sng's. So they move along much faster than your typical tournament. So you have to play a little looser and make moves quicker than normal. That is the style I'm used to playing, so when I tightened up, I struggled more than usual. So last night I started playing regular sng's and low and behold, the magic was revealed! ;) Well, that might be overstating somewhat, but I finished 1st in that sng and then on the bubble in one this morning. Overall, nothing remarkable, but I could see how the tightness of the style I was playing was directly effected by the speed of the tournament.

Pretty quiet night online last night. Other than the sng that I won, lost a few bucks in a ring game, overall, I'm on a very slow decline. So slow that you might as well say I'm breaking even.

In exactly 3 weeks I'll be leaving for Las Vegas. It wasn't my plan. And I love that. In fact it's a plan that's been brewing for about 10 years. Let me take you back 10 years to where it all began.

I had graduated high school and attended University for a year when the new Casino in Halifax had just opened. Up until this point I hadn't thought much about gambling or casinos. It was a novel place to go and watch all the people and maybe put a few quarters in a slot machine. Right away I knew slots weren't my game. No thought involved. No challenge, just pay..lose..pay..lose..pay..win..pay..lose... you get the point. It reminds me of those videos you see in pysch class with the dog training, pavlovs dog I think it was?

That summer, we'll say summer of '94, not sure but it was close to that. My best friend BAJ and I decided to master the game of Blackjack! We would go many weekends with about $100 and play Blackjack. We did this instead of going to the pubs every weekend which up until this point was the standard Halifax entertainment for the 21 y/o degenerate. It was an interesting run that summer. Neither of us lost too much money and we felt that there was potential in this game for making a few bucks.

For whatever reason, I never ended up playing much more Blackjack after that summer. BAJ on the otherhand is still plugging away and had gone through some pretty big swings before leveling out his game to a fairly consistant level. Even though I only returned to bj several times in the next 10 years, the seed of gambling had been planted. It would be almost 10 years until I discover poker.

BAJ is a character. My best man. A free thinker. And most notably a good person. He believes in living life. There are many sides to him. One that stands out immediatly to most people is the storyteller. BAJ has a little less shame than most people. This lends itself to some very entertaining stories about the odd situations he tends to find himself in. When BAJ and I get together, we feed off each others appetite for adventure. We've gotten ourselves into some sticky situations in the past and have always managed to come out relativly unscathed, but with some great stories! ;) I'll drop a few of these on you in the lead up to the Vegas trip.

The next thing you should know about me is that I'm a list man. I like lists. Life is just so much easier when it's itemized. What's better than a list? A running dynamic list! So, each day I'm going to have a list of topics I'm going to touch on in this blog.

Bad Beat of the day
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I check the BB with AJo and a couple of limpers in the pot. Flop hits my J giving me top pair, top kicker, but there's a flush draw on board. I bet about 2/3rds of the pot. Everyone folds except one caller. Turn is a garbage looking card, so I bet again about 2/3rds of the pot. Again the guys calls. River is another heart that makes it 3 hearts on board. I check (I know I should have probably bet again). Other guy raises with a pot sized raise. Maybe he wasn't drawing at the flush? Why bet so big when you hit your flush and I've checked it? I would have bet for value. So do I look him up? Well, I had to see what this guy does, so I call his bet. He shows me the flush and I'm beat.

Great laydown!
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I have JT spades, I limp in with position on 2 other limpers. Flop comes TJx all clubs. So I hit top 2 pairs! First guy bets a pot sized bet. Second guy comes way overtop and bets about 2x the pot!! Yikes! I put the first guy on top pair, but the second guy? I figure he must have hit a set. If he made his flush, why not extract some chips and just call? Maybe he had top 2 pair as well? Doubtful. No matter what, the betting is telling me I could be beat. I fold. First guy goes all in, second guy calls. First guy had JT diamonds! Second guy flopped a low flush and takes it down. Whew!

Sooo... here we are. This is where I'm expected to be quick and witty and regale you with tales of my exciting life. Hmm.. well if you're not disappointed yet, saddle up son, let me take you on a pony ride filled with irrational tirades and senseless dialog. It is important to note right here, right now, I will not be checking my spelling during our time together. I spell most words correctly, words like "poker", "fish", "loser" and "biatch" I will always spell correctly. Words like "definitly" I will always spell incorrectly, other words, may or may not be spelled correctly. If you're one of those people who long ago decided it was part of their life long journey on this earth to spell check, please see this cartoon... Mr. Period and the Bad Boys of Punctuation.

Now, I've been avoiding the topic up until now. I play poker. I don't play poker well. I play well enough that I can still pay my mortgage and feed my family. Not from poker winnings, however. But that is the goal. Maybe. Who knows. Probably not. Over the next few weeks, leading up to my trip to Vegas, I will be filling in some blanks surrounding this trip.

If you don't actually know me and just stumbled on this "blog", the first thing you should know about me is this... I'll tell you tomorrow. ;) And by that, I mean I've already told you the first thing you should know about me. If you can't figure it out, too bad.

I fucking hate blogs.
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But I've been talked into starting one to track my first ever trip to Las Vegas.
But, I'll get to that later. First off. Why I hate blogs. What is a blog? What does blog mean? I'm sure it means something, but I think I'm finally too old to know the meaning of things like "blog". I used to know all the 'leet terms in relation to computers and pretty much considered myself an uber-geek. Now, my uber-geekness, is probably considered, basic know how to the generation coming up behind me.

So, what is a blog then? It's a fucking public journal idiot! Why not call it a journal? Anyway, welcome to my "blog". I promise not to be this obnoxious throughout our time together.