The arrival...
Vegas Day 1 Thursday October 20th, 2005
My alarm went off at 4am.
I couldn't sleep much that night, so I had no trouble getting up. My wife drove me to the airport. She's a good woman. ;)
The flight down was a stressfull rush. I had no more than 45mins between planes in both Winnipeg and Denver. Almost missed my plan in Winnipeg. Listened to my iPod mostly, read GQ, didn't get to eat much.
Arrived in Denver and met up with Kris. We caught up a bit and boarded our flight to Vegas.
We waited for Colin at McCaron Airport in Vegas. He was in about 40mins after us. We got our bags and caught the shuttle to Aladdin. First off. Wow! The desert is cool! Kinda looks like the surface of mars.

We got to the hotel and checked out the gift shop. This is when we realized we could drink openly on the strip! So Colin picked up 3 coronas and a magazine and the we headed up to our room. Time to relax! We kicked it for a few minutes, then decided to head out for some food. We found a cool Indian buffet and filled up. Then we picked up some more beer and made our way back to the room. By this time it was almost dark, so we chilled and had some beers until Blake arrived. Then we chilled a bit more. ;) Enough chillin! It was time to visit one of Vegas' finer establishments.
So we go outside and get hooked up with a cab driver who wants to take us to the best strip club in Vegas. Ok, I knew better, but, we were in love with the idea of no hassle. I know that the cab drivers get kickbacks from certain clubs to make sure they take their rides there. So we end up at Scores. After dropping a combined $120 just to get in the door, we're seated. I noticed the stage, but no more than 2 minutes in, the ladies started lining up at our table. "Would you like a dance??", "Excuse me, how are you tonight? Would you like a dance?".... Arrrggghh! I have nothing against lap dances from beautiful women, but please! We just got off our flight and we just want to kick back with a couple beers and look around first. But, that's not how it was gonna go. So after 2 $50 rounds, we left, pretty annoyed. So we went to check out Bellagio. Wow! Pretty nice place. We just walked around for a bit taking things in. Watch the fountain at Bellagio for a bit. Then we went to our room and crashed.

There, I've added some hurricane pictures to some previous posts in my blog. To see the full set of hurricane george pics (and some old pics of me from a lifetime ago), check out my website... http://brock.homeftp.org

Well, I'm back from Vegas. Before I tell this story, I'm going to finish my Dominican story...

So our tour operator had a bus ready for us and bussed us across the island to Puerta Plata. It was pretty cool because we had a tour guide and there was plenty to see. We drove through Santo Domingo. It really was unbelievable how run down this city is. It's like there was a layer of dust over everything. The people here are very poor and living conditions are not good. However, they make the best of life in some ways. They like to party!

We only had a couple nights in Puerta Plata before we had to go home. We didn't really do to much. Hung out at the beach mostly. But on the last night we got a driver to take us into town. He took us to an interesting bar. ;) I won't go into details but the night ended with us being "strong armed" by a bouncer. Our driver had to help us out and get us out of there safely. Pretty exciting stuff. ;)

The trip home was an adventure in itself. We landed in Toronto only to find that I left my driver side window down!! I left my car parked in a big empty partking lot for 7 days in downtown TO, with an expensive car stereo and CD's all over the back seat, and I don't think it even rained while we were gone!! No one touched anything. I was shocked. When I saw my window open, I thought for sure my car was gonna be trashed. Another bullet dogded!

Then we started the drive up the 401 highway back to Ottawa. It's about a 5 hour drive. Of course we were right in the middle of a tornado outside of Peterborough!! I shit you not. After everything else, now we were driving through a tornado. And to make it worse, they were in the middle of doing construction on the 401, so there were know discernable lanes, just pylons blowing all over the highway. It was total chaos. And I was very tired. But we slowly made our way home. With stops at every coffee shop along the way. ;)

You would think the adventure would have ended once we got home. Well, it didn't. The next day we went for lunch downtown. I parked my car and we went across the street to eat. When we finished, we decided to wander around the market for a few hours. When we got back to my car, I discovered, not only did I leave it running the whole time, but I did so with my doors locked!! AARRGGHH! So a quick call to a tow truck and $80 later our adventure was over. Not too bad considering all the danger and trouble we could have gotten into in the past week.

I've got pictures of the hurricanes damage online now. I'll figure out how to link to them.

So we made it to the basement of the hotel. People were pretty calm really, the staff was pretty good, they let us hang around in an open air area. It was mostly closed off and it was still lower than sea level, but the stairs just led to the outside with no doors. So it was pretty windy in this area, but better than being locked in the big room. At one point a wicker chair blew down the stairs and almost hit me in the leg. So then the staff made us go into the room and they closed us in. They had lots of food and a screen that they showed Jerry Maguire in spanish several times. I think they also showed that Air Jorden movie with the cartoon characters. Both very stimulating films. ;) It was getting pretty boring, until the power went out. Now you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. That's the darkness we're talking about. You could hear the ceiling tiles being sucked up above us. That was kind of unnearving. So there we were, in the dark, in the basement, crowded into a big room, in the middle of the Carribean.
Eventually the storm moved on and we were allowed to go back to our rooms. We were pretty lucky, our room was pretty much intact. Some flooding and most of my clean clothes were wet, but overall, it was ok. At first we didn't dare complain because the villiage was destroyed. We felt pretty lucky. A lot of the people in the main hotel weren't as lucky. There were smashed windows and really beat up rooms that got hit hard. We had met some Americans earlier who were pretty upset now because the air traffic control tower at the airport in Santa Domingo was blown over and no flights were able to move. So they had to stay at the hotel. The hotel would not comp the rooms to them, even though they weren't really useable anyway. They wanted like $250 US/night for them. So these guys started building a group of people that were basically walking around complaining. We had nothing better to do, so we joined them. Stupid stupid stupid.
We slept in our room that night and the next morning we ran into one of the guys from that group. Apparently at 6am, the hotel sent armed guards to escort the American guy and his gf off the resort!! They asked about the Canadian guys, but they said they didn't know where we were. WHEW! So that morning we were put on a bus and taken to the other side of the island, where the hurricane didn't hit.
Before we left, we walked around the village and offered to help people pick up their stuff, but they were pretty resistant and generally annoyed that we were even there.

T-3 days and counting...
I couldn't have picked a better time for my game to step up to the next level. I've only had two losing days in the past 14 days! I'm currently riding my best poker run ever. The funny thing is, it's hard to tell whether I'm just playing better, or getting lucky. My play style has definitly changed over the past month. I've read most of Harringtons book on tournament play and have found it to apply fairly well to ring game play as well. Basically what I've been doing is buying into a ring game and playing a tournament at the same time. This way I can play tight patient style needed in a ring game and I can play the looser, riskier (more fun!) style needed in a tournament. I play about 15% of my hands in a ring game and about 25-30% of my hands in a tournament. Tournaments are more fun also because there is more positional strategy involved than in a ring game. By positional here I mean relation of chip stacks to other players and the blinds. This isn't as big a deal in a ring game, but in a tournament, it dictates your play quite often.
So this morning I busted out of a tournament pretty early, so I sat in on a second ring game instead. This turned into a very profitable situation. ;) I ran the table and doubled up after about 30 hands before signing off. In my other ring game, I was caught bluffing on my first hand with 6 2 offsuit. I had a flush draw on the flop and wanted to scare the other guy out of the pot right away, he called, then called on the turn and again on the river. No more diamonds came out, so I never made my flush and I had put him on a flush draw, so I figured he missed as well. Turns out he had top pair. He was "shocked". My rational during this hand was that I was going to bluff at it all the way and show my hand at the end regardless. So either I hit my flush and take a decent pot, or I establish a loose agressive (read: stupid) table image. The reason I do this once in a while is because I'm actually the opposite type of player. I'm super tight and aggresive, and I want some action when I actually have a hand. So about 6 hands later I get the pocket AA's. On that first bluff hand, the winner commented how shocked he was at what I was holding. I just smiled and waited. ;) So now with my pocket AA's, I started betting hard right away, knowing that my table image was loose and would likely get called or better, raised! ;) This turned out to be the case and I ended up taking down a big pot and doubling up. Unfortunatly it was through another guy and the "shocked" guy only lost a small bet before getting out at the turn. So after I win the hand, I show the AA's. Of course I couldn't resists commenting, so I typed "Shocked?" LOL

Life was grand.
We were loungin around in the huge jacuzzi outside our hotel hut thingy. The sun was great, the air was perfect, the water warm and the company stimulating. Lots of European's in the Dominican Republic. We were chatting up mostly Brits, Germans and French. We did this the first day and a half of our stay! We were through our second day and we haven't even made it 40 feet from our room! We also hadn't had much to drink. It was the second day when we decided we need to kick it into gear and start having some drinks and find the nightclub (or disco as it was called).

Curious event #2
Where the hell is our room key?? We must have left it at the dining area. So we check with the front desk and at first they say they found it, but then they change their story and say they didn't. Strange. At this point we were getting a little worried considering our safe was in our room and our money/passports etc was in our safe. So we found the old concierge type guy who was pretty friendly to us earlier and seemed like a stand up guy. He promised to take care of it for us. Sure enough, after a bit he produced our room key. We checked out our room and everything was still there. Whew! Dodged one there.

So 8pm rolls around and we're already pretty ripped. So we find the disco and do what any half drunk 20-something single guys would do. We found the hottest mother/daughter combo in the place and started hitting on them like we were all gonna die tomorrow! Oh, but we didn't realize they were mother daughter right away. Basically, we met them on the dance floor. They were british. Both were pretty cute. The daughter looked older than she was and the mother looked younger than she was. So after some idle chatting, we each picked one and we split up to get to know these girls better. I was wooing the mom, while BAJ was wooing the daughter. At some point, I figured out that the girl I was putting my smooth moves on was the mother of the the other one. I think it was when she told me "That's my 16 year old daughter btw", the second time when I figured it out. ;) It was at that point when I was having trouble containing my laughter because I could see BAJ was in full gear chatting up his new found mark. Things started getting pretty foggy for me around that point, but I guess at some point we all had a good laugh over the minor misunderstanding. Both girls were probably flatered with the attention and of course we were perfect gentlemen. Interesting side note to this story, I swear to god I say the daughter again in the airport in Sydney Australia, two years later. She had a distinctive hairstyle. I could have been wrong, but that's not nearly as interesting. But seriously, I'm sure it was her.
At some point that night, some hotel security guys got on stage to give us some information about hurricane George that was going to hit the island. We had heard about it earlier, but were told it was hitting the other side of the island and we were ok. These guys basically said that, but they told us that if it changed course, they would call our rooms in the morning to tell us to come to the function hall area, under the hotel for breakfast. They repeated the story in several languages, but the part I remember the best was the Italian guys complaining because they didn't say it in Italian and they didn't fully understand.

So, my memory of the rest of that night is pretty spotty. I know we left the disco around 2am and headed back to our room, then decided to go back to the disco and then ended up staying there until about 4am. My next memory is the phone waking us up in our room. It was storming pretty bad outside. I remember thinking, "this hurricane stuff isn't too bad" They told us to come down to the function area under the hotel for breakfast. We were in little huts that were seperate from the main hotel, so we had to walk in the rain and wind to the hotel. We made it down and ate a light breakfast. We were still very drunk actually. So we figured it was ok to go back to our room and sleep it off since they did say breakfast.

So we wake back up again around noon and now we understand what they mean by hurricane. Actually the patio doors were being pounded with wind and rain. Branches and debris were flying around outside. We were actually really worried that the patio door was just gonna bust in, so we hid around the corner in the bathroom. We called the front desk to ask them when we should come to the storm shelter and they got a bit upset with us because they already called us at 9am! We thought that was just for breakfast! So they sent these three guys to our room with a huge rope that they tied around us and they literally dragged us through the storm to the shelter. It was kinda cool. We had to stop at certain spots and plan our moves towards the hotel. LOL

This is getting long. So I'll continue later...

And as quick as the rush started, it has ended.
Last night I had the wind knocked out of my sails at the poker table. I've been playing a level above my regular level due to my sudden jump in bankroll. After last night, it's time to step back down and regroup. I dropped about $50 in a ring game and another $10 in tournaments. The good news is that I don't think it was due to poor decisions, but rather a case of getting good hands beaten by better hands. My biggest weakness is not to know when to back down when I'm the lead bettor. For instance, I'll flop top pair, top kicker. I'll bet, get called, then bet again on fourth st., get called then bet again on the river and either get called or reraised. If I get called, my opponent might have me beat or he might not, if I get reraised, if it's a small raise, I'll call and usually be beat. If it's a big raise, I'll lay it down, but it's too late, I've already put so much money into it. I'm still doing very well over the past 2 weeks, but this was the single biggest loss I've had in a long while. No surprise since I'm playing at a higher level. Back to the drawing board this weekend. I'm into my final week before Vegas and I need to make sure my game is sharp.

Is there really a better way to celebrate graduating from University than spending a few days in an underground hurricane shelter in the poorest part area of the Dominican Repulic?

So, it was the fall of '98 and both me and BAJ had graduated from University. I had moved to Ottawa and BAJ was working as an officer in the navy. The time was right for an adventure. We decided to spend a week in the Dominican Republic... in September. We were warned that it was hurricane season, but we were young, but most importantly, we were (still are I think?) invincible.

Part 1 (The Calm Before the Storm)
BAJ flew up to Ottawa and stayed for a couple days before we left. Once the day was upon us, we got in the car and drove down to Toronto (5 hours) to the airport. I hadn't really thought about parking ahead of time. So I just payed to leave the car in the airport lot. When we left the car, BAJ thought he might have left his window down. So he ran back to the car to check. As it turned out, he actually had remembered to put his window up. Whew! Remember this, it is significant later.

The flight to the DR was cool. Blue sky's, airplane food, and a buzz of excitment in the air! Eventually we made the approach to the airport in Santa Domingo! SD is the poorest large city in the world. Over 2.5M people living in poverty there. We were staying in a small village called Boca Chica, just outside of SD. On the approach, the beaches looked awesome.

Curious event #1
We get off the plane and walk outside. The air is great! Very warm. We meet up with our tour operator and are confronted by a big Dominican dude. He want's to take our luggage to the bus. Both BAJ and I only had a small carry on bag each (travel light, the only way!) and figured we were good to get it another 10 feet to the bus without help. The guy insisted, so we follow him over to the bus. Then he puts his hand out. Ok, a tip, sure, no prob. Oh wait. Small prob. I only have Canadian money! I offer a $5. The guy looks at me like I'm insane. His english was very poor, but it was good enough to say "$5 American". Hmm.. ok. I don't have it, sorry. Then he pulls his jacked aside to show us his nice handgun in his belt! Ahh.. so it was gonna be like that. That was our welcome to the island. So our tour operator bailed us out of that one and spotted us a couple of US fivers. Whew! Didn't get shot on our first day. Score one for the good guys.

Too be continued...

The march goes on...

So my rush has slowed a little, but the march is still moving uphill. I'm riding a winning streak of about a week now. Not one losing day in over a week! I've got my bankroll up to it's highest point in several months, and just one week before leaving for Vegas baby!

Finished just out of the money in a 30 mtt yesterday. I went to the final table as the second stack and got caught on every one of my all-in calls. I had a mid pocket pair 3 times and all three times I called an all-in by one of the short stacks. All three times the A or K or Q hit the board and it crippled me. Then when I moved in with AQ against a pair of 9's, the 9's held up. That one just wasn't meant to be.

I also moved up a level to $.25/$.50 blinds in my ring game. No difference in the level of competition, just moving up to keep inline with my bankroll. Soon I'll move up to $10 sng's as well.

Finished 1st in a $5 sng this morning before work. It was one of those games where it was a steady rise to the top. Stayed in one of the top 2 spots the entire tournament. Got into heads up with a solid chip lead and flopped a set of Q's. The other guy thought I was bluffing when I bet half the pot, so he reraised me, I called. Then the fourth Q came down on the turn giving me four Q's. He pushed all in, and that was it. Not the best spot for a guy to bluff. ;)

With hockey season in full swing, it's hard to find as much time to play poker in the evenings. I usually play one tournament in the morning before work along with a ring game. After work, I usually get another tournament in and another ring game. That's about it these days.

T-14 days and counting!

I will be in the air in exactly 2 weeks. Am I excited? You bet your ass I am! I've been playing poker online almost every day for almost 6 months. I've played about 20,000 hands of poker over that time. That doesn't make me good at poker, unfortunatly. However, it is enough to teach me a little more than the basics and I'm hoping that will be enough to break even in Vegas. There is the tell factor though. Maybe my friends can't see right through me, but I'm sure in Vegas I'll run into some players who will just smirk and really put me to the test. Going in with a limited budget makes dealing with these people very tricky. Ideally you would have the balls and the bankroll to come overtop of a guy who is bullying you. That might not be an available option this time around, so I have to be very careful to stay out of unfavorable situations.

The mis-adventures of Rob and Blake. There have been a few. ;) I look forward to reading Blakes memoires that I'm sure he'll write one day when he's old and gray and has been there and done that. In those memoires, I'm sure our trip to the Dominican Republic will get the proper treatment. Both Blake and I have retold this story many times to many different people and I'm sure, depending on the audience certain parts fo the tale have been accentuated over other parts. I like to thing of the retelling of the tale as having different ratings. There is the PG version that gets told in the company of youngsters (Jessica, Michael, neices and nefews), the R rated version that gets told to family and friends, and the XXX version that rarely gets retold, due to possible legal ramifications. ;) Really, this story is the biggest of the adventures that Blake and I have shared. There have been others, but none as memorable as the Journey to the Jungle, the Dominican trip.

I'll leave the big one for later though.

Grade 11 typing class. Yup, that's right, I took a typing class in high school. I was destined to be a programmer, so typing was pretty essential. Why do I bring this up? That is where I met Blake. He was sitting behind me and throwing paper balls at me one day. I remember thinking, who is this cockgobbler? After that first experience, I'm not really sure how we ended up becoming such good friends. Typically, you hate the guy who is teasing you in high school. I don't remember taking it personally though, so it could have been a pretty light hearted incedent that got us to talking and before we knew it we were both nearly passed out on the floor at some guys party! Blake wasn't my first drinking buddy, but he was my most eager! LOL My parents could tell you some stories about Blake. He pretty much became a family member over the years. He lived a bit further out of the way than I did, so after a late night of getting up to no good, he'd usually crash at my place and sleep it off. Now, typically I would make it to my bed and keep it pretty quiet what I was up to, Blake on the otherhand, he tended to have a bit more trouble covering his tracks. ;) At least once my parents found him passed out in our hallway. Another time, my father walked in on him cleaning up the puke off the floor where he slept. The funny thing is that they loved him more for it! LOL My parents were pretty liberal, but supportive. Obviously they didn't want us getting into trouble, but they also were in a way proud of us having a good time in our youth. We expected to be in boatloads of trouble for getting caught drinking, but in the end they would act strict, but then tell the stories to anyone who would listen! LOL

And the rush continues!

Last night I dipped a bit and dropped about $20 in a ring game and a couple sng's. Not a big lost moneywise, but it took a bit of air out of my sails. So I took a break last night to catch up on some tv. I got up this morning and hit the tables again. And the rush was back! Almost tripled up on my ring game and I finished 2nd in my sng! I was getting great cards in the ring game. The big one was a hand where I was betting heavy with a pair of J's and the board was all under cards. The guy I was in with, I put him on top pair on the board which was 10's, and he called his way to a giving up a $20 pot. I love those guys! So I've now got my bankroll back to it's initial amount. First time at even in a month or two. And it couldn't come at a better time. The key really is patience. Wait for your hand, then bet it. Usually you'll take down a small pot, but every once in a while, you hit a monster.

The cost of Vegas
So I know some people will read this blog who have considered going to Vegas and are really curious about the costs involved. Well, I for one can't afford to go. But I'm going anyway. ;) So, I'm going on a pretty strict budget. So far here is the costs... (all prices are taxes in)
Return Flight (Ottawa-Vegas): $$516
Hotel (Alladin, right in the middle of the strip): $150 (total for 3 nights)

I'm not gonna count the cost of my stylin new plum suede jacket, or new shoes.

I was really impressed with the cost of the hotel. Basically we got 1 room for the four of us. 2 queen sized beds. Our logic is that we don't plan on getting much sleep anyway. The more beds we have will only encourage unneeded sleep. The room has a sofa in it and it's quite large.

I've always heard about great hotel deals in Vegas, but when I started looking I wasn't seeing anything too spectacular. But I've since found out that the real deals are had after your first visit. I guess you sign up for the players club's at the various hotel&casinos and they will send you coupons for cheap rooms year round. So next time I might be able to score the $90 room on the strip. You can get much much cheaper rooms off the strip. I've seen them as low as $40/night for the Best Western about 8 blocks off the strip.

As for the flight, I'm sort of kicking myself for not checking my aeroplan miles because as it turns out, I have enough for a return flight to Vegas. So my trip would have been really cheap!! Oh well, next time.

I'm planning on a bankroll of about $400 for the weekend. That will get me into a $1/$2 NL game and 3-4 tournaments throughout the weekend. And with the great shape the CDN $ is in compared to the U$, it makes it that much sweeter.

Oooh what a rush!

Playing poker is a journey of peaks and vallys. The peaks really keep you going and the vallys, well, they make me want to quit. Luckily I haven't had a vally so bad that has actually caused me to quit for more than a couple days. ;)

I had a rough weekend at the tables and had my bank roll cut in half. I already whined about that. But guess what? I'm on a peak again! I've more than doubled my bankroll in the past two days. And it was defined by the winning of my last 2 sng tournaments.

In my game last night, I was short stacked early. Like as in 200 chips left! Pretty rough shape. But I was patient and I clawed my way back and eventually made it to the money, still with the smaller of the three stacks. But in one monster hand I tripled up and too the lead and never looked back.

This morning, one guy tripled up early and sat on a huge stack of chips for the entire game. I was sitting around 2nd/3rd for most of the game. Once we got to the money, after a few hands of one guy coming over top of me and me laying it down, I took a stand with K9c. I floped top 2 pair and played it to perfection. That got me back in the game. Next hand, AKo. Flopped the nut full house!! AAK! Made a couple chips off that. Then next hand, KK!!! I knew how to handle this one. ;) After raising the pot twice in a row, how could I possibly have a good enough hand a 3rd time to raise the pot with. So I put in a big raise! And sure enough, they didn't believe me. I flopped trip K's and ended up crippling them both and sat with more than 10K in chips. Went to heads up with a tricky player. We went back and forth a bit and I was having a difficult time figuring him out. So I told him so. A couple hands later I hit a couple hands in a row giving me trips and took it down. Ooh what a rush! ;)