Calgary: Sept 30 -- Oct 2, 2006

I know that Matt's been waiting for this post. It's 9:00 am at lab, been here since 8:00 am, just finished editing a few photos, exporting them, adding comments and uploaded the album to the net.

So here's me reporting in on my Calgary trip.

Sept 30 2006 -- Arrival in Calgary

I hopped off the plane and made my way straight past and out of baggage claim-- I was travelling with carry on luggage only for my Canadian trip. I'll have you know how nice it is to not spend 30 minutes at the conveyor belt of luggage claim waiting for a suitcase to pop out.

I strolled out past the exit of luggage claim to go find Matt somewhere near the exits. It was the other way around unforutnately as I walked right by him without noticing while he blurts "and he walks right by." So sue me, I had an early start that day and my brain wasn't running at full speed.

We jumped into Matt's car and beamed back to his place in all about 15 minutes. Calgary, like Toronto has lots of large highways running all over the place, though Toronto's highways are a plenty wider. I dropped my stuff back at his place and decided to hit the roads to Banff -- it was a beautiful day, why waste it chilling at home? And so, we were off.

After about 2 hours of driving (usually it takes about 1.5 hours to make it out there but traffic was a little bad that day) we made it to Banff. I'll let you guys know, Matt is turning into a Calgarian -- Country music has started creeping into his music mixes, I kid you not. I'll give him this much-- it isn't old school country music atleast.

Matt pumped the WRX up and through a small road off the high way to a lookout point looking down at a valley in Banff. The view was very impressive and unfortunately something that a camera fails to capture. If you want to call youself a Canadian, I sugges that you pay a visit to the Rockies atleast once, especially if you're a Vancouverite. Get a bunch of friends, get a car, drive from Vancouver to Calgary and check out the Rockies and Banff along the way. I assure you that it is something that you won't regret.


Plenty of nice pictures in Banff were taken, actually I'll let them speak for themselves:


Left: Matt's Subaru Wrx by the trees, Right: Matt by the trees


Close up of the leaves in change

These pictures were taken a during a drive around Kananaskis Country which is near by Banff. Nice pictures no? We also strolled around a river that runs near by and took a few shots over there. Which reminds me, Matt! Fire me over some pictures!

After our stint in Banff we headed back for Calgary, as for me I decided to catch up on sleep in the car since after flying in from Toronto, I'd be having a 26 hour day with the time zone change. In addition! That evening we would be heading off to the local casino for some poker action and I definately wanted to be in tip-top shape for the poker action.

By evening we made it back into Calgary, popped by the house to drop off some stuff and made a run to Matt's company where I'd get a tour of the hangar where the pretty planes are kept. The Jet, especially, that Matt now gets to fly. A picture of it right below actually!


Mmmm $14 million dollar jet!

Need to get around in style? Drop $1.4 into Matt's company to buy a share (refundable of course), it's only $2300/hour to operate the plane and I think it seats 6~8 people. Got cash to burn? Just drop Matt a line!

The jet was pretty darn cool. I got a chance to poke around the cabin, fully stocked with all sorts of goodies and took a seat in the cockpit. We popped open the cover to one of the engines for me to take a look. Pictures, of course are in the photo album. I also got to take a look at the turbo-prop plane that Matt used to fly. Well I even had a chance to poke around it once a long while back when I was in Vancouver. Planes are very cool machines. One day, I'd like to have a nice small one for myself. One day :)

Right after the hangar trip, we headed off to "Joey's Tomatoes,"to grab some dinner. I'll say that the waitress there are pretty darn good looking and you might end up taking your time eating because they also like coming by and chatting it up a little from time to time. The steak they make over there is just awesome. They have this great pepper sauce that goes with it and the steak was exceptionally tender. If you go to Calgary, be sure to get some grade A steak, you'll never regret it.

Finally, the poker action.

Matt has provided a short summary of our little poker stint here, but I'll tell my side of the story. Before we stepped into the casino, actually during the drive back from Banff, I told Matt that I had a feeling that I would win big that day. Actually, it's been a feeling I had since I knew that I would be coming to Calgary, about a month before I arrived.

We arrived at the "Cash Casino" a little casino somewhere in a semi-industrial/commercial area outside the heart of Calgary. It looked a little seedy, but none the less, it had the kind of poker and the limits we wanted to play. We'd be playing $1/$2 no limit Texas Hold'em that night. There were other places that were playing Texas Hold'em, but the buy-in's required were considerably higher, sitting at $300~$400+ required to have a respectable sized poker stack, an amount beyond I was willing to risk. The max buy-in for the place we were at was $200, which was the right range for me.

We walked through the doors, past a smokey room filled with slots and table games like pai-gow poker into the backrooms where the poker tables were. An added bonus is that the room was also a smoke free room! Yes! I hate being in a smoke filled room for extended periods of time.

We took our seats at a table together and we ended up pretending that we were strangers that evening. It just seemed safer to me. The table we sat at was pretty quiet, there wasn't much banter and people were pretty focused on the cards. There was one guy at the table that had a group of friends playing at various other tables which seemed to liven things up as they stopped by our table from time to time to chat with their other friend, but that was pretty much it. Small talk with the other players was... pretty small.

I played exceptionally tight the entire night. There were 8~10 players at the table the entire time and the players were pretty loose-- lots of callers. If that's the case, you're better off waiting for some pretty good hands before getting or else you risk losing too often-- part of poker is winning money, the other part is to not lose it. Not losing money in poker is exceptionally important... especially when you've got to make tough folds.

We started playing at about 11:00 pm, the night droned on for a few hours before Matt and I got moved to another table as the managers wanted to close our table. I won a few hands but ended up losing the extra cash because I was insistent on confirming my gut feeling that my opponent had me beat dispite me having some pretty decent cards. I was right, unfortunately.

Things got really interesting that night after a gruffy biker dude arrived in his suit and pulled out wad of cash where he tossed $200 on to the table (a small portion from a big wad). He got his chips and played incredibly agressive and like he didn't care about losing. Scared the crap out of many players at the table and within 1~2 hours, he had atleast $800 total in his stack from other players not willing to take him on... or the guy catching weird cards and taking them out. Very scary stuff.

As for me, I wasn't playing all that many hands that night and I would be down about $50 at one point since I'd keep missing the flop with decent hole cards. Things took a different turn after a while however. I had AQ one hand and flopped QQ6, there were about 4 other players that hand and Matt also stayed in after a bet of $6 preflop. Well Matt bets $20, I raise back to $40 to tell him that I've got something... then he raises me all in. Well what am I to do? I got a pretty good hand and if he even had a Q, I had him probably out kicked. Call! He flips over his cards to show 66. Crap, he had a full house on the flop!? Well the turn came, junk... the river? An ace hit's the table to give me the win and I end up cleaning out Matt for $88 bucks and he had to rebuy in for $400. Well alteast he lost the money to me, he'd get it back anyways.

So here I am sitting around with about a $300 stack. A guy that's been pushed around all night by the chip lead recently started making some big bets and taking down some nice large pots. I had an K-10 one hand with a 10 top pair after the flop. He keeps calling my bets on the flop and turn. By the time we get to the river. He bets $75 at me. What the hell? I didn't even bet that huge at him and now this? After thinking hard, I decided to take out $75 from my stack to call. He had nothing but low pair and was trying to push me out. Sweet, my stack is up to about $400! The best had yet to come.

I had a few good hands that night but I had very few of them actually, I was feeling that I was getting statistically too few of them; I had to get a good hand sometime soon! At one point, I thought exceptionally hard about getting AA, the best cards possible preflop. I stared down the cards flying at me and mentally willed each card that hit the table coming to me to be an ace. My gut feelings were exceptionally strong that hand, my gut was telling me that I'd hit it... exactly on this hand. I flip my cards over to find... 22. Somewhat anti-climatic, but still I had a good feeling about this hand. I called preflop and was in early position with 5 other players in. The flop hit, 10 7 2. A 2 hit the table!! I was sitting on a hidden set of 2's. Nobody would ever see this one coming. I was extactic... but of course, calm, cool and collected.

Light betting ensued on the flop and I decided to call a $5 bet-- I decided to slow play this hand and hoped to milk it for all it's worth. The next card hit, and it was a 9. Possible straight on the table but from my observation, it's be a gut shot draw. The probabilities were still in my favor. One player bets $20, I decide to raise to $40 and I get 2 callers. There's about $130 in the pot now. The last card comes out, a 10! I am now sitting on a full house! The biker dude before me checks the bet, I bet $40, the other guy calls and the biker dude tells us all that he's going "all in." My heart was skipping with joy. Gave it a second and called with the rest of my cash. The other guy backed out.

The biker flipped his cards over to reveal that he had 10-3, he caught triple 10's on the river. I look at him and told him "nice hand," paused... and then flipped over my 22 to reveal my full house. The players at the table gasp, yeah I took out 1/2 of Mr Crazy biker's $800 stack and my stack was over $900.

There is a bit of a taboo of leaving the table right after a big win so I decided to stick it out for a few more rotations. The biker dude transfered off the table after that crushing defeat, a few of the players were talking about how tight I played the entire night. I loosened up a little because everyone really tightened up and bluffed a few hands and showed off my cards to everyone a few times to loosen them up. My stack still commanded the respect of everyone at the table and very few were willing to take me on. After a few rotations, I decided end the night at about 5:00 am and cashed out for $912 and gave back Matt his $88 bucks which actually came in useful... because I got to use it to earn an extra $88 off the biker dude from that one hand.

I left the table, then Matt and I met up in the parking lot and then we were off. Matt was up $93 bucks and I was up about $600. Not bad, not bad at all.


The fan of cash at the top is mine, the one at the bottom is Matt's

We got back at 5:30 am, had a celebratory beer and headed off to sleep.

The next day? Well, I met up with an old friend Alan that moved to Calgary... Matt and Alan got me horrendously drunk along the 17th Ave strip otherwise known as the "Red Mile" in Calgary. I'd talk more but I think this post is long enough as it is. Waking up the next day, I caught breakfast with Matt and was off to Vancouver.

Calgary was great and if you want to see more pictures, they're of course here.