Another visitor to Calgary

Jon Sy stopped by early this week after taking part in a conference at Lake Louise. I managed to use some days off that were owed to me, and make it so I was guaranteed to be off when he visited. Jon's main itinerary for while he was in town was to experience some Calgary poker action, like Justin and I had done last year.

Monday night I picked him up at the airport and we went straight to Joey Tomato's, a very nice and 'scenic' restaurant here in Calgary. After a steak dinner for Jon and a Roast beef dip for me we headed straight to the Casino. It was 8pm when we arrived and a couple of tables of 1/2 No Limit Hold 'em were on the go, plus a tournament which had started earlier in the evening. As people were knocked out of the tourney, they progressively started filling up more and more of the 1/2 tables. Jon and I were at the same table side by side. Jon had some early success getting up to about plus $100 on top of his $200 buy in. I however did not see any nice cards and I floated around -$50.

The one hand of the night that made the evening for me was when I was dealt QToff in the small blind. 4 callers around the table and I limped in. The flop came QcTc2h. I checked and it was checked all the way around until the player in last place (who had been lucking out and playing very loose all night) bet out $30. I wanted the pot right then, and wanted it known that I had some cards so I re-raised to $60. Everyone else folds, and loosey mcloose called. On the turn came a Jd. Which concerned me slightly, but I didn't think this guy was on a freaking straight draw and at best had top pair, crappy kicker. So I bet out $60 and got a call. The river however came a card I didn't want to see, it was a 8d. This now made it one card to the straight, a nine. And that's exactly the hand I was putting this guy on, Q9. So now I figure, great, I've got tonnes of cash in the pot and he goes and catches his freaking straight! I check in disgust and he grabs $100 and pushes it in. My heart was racing. My rationale at this point was I had to see his freaking lucky cards. I had to pay him off now, and I'd rebuy chips for another $200 and I'd most likely get another good hand up against this clown where I could make my money back and then some. After a lot of though, I pushed my $100 into the pot (I only had $115 total at this point). He flips over his cards to reveal a T8. 2 pair?! Which he made on the river.. and wait a minute.. I had 2 pair as well, but I had a much better 2 pair! I flip over my cards and in great relief grab the mountain of chips from the middle of the table. I was happy, lucky, and happy. I was just shy of $500 at this point and held onto those chips pretty tight. I did luck out with a couple of other hands including one very nice nut flush, which was hard to squeeze money out of people after 4 spades were showing on the river. But I brought my total up to $575 before leaving the table, for a profit of $375 over a 4 hour poker stint.

Sy however was not so lucky. He got into some big pots, and made some big lay downs when less than stellar cards started showing up. Poor guy, came out to Calgary to have some fun, and he did end up loosing his full buy-in of $200.

The next day Sy slept in quite late and we played NHL07 on the xbox for the better part of the afternoon! We then did some shopping and it was back to Joey Tomato's for dinner. Where we saw the first period in the Vancouver/Edmonton game. We opted to not go back to poker that night and to cut losses. I showed Jon our hangar's and he got to see a couple of the planes, but it was rather busy in there as they were changing the engines on one of our turboprops and planes were also arriving. So he didn't get to have the full tour, but got to see some of it at least.

The next morning I dropped him off VERY early and he was on his way back to Vancouver and out of snowy Calgary. I think he had a decent time, he even wanted to take one of the cats home with him, I tried to encourage him but cat and house owner Shelley wasn't too keen on the idea and squashed my attempts. :)

So, who's next to come visit?

Gratuitous shot of the bankroll upon returning home. This includes the $400 I took with me to the casino and the $375 in profits.