Cali-for-ni-a

Off to Santa Rosa tomorrow and will return on Tuesday. With stops in Salt Lake City and another stop in Vancouver before returning home to Calgary.

Will be spending the majority of the time in Santa Rosa right in the middle of Wine Country (Napa Valley and the like). Post again upon my return!

5hrs and 19mins...

Last night I had a massive headache... but the good kind of headache.

I decided to enter into a higher stakes poker tourney online last night. I was usually just playing in the $5 and sometimes $10 range, but was curious to see how the play was at the higher buy in levels. I was looking around last night with not much else to do and I came across a guaranteed prize pool of $10,000 in a $30+3 buy in no limit hold 'em tourney. This was pretty good bang for the buck so I decided to enter.

However I had already missed the opening bell of the tourney! Not to fear, on some tourney's they'll allow alternates to join in and take the place of people who get knocked out within the first two blind levels. So I was successful in making my way into the tourney. This was shortly after 8pm Calgary time.

What happenened over the next 5hrs was something I couldn't quite comprehend. I was playing my "A" game poker for most of the hands. Rarely risking much if I didn't need to, and making sure my chips were in the pot when big pay outs were to be had. I fought and battled through many band hands and bad beats. But I did have some great hands that unfolded well for me. Some lucky, some more than lucky and some just great skill :) well.. lucky skill perhaps.

I recall one hand as we were getting down close to the money, I had AK and found myself going all in and up against, yikes... KK! The cards started flopping and I'm chanting "ACE ACE ACE" and thank god and Ace did hit! I had just doubled up and was looking good as I now was within top 10 of the further remaining 50 ppl.

422 people had entered the tourney and therefore pushed the prize pool for all payouts above $12,000. Not too shabby! And as long as I didn't do anything stupid I was at least guaranteed some money as we soared through the final 50.

So I was now in the money and feeling pretty good. Stealing some blinds as the competition got down to the nitty gritty. I was on my game, only risking it when I needed to. I did have 2 hands though that I can recall where I was on full bluff and my opponent thought long and hard before folding. I could read what they had, but damn... tense moments and I was hoping they weren't going to call with their crappy hands (but which would have been far better than mine!).

Now we're into the final 20 and I'm not doing anything too stupid, too many large chip stacks at my table. 8 of the 9 leading chip stacks were at my table! It was crazy. Nobody was really willing to risk a whole lot, and most of the hands that ended up getting played were two great hands but only 1 winner.

Final table... holy crap, is this really happening. I'm aware that the payouts are going to start getting quite nice at this point. And I'm now in 8/10 at this final table with my chip stack. So I'm only going to risk it for solid gold. I manage to steal some more pots and secure myself with chip stack 5/8 as another couple players bite it. I'm doing ok. And then it happened. The turning hand. I'm dealt J10 offsuit. There are 3 of us in the pot, the flop comes Q 9 8. Hmmm... I do believe I've just flopped the nut straight! However, there are also two hearts out there now. So I'm a little concerned. I check the bet, the player to my left checks and the player to my right bets the minimum. I come over the top feeling this guy might have a little something or is perhaps on a draw for those dang hearts. I raise it up big. He simply calls. I'm concerned now that he is indeed on a drawing hand. The turn card is a 5, not a heart. I go all in for the rest of my stack which is not a very impressive amount but I'm called very quickly. The cards are flashed before the river is shown. He has KK. I have him licked. Nothing is going to save his baken now! I have now crippled his stack and doubled up. I have taken chip lead and am sitting quite pretty.

I play very carefully now not wanting to lose my lead, but not wanting to risk too much either to maintain it. Another key hand came maybe 30 hands later. I had K10 and was dealt a not so hot looking flop of A Q 7. I make a minimal bet as I'm in bad position and try to represent an ace at least. He calls and now I know he has an Ace at least. The turn of course, is heaven for me. I just made the damn straight! I make another minimal bet and he calls. His stack is now VERY small. So the river hits with garbage and I push all in and he calls. He was holding two pair off the flop with his AQ. My straight takes it down and propels me into a commanding lead over the now reaminaing 5 players.

The next 2 players will killed off by the other players at the table. Holy cow. I'm I seeing this correctly? I'm not only at the final table of this huge tourney, but I'm now final 3!

I battle with these other two players for quite some time. I manage to make a couple of good hands and maintain a fairly good constant threat, taking good chunks out of them when need be.

Then it happens, the two other opponents are all in and I get the hell out of that hand. The smaller of the two is eliminated. I'm beside myself. I am now headsup with a slightly smaller stack then my opponent. I make a couple decent plays right of the get go and take down a couple good sized pots to make us more or less even. This battle goes back and forth for a few more mins.

Linkin Park is blarring in my headphones as it is now quite late in the household and everyone else is asleep. But not I!

I have a really good idea of my opponenets playing style and feel very confidnet in this heads up battle. But then it happened. I'm not sure what the heck was going through my mind, but it was nothing too great. I made a horrible move. I pushed a huge stack of chips in when I had bottom pair off the flop and somehow thought this was going to scare off my opponent. He didn't buy this and came out gunning with his top pair. OUCH. The rest of the cards flip and there is no help for me. I have been eliminated from the tourney.

However.... I have just placed SECOND in a HUGE tourney. I scroll down to see my winnings, just to make sure as I knew exactly what I should be getting based on the payout listing on the main tourney page. And yup... there is was. Tourney profits after my $33 entry fee... a very nice and respectable $1,861.50! Cha ching!

So it was now 1:19am and my head is hurting from all the concentration. It took me until freaking 4am to finally get to sleep. Partial excitement, but also just crazy bad headache which I popped some pills for.

And then of course I wake up at 11am today, load up my internet schedule to see if I have any flights booked in the next few days (hadn't all week long) and boom. There it is. A flight for tomorrow morning at 8am. OUCH! That means a 5:30am wakeup. I'm gonna be slightly screwed trying to get to sleep tonight. And the best part, I'm off to the prairies where it's blizzarding tomorrow! Woo hoo, a few hours in wonderful Estevan SK! So yeah. That's my excitement, time to go and get a few things ready for tomorrow's excitement.

100th Blog Post!!

Yup! Since I've been blogging since last fall I've posted 100 times. This is quite the milestone. You can send your celebratory gifts and cards to my home address here in Calgary. :)

Well I've got a few postworthy tidbits so here they are:

Destination Tracker MAP!

I have found this place that uses google maps as a base map for their service. It's mainly to be used to track your friends from around the world and all that, but I've customized it to show all of the places I've flown to. It's quite neat to visually see where I have travelled within North America. And what is also impressive about this little tool is that you can write comments at each pin you put down. So, that's what I have done. On all of the places that I've been there is a little comment about the location. So check 'em out. When it first loads off the webpage it's all the way zoomed in, so zoom it out and it looks like this:

It also has options to view as a satellite image so you can zoom right in and on most of the maps the detail is quite good. I've placed the pins directly on the airports at all of these locations. It took a long time! The link only takes you to a basic page though and I'd like it to just be the image itself but I can't seem to figure out how to use the various html codes so that you just see the image (like the one I posted above) instead of it always being zoomed in closely everytime you click the link. If anyone else knows a way to do this, let me know!

To access the map you can click this link HERE, or you can click on the new picture below the text version of my destination tracker on the right hand side of the page.

Calgary Cold Snap

Yesterday was a little chilly. How's -41 degrees with windchill for ya!? She was so cold that my battery in my Subaru said "screw this" and wouldn't start for me yesterday morning when the temp was -28 degrees (not accounting for windchill). So I had to get someone to give me a lift to help out at work (not flying). Brrr, I was working outside for a good chunk of the day too... it was very very chilly. My lips were not very happy and of course I had left my chap stick at home! Bah!

And it didn't help that yesterday my company decides it's going to do the bulk of it's office move to our new location across the other side of the runway here in Calgary. So of course anyone that's not flying or on days off gets the call to come in and help. So I went in and spent 11hrs of the day loading boxes, furniture, office supplies and many many files into a rented U-Haul making numerous trips back and forth to our new facilites. Hopefully the majority of it is all done, as I just received an email from work stating that we are no operating out of our new facilities 100% now and no longer using the old office/hangars. Woo hoo! The new hangar/office space we have is very nice. Just in the passenger lounge downstairs at the front, I'm sure $50,000 was spent on furniture, TVs, special coffee machines, mini fridge etc. The hangar is brand new and state of the art and can house all of our planes. We have a $32,000 John Deer tractor with multiple attachments. It's main purpose is to tug our airplanes around the hangar and ramp. But it can also snowplow, forklift and do many other things too. Pretty crazy. The offices are great upstairs with lots of room for everyone, and the pilots have a little lounge area as well. So it's pretty nice all around. I'll take some pics and post 'em up as soon as most of the kinks are worked out and it's looking its best.

Poker update... it had to happen

I won't go into great detail, but I took a trip (online) into some cash games (1/2 limit) and got hit pretty good by bad plays and suck-outs. So I opted to hope into a no limit game and play super tight and make it back. It was a success, up until the point when my AA got cracked by QQ on an all in move where the Q came on the turn after all the chips were in after a rag flop. That's poker unfort, I was quite irked and so I'm taking a break for a few days. It was a costly day at profits standing at -$180 for the day. It sucked.

So there's the goods on my 100th blog post. My flying schedule right now has me not booked on any flights until March 9th! Haha, that'll change but it's just not too busy right now. I go on days off this weekend and monday, so I'll be taking it super relaxed and looked forward to my next flight being operated entirely out of our new building.

Benifits of being an Albertan

I must say that for all the grief that some people put upon Alberta, I've been pretty happy within the past couple of weeks.

First off, simply enough, we have no PST. :) That's like an extra 7% per year right there!

Also, Alberta has been making stupid amounts of money in the oil business. By stupid amounts I mean they made 8 Billion freaking dollars last year. They took some of this money and decided to give it back to Albertans. Every person in Alberta, children and infants included, received a prosperity cheque this month for a nice $400 bucks. Not a crazy amount of money, but hey, anything helps! You should see all the incentives in town right now. All the department stores want you to come and spend that money so they're offering deals like "bring in your $400 prosperity cheque and it's worth $440!" and things like that. What am I going to do with my $400? Quite simply I need a new headset for flying and it'll go towards that.

And the other benifit right now is my car insurance. Being a singe male, under 25 with a car like the WRX does not prove to be a great combination for ANY auto insurance plan. Back in BC I was paying around $3,000 per year on auto insurance!!! And here in Alberta it didn't get a whole lot better at $2980, but I did get some extras like a "free accident" and extra free roadside assistance and things like that based on my safe drivers record. That's something that I likely would not have seen for even a couple more years with ICBC.

Now here's the kicker. As soon as you're 25 or older in Alberta the miracle happens. I knew I was entitled to cheaper rates so I called up my insurance company last week to inquire. And yes, for all you bastards out there who forgot my birthday... I'm now 25!!! :)

So I talk to them and explain I want to redo my insurance. Because it was setup in August I would actually have to cancel my current policy and redo a new one. No problem if it's going to save me money, lets get this show on the road. So we do up the new quote. I nearly passed out when I heard the difference in price. Remember my old policy was $2980. My new policy... freaking $1,437! Can you believe that! I simply turn 25 and my insurance rates drop an amazing 51%! So I'm pretty happy about those savings. I wouldn't be seeing rates like that in BC that's for sure. It doesn't help that I'm driving one of the most highly rated (bad thing) vehicles in terms of insurable cars. In the same vicinity that Porsche and other high end sports cars get labelled. Mainly because it's a common car that's been in many accidents, is expensive to repeair and has been a very desirable car to steal as of late. Yay for me.

So getting older pays off once again. Now I just need life to SLOWWWWWWWWWWWW down so I can enjoy my youth. Haha.

Poker updates

Well, it has come to my attention that I'm busier than I thought I would be and therefore not able to keep playing poker daily. So I will get rid of the poker tracker on the right side of the screen but will keep you all appraised as to my progress. I will play when I can and hope to keep the minimal profits in a continuous climb.

As per some stats, for the month of January I did net a total of $354.00 USD. This was over 25 days of play, which works out to $14.16 per day. Didn't quite maintain my average it would appear! Haha, oh well. Pretty close.

I have been playing in a few online tourney's though. My best success to date is recorded below. Click on the pics to enlarge.

Here is the screenshot of me making it to the final table of a 377 person tourney. I was pretty happy to be there, and had a bigger stack then at least 4 other people at the table with me. This was just a $5 event, so the payouts weren't that great, BUT when you get into it this far, the return is actually pretty decent. It was a turbo event, meaning that the blinds were raised very quickly at 5 min intervals. This forced a lot of action that had been benificial to me in the previous half hour of the game.



And it was bound to happen. I was fairly even stacked with another player on the table but the other two players had the most of the cash. I decided to make my move and only lost out due to a smaller kicker. It was OK. I figured I had gone about as far as I was going on this whirlwind ride. It was great fun and I ended up winning $114 USD. So not too bad for just under 2hrs worth of play.



So it doesn't happen to often and I was pretty proud of this. This all occured yesterday and today I decided to enter into a couple more. It was going great in all three of the events I entered. And in the first two I was out within the first hour when my best hands were rivered!!!! Oh it irked me so. But this is poker and I can't get mad at the situation, as I had rivered somebody on my way up to my fourth place finish yesterday. And had it not been for me screwing someone over, the bulk of this post would never have been written.

In the last game I was playing today for a solid 10 mins I was actually the lead chip holder and dominating like nobodies business. Then in 3 progressvily horrible hands I had my ass handed to me! But again.. ALL BAD BEATS! My full house was busted by a higher full house, my KK was busted by AA and my QQ was beat out by some punk who called my preflop massive raise with 67 offsuit and managed to get a straight on the turn after I pushed him all in off the flop when I tripped my Queens. But, I'm not mad because it's a low cost tourney and these turkeys are everywhere! Sometimes it's a turkeyshoot and it's great, but more often than not it feels as if the turkey's have revolted and come after you pecking you to death. Ok, a little odd comment I aggree.

Anyone else wish to share poker great and poker horrible stories?

Back from Sin City

Well.. what can I say. It was a good trip. We were in Vegas from Tuesday afternoon until Friday afternoon. We were extra lucky that we didn't get called back to do more flying. So we partied it up pretty good.

The first night we walked the strip and hit up a couple casino's for some drinks. The first place was Treasure Island and we had a good 5 or 6 drinks there will playing some slots. No luck on the slots but we got downright shitty off the drinks. We were staying in the Excalibur hotel which was at the other end of the strip. So as we walked back to the hotel we made stops in many other hotels and plunked a couple of bucks in the slots and made like bandits on the drinks. By 1am we were back in our hotel and totally gooned. I passed out on my bed and awoke again at 5am with very sore eyes as I forgot to take my contacts out. Ouch, that was painful.

The next day we slept in and then met for lunch around 1pm. We walked more of the strip but we were quite tired of all the walking so we got some bus passes that were good for 24hrs so we could go up and down the strip and not hurt so much. It really is quite a walk. That day we toured around more hotels, including the Wynn which is a really really nice new hotel. We also checked out that mall that Nat was so quick to point out as a tourist trap :) It's okay though, I didn't buy anything. We decided we wanted to sit down on a cheap blackjack game. Most of the casinos just have 10 dollar blackjack and it's hard to find the 5 dollar blackjack except for in some of the older ones. Success, we found what we were looking for in the Barbary Coast Casino. It was an older casino but was full of life. It was smaller and didn't have as much "bling" as the bigger casinos but that was also a great attribute. The drink girls came by every 5 mins and once again, we capitalized. We got sloshed again while playing blackjack and we were doing pretty good. Not winning lots, but not losing much either. With all the free drinks we were having we were definatly ahead. We joked it up with all the other players at the table as well, it was great fun. Even the dealers were having a good time and the pit boss would come up every once and a while and join in on the fun.

Well we played for a LONG time. After about 5 hrs of playing there I started chatting up the pit boss for some free stuff! I don't know what came over me, but I have a feeling it had something to do with the alcohol flowing through my blood. He asked if we had "comp cards" which are those credit card things that you can get to track your play while you're at the casino and sometimes you'll qualify for some free stuff or coupons off of meals and things like this. Well we said we didn't have any comp cards so he asked for our licenses. I wasn't quite sure what the hell he was talking about but the other pilot Shaun did and he threw his drivers license at the pit boss and I followed suit.

Then about 10 mins later Mark the pit boss returned and handed us each a credit card looking piece of plastic with our names on it and that of the casino. Holy cow, now we've been tagged! Well after another few mins I again started talking to Mark about some comps and he asked if we were hungry, I replied "of course!" So he actually got us a couple of free full course dinners at their restaurant! A nice big steak dinner with soup, baked potato, hot dinner rolls.. the full works. An easy $20 dollar meal for free! Woo hoo! This Vegas trip was turning out to be not too shabby!

We headed back to our hotel rooms to regroup and have a couple more drinks (we brought some booze back from our plane stock too.. shhh..). We then agreed to head out and check out the club scene in Vegas. It was now already past midnight but our sense and reasoning was a little sub par now. We started the night by going across the street to the MGM Grand and waited in line for their big club "Studio 54". It was pretty crazy in there, multiple levels with cirque du soliel type acrobatics going on in the middle of the dance floor hanging from the ceiling. Confetti every once and a while and go go dancers. There really weren't many girls there though so we decided to split.

Next stop after consulting a cabbie on the best place to party that night was Treasure Island's "Tangerine". Now this place was happening. We still had to wait in line at freaking 2:30am because it was so busy inside. We chatted up the people in front of us and turns out the young couple was from Edmonton. After a little more talk we found out they had some free passes to get in without cover. They had an extra pass that was good for 2 free covers and so they gave us one. Once inside we returned the favor by buying them drinks. Wow, a pretty nice club. It was packed to the max and had many a hot girl dancing around. They had a nice patio area too that overlooked the strip, so it was nice to get out there for some air. We partied it up for a couple hours and then realized it was time to split. We headed back to the Barbary Coast to try out their $3.45 breakfast special. It was good! We took a cab back to the hotel and we were back in the hotel room around 5am. Now that was a night of partying.

The next day was much more relaxing. We checked out some more sights and the other pilot and I split up for a while. I took this opportunity to go and check out some poker! You knew it was coming at some point. How could I go to Vegas and not play poker!? I sat in on the Excalibur's 2/4 limit hold em game. My very first 2 hands each time I had pocket 8's and won both pots. I then played rather tight over the next 40mins of play but every hand I went in on, I won! In less than an hour I had made $110! That filtered down to $76 when my table split up and I then had to wait 20 mins for a spot on the other table to open up. I played for another hour and was down to a profit of $30 at one point, but eventually made it back up to $80 and called it done. It was great fun. The play was easy and I'm sure I could make good money if I lived in Vegas and just went and prayed on all the inexperienced players that sit down while they're there.

While waiting for Shaun to meet up afterwards I went and played some slots, I was down about $20 bucks when I hit a mini jackpot and made a cool $40 bucks in one pull of the machine. So I cashed out. Not too shabby! I met up with Shaun and we headed back to the Barbary Coast for more Blackjack. But it was incredibly busy, so it took a while to find a seat. We both sat down and Shaun ended up loosing some cash while I just broke even after a good 2.5hrs of play. We were both pretty hungry at this point and tried to get another steak dinner but it was too busy to even try. So we walked down the strip and eventually went to the famous "Fatburger" for a great burger at 1am. That place was packed, it took 20mins to just get our food. Afterwards it was back to the hotel for our last nights sleep in Sin City.

The next day was really mellow as we had lunch and pretty much just got ready to head back home at 3pm. We arrived early at the airport and it was sooooooooo busy. All the private jets and turboprops coming in for Superbowl Sunday. Holy cow it was madness. We got the heck out of there, flew right over the strip on our way out and made it back into Alberta late last night.

Now I'm back at home going through Vegas withdrawl. Not a shabby way to spend 3 days!

Final results:

Money in pocket going to Vegas: $360 USD

Blackjack Profits: $ 50 USD
Poker Profits: $ 80 USD
Slot Profits: $ 40 USD

Money in pocket upon return: $385 USD

Money saved on free drinks/comps: PRICELESS!!!

Haha, it was a good trip. Not to mention I also get my food allowance from work, so it was definatly a money making trip. Can't wait for the next one!