Poker tourney at the River Rock

While back in Vancouver a couple weeks ago I went and played in the early bird tourney at River Rock with Jon Sy. The entry is $30 and I have played in this event a few other times. I haven't placed in the money 2 times, but have placed 7th 8th and 4th at other attempts fetching between $60 to $195.

The amount of entries range from 65-100 each event, in this event there were 65. On this latest attempt I made it to the final table with the smallest stack, but survived making a couple of doubleups to afford the blinds, which led me to 5th place with the smallest stack. At this point I jokingly offered a 5 way chop of the money.. of course there were no takers.

Then I had a series of good hands to keep me in the game, eventually to the point where I took out 3rd place and went heads up with a healthy chip lead over 2nd. A few hands later it was all over and done with, my A9 taking out his 44 when an Ace came on the flop.

So I was very happy, especially with a $650 1st place finish. This is not my highest amount won in a tourney (2nd place online netted me $1700 USD a couple years ago), but it is however my first time winning a tournament. In the end I went from 3,500 in chips, dead last in 5th place, to take all 130,000 in chips and win the event. Oh, and poor Jon had some crappy luck and was out within the first 20 mins of the tourney.. better luck next time I'm in town Jon and convince you to skip work again to come play cards. :)

Death of an Xbox

After opening up some bad mail from Revenue Canada about how I owe them some money (too much to get into I'm afraid) I turned on the Xbox to go and shoot it out with 14 year olds around the world in Call of Duty on Xbox live.

As the machine powered up, the "red ring of death" appeared and on the screen came up an error code. A quick google search later revealed it was a hardware failure. A quick call to Xbox confirmed this and I was then told how it was no longer covered under warranty (if I had more than the one red ring flashing it would have been). I then recalled I bought the machine on a Visa with extended warranty protection services. So yup, Visa will pay for me to repair the unit. That process is under way but costs $110 and takes 3-4 weeks of me sending my Xbox to them and they in return send a remanufactured one to me. I'm quite irked over the whole deal, but upon researching online however I discovered how common a problem hardware failure is in the Xbox community.

So now I'm without my gaming vice until this whole mess is resolved. Then will begin a 4 week wait for getting my money back through Visa. This is why I buy absolutely everything I can with the Visa. Warranty protection, bonus money for Starbucks, the free 45 day loan before I have to pay and an easy way to keep track of expenses - all from a free, no fee credit card.

Oh man, I've been busy!

The past couple of months have been very busy, and things are just starting to settle down a little now. So I'll just say that some updates are on their way. But in the mean time, here's a link to a crazy video of a Lufthansa Airbus 320 attempting to make a landing during a very strong and gusty crosswind which to me appears to be well outside the safe envelope. Watch the video at the bottom of this page here:

VIDEO LINK

Then view a picture taking during the incident here:

PICTURE LINK

I'm very happy they were able to return for a safe landing, but that is some very sketchy stuff. They should not have even attempted that landing in the first place.