Well *poof*, here I am in Vancouver once again. I love it here. Already up over $3k loonies too :).

Yesterday Gavin and I flew out of Las Vegas at 1:25 pm. We got to the airport at noon, but almost missed our flight due to my being a dumb-ass. When we went through security I took my laptop out of my backpack, put it into a tray, put another empty tray on top of the laptop, put all my miscellaneous nonsense into that tray, and send it through the scanner. Whoops.

"Sir, next time when you come through, your laptop has to be in it's own separate tray."

I couldn't come up with a good response quick enough. I mean, no shit. Make fun of me for putting the trays on top of each other or something.

So I get sent to this little metal exam table, and I'm expecting to be handed a hospital gown and meet some Hungarian woman with sideburns and a uni-brow putting on a rubber glove. He puts the two trays on the exam table, says, "Don't touch anything while I check your bags."

He walks back to the scanner with the laptop tray, runs it, comes back, gets the other tray, runs em both again, they pop out of the machine, are sitting there, still, and still.... bout 3 minutes pass. The guy walks back to the exit side of the machine (he was on the entrance side), looks at my bags, and motions from far away something like you can get your bags now to me.

Really?

Gavin and I are giggling about it though all the way to the bar where I make the mistake of refreshing his memory of how to play Gin. We start at $100/$1 (a game/per point), I get whipped the first game, but end up coming back to get on the plane as a small winner so far. With less than 15 minutes to departure we start walking to the gate, and I realize... Oh shit. I left my carry-on bag at the exam table.

I start running back to the A gate security checkpoint as I hear our names being paged.

We baaaaarely made it. One of the front desk people ran back down the jetway as they saw us coming to tell the plane to wait. LOL.

Gavin and I continue to kick each other in the nuts at gin and somewhere over Seattle I'm stuck like $27.

"Wanna kick it up?"

Hell yes I do. We make it $200/$5, and Gavin skunks me in two hands.

Stuck $727. Oops.

Anyways, Daryl the best poker room employee I have ever met sends us a limo, we check in, and after a shower I head downstairs. I exchange $9600 American for $11,300 Canadian at a 1.18 rate. In May when I brought fifty thousand loonies to Las Vegas, they gave me more American than I gave them Canadian. That means that if I had held on to those until this trip, like I thought about doing, I would have lost ten thousand American dollars. Sick eh?

I go and buy in for all the events, say hi to Daryl, and then run into Donovan. He insists on buying me a beer, and don't try and force me into a good time I accept. We hang for a while, and then I have the itch to go play. I weasel my way into the only 5-10 game going, buy in for $6k, fold for about 20 minutes straight, finally pick up a good hand, one dude limps UTG+1 (who will later pull off a super-douche manuver), and I jack it up one to $60 with my QJo (told you it was a good hand). It goes call, reluctant fold, reluctant fold, call, call, call, pained fold in the big blind, and super-douche makes it $260.

Everybody folds like they had "[x] fold to any bet". I mean, I laugh and just kinda giggle-fold, and it takes less than six seconds for everybody else to fold behind me. It took longer for each player that folded pre-flop after my raise to fold individually than it did for all four of the callers to fold collectively after I folded.

I think they think I suck.

I don't blame em really, with the reputation for being a spewtard that I earned last trip. Between snapping aces with XX like six times in big spots, five-bet shoving to isolate an all-in player with five-eight off, and the final table train wreck where I had 50% of the chips with 9 left and took 9th, I wouldn't fold to me either :).

Soo, Gavin drags me out of the game at 10:30 "to go drinkin", I accept, and I quit up $1500 (loonies). Then begins the great adventure of bar-hopping.

We go to some pub in Richmond with Adam (and eventually meet Mike too) from PokerCast, and then somehow decide we're going downtown. Things get fuzzy from here.

Oh yeah I forgot. I won $500 on a prop off Gavin right before we left (Canadian unfortunately... I have to beat him out of like $1k here to get even after the gin disaster). Last week we argued about the color of the Canadian $50 bill. I say red, he says pink. Gavin takes a bill to eleven random tables, asks people he chooses what color it is, and we play a race to six. It goes red, red, red, red, and then he asks a girl who says pink. Haha of course. He then asks another girl who says red, another says pink, and I win somewhere after that when like ten people in a row said red. It was hilarious to watch though cause he did it through the white chip and 1-2 NL games, and everybody is like holy shit that's Gavin Smith, and he's oblivious to it all, solely focused on his failed mission of pinkness.

So we get downtown and meet MJ, walk up to the bar, order, and when I turn around Gavin and Adam are gone. Huh. Weird. I wait for the drinks, wait, wait, then the bartender says, "Can I get you anything?"

"Didn't we just order?"

"Didn't your friends just leave?"

"Ummm... I don't know? I guess I'll take a Sleeman's?"

Then MJ introduces himself to me, says that Gavin and Adam got kicked out, and that they're at the Morrissey. So I finish my beer and go looking for a goose called the Morrissey. I acquire some more information.

It's at the Ramada.
If I walk out the front door of where I'm at, I turn left.
It's about ten blocks.

Good! So I walk out the front door, turn left, and find myself in the middle of downtown Vancouver. I wrapped my scarf up a little tighter, buttoned my peacoat, and actually enjoyed the crisp air and seeing my breath. I walked for about ten blocks when I started running out of street, called, and got more information. Granville and (street name I forgot). I ask somebody, which way is the Ramada? He points left. We walk down the street for a while, I see no Ramada, these guys aren't too sure where I'm supposed to go, so I go to 7-11 and basically make another left, heading back towards the bar that my friends got kicked out of (and I still don't know why that happened).  Poker TV

I wander around for a while, pee in a back alley for the first time in a foreign country, and magically stumble upon Granville. I ask some mounties which way to the bar, and shocker they know exactly where I need to go, and I finally am re-united with Gav and Adam.

Turns out that on the way in the two of them were goofing off and rough-housing basically, I think Adam hip-checked Gavin into the boards on the way up the stairs, or maybe into the wall when we got upstairs, but security booted them as soon as we walked straight to the bar. I guess MJ got the OK to be back in, but by that point Gav's basically like FU I don't want to drink here anymore.

Anyways, eventually we take a cab back to the River Rock, I stumble to the online poker room, and the game has turned into 5-10-25. I buy in for $8k this time (I had to cover the $7k stack obv), and I have a really good time playing in this game.

Oh, I forgot to tell you about super-douche. Flop action goes like this - check, bet $40, raise to $120, arrin for $1600. After about 75 seconds the guy says, "If you take much longer I'm gonna call the clock on you."

About 60 seconds later the guy yells, "CLOCK!!!" It is at this point that I verbally berate him, telling him what an asshole, un-gentlemanly, douche-baggy play that is. The asian across the table from Toronto (who was a very good player from what I saw... I respected him most by far) also went off on the guy. Just for the record, there was no prior history, the kid played fast, and it was an obvious crappy spot. It was like AT4 with two hearts.

So, when I got there at 3am, I was happy to hear and they were happy to report that he lost his entire stack that evening. I watched him to from $1k to $100 to $2k to $3600 after the kid called and lost in that hand right before I left.

I end up playing until 6:30 am, only really playing one big pot where 7 handed it went limp-limp-limp I make it $175 from the SB, fold, call, fold fold heads-up to the flop, T93 I bet $205 he calls, turn 2 I bet $505 he calls, river 4 I ship for his last $1100ish he calls and my JJ is good.

Playing online now, finally in my own room, and will be playing live all week.

Peace and good luck,

Devo

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