E-H-V-E-G-A-S

And so ends the beginning. To those who came to Toronto on our sunny, warm (-6ish Celsius - just multiply by 9/5 and add 32 for you Yanks), fun-filled weekend -- it was great to meet you. For those who didn't come -- that's your loss. Worry not degenerates, for I doubt not that there shall be future opportunities, in more temperate times, to visit my fair city in search of good fishing and fun.

I'm sure Kat will have a full report up soon enough. Needless to say, it was great to meet Jules, Graham, Iakaris, PlatKat, and Gus, and to get some live action against Guin and Kat again (been awhile since our paths crossed live). The turnout was small when compared to the Bash or Vegas standards, but landslides start when a single pebble starts rolling.

Good food and great wine on Friday, was followed by some profitable live action against many drunks (I being one of them, just less-so than the rest). It was firmly established that Gus is a luckbox at the table, but that played nicely to my advantage when he rivered his flush and ran into my flopped boat. Passing out for 5 hours and waking up to creepy children's voices singing about teacups on your TV causes an unsettling environment when you stumble around in the dark at 6am with a mouth full of cotton.

I unfortunately missed dinner on Saturday, but made the tables. Bubbled in the inaugural Eh-Vegas tournament. This, however, was soothed by being able to drop the inaugural HAMMER of Eh-Vegas, and later seeing my pocket Tens turn into a big fat DQB! against Kat's full boat (not a suckout, I was ahead from the deal). Congrats to Iak for taking it down and Gus for placing. Our unfortunate 10pm closing time for the beer and liquor stores meant a dearth of alcohol at the games, but that didn't stop myself, Guin and Iak from playing cash until 4am or so. A down night overall, but not enough to wipe out the previous night's winnings, thanks to a big gain to nearly septuple my final, wallet-emptying buy-in. It's amazing what happens when your last $60 turns into chips... I focused, read the table like a book, and got the cards to do something about it. QQ5 on the flop and me with J5s (cheap flop BB special)? Yah, you don't have the Queen mr. better... why, you have AKo. THAT'S how I called your bets and raises.

These two days proved something else - I am Jules' personal walking, talking poker jinx.

A requested wake-up call from Kat the next morning 5 hours after I found my pillow had me up for brunch with the Two Kats and Gus (what a horrible band name). A surprise was discovered when our waitress came up to us and she happened to be the same waitress as at our poker club. Needless to say, she was tipped well, or maybe it was because Gus was dumping his Canadian cash :).

After dropping off PlatKat and Gus at the airport (29th busiest in the world, 17th in North America - apologies for my inaccurate information on the drive), Kat and I headed off to Fallsview, with hopes of Iakaris and perhaps VinNay catching up with us. Alas, it would turn out to be just the two of us, but we had fun nevertheless.. with 5 solid hours of winning poker. I kept up my roll from the previous night, reading the table with ease and messing with their minds. If I raised to $10 with rockets, what the hell did I minraise with? Why do I limp sometimes and then declare that limping is pathetic and raise 7.5x the BB? I called your raise with 79c? 35h? No way you put me on my straight. You raised on a raggy flop and I re-raised you hard? Surely I don't have crap in my hand. By the time I left, I think the table was sad to see me go, but happy that I wasn't taking their chips any more.

Then I promptly dumped my winnings into the slots, failing to follow the cardinal rule of "quit while you're ahead," as I was almost instantly up an additional $200 on those Blazing 7's I so love, but I pissed that away post haste. Back to the T-dot and the end of Eh-Vegas I. I can't wait for Eh-Vegas II - Electric Boogaloo. I can only hope that Eh-Vegas III will be in 3-D.

So now I suppose I shall look towards Vegas in June. Let's see how that works out, shall we?