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Trip Report
A month ago I took a bus to Vancouver Island to visit a friend of mine named John and planned on staying there for a week or so but just got back today. This trip was very spontaneous - was invited and jumped on a bus 12 hrs later.
The bus ride was pretty bad because I left at 10am and did not arrive until 11pm, so you can imagine the distance traveled. While on the island, I stayed at John's place with a few of his roommates for one week. During this time, I played about 10k hands of online poker, including the 5am drunken 3/6 online FR games as mentioned earlier in this thread. This was the only poker I played online in the last 4 weeks.
While in Victoria I hit up their local casino and played a couple hours of Lightning Poker. Lightning Poker is your standard B&M poker except instead of chips, cards, and dealers - everyone has a screen in front of them. It's still a social game, but other than a timer, there is no control over the table.
John works for Fairmont Resorts (hotels) so we came up with the great idea of staying at Hotel Vancouver for a few days at an 80% discounted price, the rooms usually go for anywhere between $400-$500 for the ones we stayed in. While there, I invited my brother to come and visit. My gift to him for his birthday was a flight from Toronto and back, and all expenses paid, including spending money and gambling stacks. He ended up staying for two weeks but was hotel ridden for the last week because of an infection. I'm really glad he came though.
So, every 4 or 5 days we changed from hotel to hotel in Victoria and Vancouver and things turned into 4 weeks of bed hopping. I am a little disappointed with myself with the amount of sight-seeing that I did, but I know I'll be back to the area again sometime this year or next.
As for the B&M games: Wow. What a difference alcohol makes in my game. First of all, I love getting drunk and playing live poker, but I was more or less a break-even player. I played maybe 3 or 4 sessions all getting sloshed and not coming out very far ahead.
I haven't drank or smoked since last Sunday and my wallet thanks me. Mon-Fri +$1300. Friday morning after getting home from my latest session, I decided to play my first 24hr session. So, I went to bed, woke up at 8pm, and began a session at 12am Saturday morning. Midnight to midnight. I really fucking enjoyed this, maybe it was due to the success however, but I had a lot of fun. I invested $200 and left my third table at 12am Sunday with a $2500+ stack, all from the 1/2 tables. One of the dealers today (played a 6hr session before my flight +$400) mentioned that it was the 2nd biggest stack he had ever seen. At this point I'm feeling on top of the world and my live game has never been better.
I just decided now that I'm going back to Vancity with my roomie Keilah around the 19th of April. For some reason, Vancouver has crazy good parties on the 20th.
My hand stories for the month will only include 2 because there are so many fun ones to go over.
1) I'm new to the table but a few regs recognize me as a bit of a spewy laggtard, but this is early in my sober week (first hand and last really bad hand I played all week). Villain and I have history, he sees me as a bluffing maniac because I shoved on a flop on him the day before with a gut/flush in a big pot, he made the sick call with KK on an A high board.
Folds to villain in MP, limps. Folds to me in the CO, I raise to $12 with J7o.
Folds to villain, who raises to $40, I call, effective stacks are $250.
Flop: 
Villain bets $69
I call. WORST CALL EVER but I convinced myself that floating here would be profitable.
Turn: 
Villain shoves, I snap call.
River: 
Villain: "Did you hit your straight?"
Me: "No. Two pair.
Villain: "AQ?!?!"
I show my hand, Villain slams down AK and flips out. "Fucking idiot etc. etc."
I admit I gave him a few kind words of advice on how to not act immature.
Hand 2)
Vs. Same villain , only it's the next day but I still have position on him. So, my two friends and I sit down and we're only non Asians at the table. I am 100% a minority in Vancouver. Anyways, we sit down and right away we start talking about J7o (that's villains name now and most of the table is loving the story about the hand from the night before. Oh I forgot to mention that J7o sits down 30min into our session. He's a young, tall, skinny, trying to be pro, Chinese kid. Him and I have a few words exchanged about who is going to stack who. For the first orbit or so, he his being referred to as J7o by half of the table, so he decides to go on monkey tilt by shoving his $100 stack all in preflop every other hand. He's on tilt and hasn't even played a hand yet. He steals $50 and eventually gets caught and loses his stack with some random two cards. Apparently this guy is a reg. So, he re-buys for $200 and plays 5/3/1 for about an hour, super nitbox.
Villain aka J7 straddles, so obviously I call beside him UTG with 63o.
Few callers, villain pops +$25, I call, we're HU to the flop.
Flop (cums): 
J7o checks, I quickly fire $45, he quickly shoves for $150 more, I snap call.
J7o: "You flop a set?"
Me: "No."
J7o: "Aces up?
Me: "No. Two pair."
Turn and river is randoms and villain flips over AhTx I show my hand and villains body language turns into that of a beat up Mike Tyson victim.
J7o: "Can I keep the whites? ($10 in chips) I don't want to go all the way to my car and need to get something to eat."
Dude is panhandling me. I am stuttering, not really knowing what to say, feeling like shit, and not wanting to give $10 to this ego-maniacal dickwad who probably won't come back. Dealer steps in and throws the chips my way, whale on my left tosses him $10. J7o does not come back. In fact, Saturday and Sunday were the only two days all week that he didn't show up to good ol' Edgewater Casino Poker room.
On the way back to Vernon, my roomie Keilah picks me up in our $1k beater GMC. It's dark, lil wet, black ice, we fishtail, spin, and hit a telephone pole into the driver side between the front left wheel and the mirror. We take my suit case and lap top out from the back and walk about 1km homeward. We were both fine, minor headache, probably due to some stress, but the truck is now worth even less than 1 G. It's done, off to the scrap heap tomorrow.
I'm nervous as fuck to grind online again. I already miss the live game. We'll see how she goes from here. Oh, and because of this trip, I'm not confident in comfortably playing 2/4 by the end of March. So I've decided to change the OP title.
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