Day 2 in San Diego: The Zoo!

Diane and I slept in again, quite a bit later than I figured we might given that we went to bed super early. I guess we needed to catch up on some sleep. We wandered down for the complimentary continental breakfast which was alright, but not spectacular. Then we headed off to the zoo! It was just one bus from downtown, so we picked up a transit all-day pass and rode the number 7 bus from downtown all the way to the zoo. The San Diego Zoo is *huge*. It was very overwhelming at first, but luckily our tickets gave us a free bus tour throughout the park so we decided that the best way to start was to take the bus tour around to get a feel for what the park had to offer. The bus tour was at least 20 minutes, and I was able to get a few decent photos with my telephoto lens from the top of the double decker bus.

After the bus tour, we started to wander a bit and saw a large number of exhibits and took a lot of pictures. Diane and I teamed up -- she wrote down what the animal's names are while I was taking pictures, so hopefully we have most of my pictures labeled with the actual names of the animals.

What were my favourite ones? I think I liked the meerkats a lot. The Pandas were awfully cute, and it was pretty fun to watch the monkeys swing around in their little playgrounds. Also, the many deer related animals: the gazelles, the antelope, etc were really cute. Especially the baby ones. One of my other favourite things was walking through the aviaries. These were so much more picture friendly than some of the other ones where the bars just got in the way of the little birds.

We stopped for lunch halfway through the park at the treehouse cafe. It wasn't all that great, but it was okay. I had a meatball sub and Diane had a bread bowl full of chili.

Wandering through the rest of the zoo took us until after 4:00. One of the highlights in the afternoon was riding the Skyfari tram from one end of the zoo up to the other. It was quite a nice view from up there! We could easily have spent more time at each exhibit or made an effort to see some of the shows they put on there, but we basically explored fairly quickly and took pictures at many of the exhibits.

We headed back to the hotel and got lucky that the bus arrived right away. We sauntered back to the hotel and changed and consulted directions to an improv comedy show we picked up a pamphlet for. Dinner was at Anthony's Fish Grotto which apparently has been around for a long time. It was quite good -- I had a plate of fried fish, scallops, and shrimp. The coleslaw they gave me was some of the best I think I've ever had. It had bits of pineapple in it, and the cabbage was very very fresh.

After dinner it looked like there was enough time to try and find the improv comedy place, so we boarded a trolley car which on the inside looked startlingly like the LRT cars in Edmonton. We took it two stops and found the comedy club with time to spare. The improv show was very similar to the guys in Edmonton who do Improvaganza. It was a pretty fun show, although I kind of felt that the referee needed to do less talking and explaining the games and more time letting the improv people improvise. Still, it was quite fun.

We got back on the train and headed back to sleep. We have to check out of our hotel by noon, but the cruise ship check-in time is 12:30 so I think we've got a pretty good plan of attack there!

I'll probably be disconnected from the internet for the majority of the cruise. I have no idea how much internet will cost on the ship, but I have a feeling it might be expensive. I'll continue to type blog posts though and I'll post them when I get the chance. If the cost of internet there is reasonable I might jump online once in awhile and post something, but for the most part I think I will disconnect myself.

Morgan

Day 8 in Vegas and Moving to San Diego

Alright, so we're settled into a hotel in San Diego so I figure I'll get myself caught up on our latest couple of days. After sleeping in, Diane and I joined the rest of the group for the buffet for a second straight day (note to self ... gotta eat a bit healthier here!). We ate our fill and then formulated a plan for the day. There was a few things on our list of things to go do, so we perused it and ended up heading to the south end of the strip to check out some of the hotels down there. We stopped at New York, New York to ride the rollercoaster which was a lot of fun. Not only did it have a loop in it, it had a weird twist upside down and turn which was something I haven't experienced. It was pretty wild.

After getting off the ride, we wandered down towards Mandalay Bay having heard about an aquarium there. On the way there we walked through Excalibur (medieval themed casino -- a big castle), Luxor (a big pyramid and egyptian themed casino), and then on to Mandalay Bay. There was indeed an aquarium, but it cost a bit more than most of us wanted to pay. Kevin and Johnny went in though and the rest of us headed back to the hotel to look into show tickets for that night.

With our flamingo hotel rooms we got 2 for 1 show ticket coupons. Of the shows we were allowed to use the coupon for, the improv one looked the most appealing so we went to go see that. It was a fun show, although for the first bit I was underwhelmed by the performances. Then a third guy came on and totally took off with it. He did a real good job playing off the audience and made the show worth it. I was glad about that since we payed like $10 for our drinks. Maybe I should've asked how much the drinks were there before I ordered one.

After the show we wandered back for some $1 margaritas at the casino next to the flamingo. Those were surprisingly good! After that, the other guys were planning on heading out to some nightclubs, but Diane and I decided to head to bed since we needed to get up early to catch our plane the next day.

The next morning we got up at 6:00, packed ourselves up and headed to the airport. We got a bit of a scare when we got there to check in. The guy told us we'd better run for it or we might not make our plane. We had less than 45 minutes to departure, but we didn't have any trouble getting to the plane on time to board.

We had a really silly flight to San Diego through Salt Lake City. That's right. You can draw a line from Salt Lake City through Vegas to San Diego! So we had two short flights to get to San Diego, but it wasn't too bad. We touched down into San Diego around noon. My first impression of San Diego? Blessedly cool! After 40+ degree heat in Vegas, we descended into a beautifully cool 24 degrees or so.

We caught a cab to our hotel which was a short cab ride from the airport. After settling in, we wandered down the bay to check out some of the places we could see. There was a fair amount of touristy things to see down there and the area is really quite pretty. So we wandered around for awhile, had some dinner and then went back to our hotel to crash since we were rather tired.

So I'm about to head for bed, but I wanted to get caught up here so I could post one post about the zoo tomorrow when we get back, and then hop on the cruise ship on Saturday!

Morgan

Day 6 and 7: Running around Vegas

Alright, so I've got only a few minutes here to try and catch myself up to today, so this will be a relatively whirlwind post about the past two days. On Monday, we had to move hotels because we are too cheap to pay the price for a Rio suite. So we moved to the Flamingo hotel on Monday morning. After checking out of the Rio, we moved our large number of bags via two taxi cabs to the Flamingo where Kevin and I checked in and got our room keys. After dropping our bags off, it was more than time to get ourselves some food so we stopped at a little cafe called "Tropical Breeze" in the Flamingo. It was alright, but not incredible. Across the way from the cafe there was an exit to the Flamingo gardens that was quite pretty. They have some wildlife out there that's pretty cool including some real live flamingos. There's several water features and a very large swimming pool as well. So it was nice to wander around that for awhile.

A couple people in our group planted the idea of entering in a low buyin poker tournament as a big group. As it turned out, there was a $45 tournament at O-Shea's that looked appealing so a group of about 10 of us all registered for this tournament. In the end, Mike B lasted the longest and chopped the first and second prizes up with another guy for a decent profit. Way to go Mike! I didn't do so well. I just couldn't get any cards to help me stave off elimination. Oh wells.

After getting busted, a few of us went over to the nearby bar and played some beer pong. In this rather silly excuse to get drunk game, you arrange 10 cups in a pyramid formation and put a little bit of beer in each one. Then you toss ping pong balls at the other team's cups and try and land your ball in one of their cups. If you do, they have to drink it. There's a bunch of other rules, but that's essentially the game. Diane and I lost the game we played, but it was kind of fun. I don't think this is something I'd want to do very often though.

After that, some of the guys wanted to go play poker, but I was hungry and wanted to get something to eat. So Kevin, Nolan, Diane and I wandered out of the casino to find something to eat. We ended up at Bally's at a little cafe that was actually quite good. I had a California club sandwich which was delicious. It had turkey, bacon, avocado, lettuce and tomato on sourdough bread. Mmmmm, tasty!

It was rather late at that point, so rather than sitting at the poker table, Diane and I called it a night... and proceeded to sleep until noon. Guess it was a good thing we decided to get to sleep! All those late nights were really catching up with us.

So on Tuesday "morning", I called Darse up to see what he was up to, and he headed over to meet us. We had brunch at the Flamingo buffet which was not nearly as large as the Rio World buffet, but it was still good. We then met up with the rest of the guys and headed off to explore some of the strip hotels and casinos. We ended up walking around the Venetian, the Wynn, and Treasure Island. The Wynn is quite a fancy place and we spent a fair amount of time there oohing and ahhing at the pretty architecture of the new casino. We stopped at treasure island to see the show there which ended up being pretty neat. Lots of fireworks and fire were used in the show. Like the Rio's show in the sky, though, they sure relied heavily on scantily clad women. That seems to be a staple of Vegas.

Eventually, the group of us (minus Darse and Xan who headed back to rest a bit) ended up at the stratosphere - a hotel/casino that has a large tower that you can go up and view vegas from. There's also three thrill rides up there. So we went up there and most of us rode the "Big Shot" -- a ride that shoots you up the top of the tower at 4Gs. It was pretty fun :)

We rode the monorail back to the hotel. Some people went right down to the end of the line and walked back, but Nick, Johnny and I got off at the flamingo and played a bit of poker. This session didn't go well for me though -- I just couldn't get any cards to punish the bad play at the table. That's the way it goes sometimes though.

I'm not too sure what the plan for today is yet. We'll be meeting up with the rest of the gang soon and head out to get some food. After that, who knows what will happen! I hope to get around to my photos soon, but that might actually have to wait until I get home to process them all. We'll see how busy we get in San Diego before the cruise.

Morgan

Day 5: Polaris Victory, Cirque Du Soleil, and Celebration

Sorry about not getting up a blog entry yesterday. Yesterday morning we had to move hotels so we were busy with that, and blogging about the previous day kind of got pushed to the wayside. Alright, so where to start? Sunday morning felt very similar the past 3 days. We got up around 8, and headed down to the expo for around 9. This morning we had a decision to make. Was there any reason for us to try and modify the bot in any way before the 4th and final live match went down? We argued for awhile about it, but eventually came down to a consensus. The bot wasn't going to chance much. We got the booth setup, and got to chat with a couple of media people who were shooting video for the discovery channel. They would do several interviews throughout the day, including the players IJay Palansky and Matt Hawrilenko. So before the match started, IJay went through a pre-game interview and then got sent up to the hotel room to start his half of the match around 11am.

At around 1pm, Matt arrived and he went through the same pre-game interviews before sitting down to take on the bot. It's interesting watching only half of a duplicate match -- there is so much luck to the cards that you really have to try and think about how the other player would have played against the bot on the other side of the cards to see whether you're getting more money or not.

To make a long story short, we won. We won by a large margin which is probably statistically significant. Our analysis tools say that Matt broke even with the bot and that IJay got crushed -- which wasn't so surprising to us since IJay said he was going to try and change his style. There are a limited number of poker players who can change their styles and still not be exploitable, and this was a case where the player couldn't do that.

So this was the year that Man fell to the machine in heads-up limit texas hold'em. No doubt there will be many who will want to challenge the bot now to see if they can beat it. But I guess I won't be with the group anymore to see those first hand.

The group of us packed up our stuff and got ready to celebrate. We had already purchased tickets to the Cirque Du Soleil show called O, but we had some time to kill before the 10:30 showing we had tickets for. We wandered over to the Bellagio with the aim of finding some dinner before the show and eventually found ourselves at a pretty fancy restaurant there called Senshi. The place was quite nice, and I was a bit amazed at how deep the restaurant went back. The place was quite a bit more pricey than places I'm used to, but it was a celebratory dinner! I had a glass of red wine with my meal of a huge hunk of new york style steak. The thing was massive ... like nearly 2 inches thick, and it was probably the best steak I've ever had.

After dinner, we went back to enter the Cirque theatre, and spread ourselves out across the theatre. We ordered tickets pretty late, so none of the 12 people in our party could sit together, but we still all got tickets! For those that don't know, the O Cirque show is their water one. The stage is a big pool of water, but the stage was *very* dynamic. They could raise the depth of the pool to very shallow or even make a floor overtop of the water. There was parts where only parts of the stage were a pool, but not others. It was fascinating just watching the stage change configurations throughout the show.

The Cirque performers were pretty incredible too. There were all manner of different tricks and feats of strength and flexibility they did throughout the show. There was probably too much going on for me to remember everything, but here's some highlights I found cool. To start the show, the curtains in front of the stage were whisked away in an incredibly entertaining fashion. I can't even really describe it except that it was awesome. Two trapeze artists shared the same trapeze for some pretty incredible moves (included one holding the other with just one arm). The three people-launching dive platforms that they used to send the Cirque divers high into the air and with little-to-no splash at the end. I wonder if this might be one place olympic divers go. A set of 4 creepily flexible women dressed in red formed all kinds of human pyramid type formations. Two people dressed in red were whisked around the stage by what looked like long strands of red fabric. They were flown up in the air and around the stage -- it was really fun to watch!

All in all, the show was pretty incredible. There sure is a lot to see though, and I'm pretty sure I missed some cool things. Between being pretty tired from the last 4 days of competition and lack of sleep, I found it a bit hard to follow everything at the late showing. Still, I think it was a fitting way to hang out. After the show was over we returned to the hotel where we ended up playing poker until something silly like 5 in the morning. This was just a fun game in one of the hotel rooms, but it ended up going pretty late.

I gotta run now to hang out with people, but I'll get myself caught up here soon!

Morgan

Day 4: A Win! and Fremont Street

Alright, so today is the last morning where I get up early after staying up until 2am (or later). It's been a rough few days staying up late to either work or enjoy something about Vegas so I'm starting to crash pretty hard. But! Today is the last match day, so adrenaline alone will probably keep me moving. Either that, or I'll fall asleep on my feet somewhere at random. That'll be fun! Alright, so yesterday started a lot like all our other days. We got up around 8, and got ourselves setup for the next match. This time around, we were playing Mark Newhouse and IJay Palansky. IJay got the hotel room gig so he was sent up there pretty early and got started while Mark would start a bit later on. We were getting old hands at this so the setup didn't take too long and soon we were up and running. The response to our booth has been pretty good. We haven't had too many watchers that just stand and watch all day, but that's understandable since no one really wants to stand all day. But there's been a lot of interest from a lot of different people.

So anyways, this session's cards were extremely tilted in favour of the downstairs seat for the humans. Mark got totally hit in the head with the deck. It was actually quite gross to watch. Mark kept hitting straights, flushes, full houses, two pairs ... all kinds of good luck. Fortunately for us, Polaris was getting those same cards upstairs ... and this time the swing went our way. We ended up 56 small bets and won the match to tie up the series 2-2-1. This sets up the stage to play the all important tie breaking match -- and we're doing it against Hoss_TBF ... one of the best in the world. This will be a fascinating match to watch. Stay tuned to the webpage for live updates!

After the match was over, we hung around and chatted with people until the expo closed at which point we needed to find some dinner. Eventually, after not successfully getting into the Japanese restaurant, we ended up at the "World Buffet". It was ... amazing. I've never seen so much variety of food in my life. You could get just about anything there ... and most of it was *very* good. The place was just enormous. The seating area alone took a couple of minutes to cross unless you were moving very fast, and the entire back wall was food. So I overate there -- there was so many different foods to try!

After dining, Darse, Alexandra, Diane, and I all headed downtown to check out old Las Vegas -- Fremont street. We took a cab down there and my first impression when I got out of the cab was "woah ... it's like day out here". It was brighter there than NYC's Times Square, and that's saying something. There was just a huge number of lights -- white, blue, red, orange, ... it was all very overwhelming. Fremont street is covered by a large ceiling which is covered in lightbulbs. Once an hour, they show a big lightshow with music which is pretty neat. We got there in time for the 11pm show and were treated to a pretty neat show with American Pie as the music. Pretty fun.

After the show, we wandered through Binions casino to see where the world series of poker started and then wandered into the Golden Nugget. It's neat that each casino we stopped at had a slightly different theme going. We stuck around to try and catch the midnight light show only to be very disappointed in the American pride show that ended up going through. So we kind of took off before that finished and found ourselves a little microbrewery in Four Queens casino to enjoy. I had a brown beer that was quite tasty, and Diane tried the rootbeer which was delicious.

We got back to the hotel pretty late to find several of the team members still up and discussing today's match. There's lots of stuff to think about going into the last match -- what's our strategy? So apparently we had missed some good discussion.

So that's yesterday's adventures. One last day to go of the expo and man-machine poker matches. It'll really be interesting to see how things go for us. I would very much like to beat up Hoss.

Morgan