A pen name and a painted character
Nadia Brandt is a pen name: the name the Calgary Casino Field Guide is written under. The guide is independent and covers nine casinos in and around Calgary, out to Kananaskis, for people who prefer to visit in daylight. It is not a casino. It takes no bets, holds no accounts and publishes no ratings.
The woman in the paintings on this site is a character made for the guide. The pictures of her are AI-generated illustrations, not portraits of a real person. Nadia writes and checks every note on the site.
What she does in the pictures
In the pictures she has a job on every page. She points the way rather than telling a story.
- On each field note, she holds a sign with one fact about that venue, such as how far it is from downtown Calgary or when its doors open.
- On the home page, she points at the transit list and at the visit-limit tool.
- On the Without a car page, she points at the transit table.
Each picture carries a fact, never a verdict.
How the hours are checked
Each field note starts with the venue's own website: its hours, gaming, dining and contact pages. That is where the opening times in these notes are taken from.
The open or closed marker on the home page is calculated from each venue's published hours, read in Mountain time. It is a calculation, not a live feed, and it does not reflect holiday closures. Around a statutory holiday, the venue's own site is the one to trust.
The facts on the site were last checked in October 2026. The morning hours page sets the times side by side.
How places and distances are checked
Addresses, gaming and dining details come from each venue's own pages. For rules across the province, the guide turns to official bodies: AGLC for regulation, age and casino rules, and Calgary Transit for transit.
Distances are straight lines from the neighbourhood the reader picks, measured across the map, not along a route. A road or a footpath will not follow that line.
When two sources give different values, the guide does not choose between them. It leaves the number out, or says that the venue publishes the figure and points to the official site. The field method page sets this out in full.
What the notes leave out
The guide works only from published records. It has not visited the venues, telephoned them, interviewed staff or tested anything. These are notes taken from the record, not from the floor.
Where sources disagree, the figure is left out rather than guessed. A missing count or time is a deliberate gap, not an oversight.
There is no mailbox. If something here does not match a venue's own site, follow the venue's site. More on the guide itself is in about this guide, and the venues are gathered in the field notes.