Sit and Go, G Love, and Everything
After watching the movie Owning Mahoney last night, I understood how my recent run of luck at Sit and Go(SnG) poker had caused my bankroll to very quickly to diminish into nothingness. SnG method and strategy is quite simple, usually you start with 9 or 10 people(depending on where you play it), there is a 10% rake, and you play tournament style until one person has all of the chips. Usually the top 3 make the payout structure, with the winner taking most of the prize pool. The strategy that had worked for me until now was this: play ultra tight in the beginning, hope to catch a big hand and double up, and then loosen up towards the end. It works well and you can build winnings when you only play with 5-10% of your bankroll with each sit and go, but I had moved up to the higher stakes once my bankroll got bigger, and didn’t realize that once I had lost a few in a row(being a 20-1 favorite I might add), instead of knocking down the stakes I started playing even higher stakes, risking 20 even 30 or 40 percent of my roll. This mistake seems to be the downfall of any regular, or “addicted” gambler as some might put it: thinking you have the ability dig your way out with higher stakes.
The feeling of winning money never leaves you, and you want to feel it again, and increasing the bets is the only way to get back to where you’d been. The logic the gambler puts behind this is that, every bad run of luck there needs to be a good run, so you need to be playing at higher stakes when that good run hits. What the gambler fails to realize that in most games, in the long run you are going to lose. I have no experience in the matter, but I assume a hard drug addiction is much the same. Needless to say poker has taken a hiatus in my time slices. By the way, the movie is excellent, probably the best portrayal of an addicted gambler I’ve ever seen. Look for Phillip Seymour Hoffman to get the nod he deserved for this film this year with Capote.
On January 18th, blacjax and I had the pleasure of seeing G Love and Special Sauce at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach, California, which is about 20 miles north of San Diego on the coast. As always, G Love put on an awesome show, his mix of blues, hip hop, folk and funk are unique as well as easy on the ears. As a new twist to his band for this tour he added a second drummer. Bands with two drummers usually don’t do much for me as far as enhancing the musical experience, but it seemed to work well here. G busted out old favorites like I76, Cold Beverage, Baby’s Got Sauce, and i can’t go back to jersey, as well as some newer stuff off of The Hustle that I wasn’t that familiar with, Don’t Drop It seemed to be the best new song live that I heard. He also did a cover of a Bob Dylan song and a reggae jam with one of the drummers taking the role of lead singer. The band played 2 shows that night, 8pm and 10pm, both were sold out and the place was literally packed with people. The Belly Up is a decent venue to see a good band, it reminds me a lot of the 9:30 Club in DC, except cleaner and much nicer employees.