What's an S-N-G?

The building next door to my office is being knocked down. Not imploded or anything, because that would be pretty hard to do without leveling a whole block here in congested downtown Beverly Hills. Rather, their process is more of the slow, painstaking wrecking ball variety. Every ten minutes or so, the floor in here vibrates much in the manner of an earthquake around a 4 pointer or so. The Big Man, true to form and consistent with the maturity level of your typical sicko rich guy mogul, actually made his assistant call the City of Beverly Hills to see if she could "make the noise stop." And when the city pretty much told the poor assistant to fuck off, The Man wouldn't stop at that. He had her get his lawyer on the phone. No word yet on if an injunction has been filed to stop the construction on the grounds that it is too annoying for one of Hollywood's Power 100 to possibly handle.

I've actually had to deal with work this week. There's shit to read and notes to write and research to do. I had a couple of drafts come in on the same day, so hopefully, this will be just one of those short bursts where I'm super-busy for a couple of weeks, and then I can go back to being my usual slacking poker-playing self. I've been playing a couple of SNGs each night, but that's all I can really get it up for right now.

Showcase, on the other hand, is doing quite the opposite. A few days ago, he got an email from Pokerroom (where he has a long-dormant account) saying we miss your business and we'd so like you to play again, and oh, here's a free ten bucks so you can get started but you have to accumulate 40 player points to cash out. Showcase loves nothing more than free money.

So he turned to me and asked quite innocently, " What's an S-N-G?"

Ahh sweet music to my addled ears! Even if he does call them S-N-Gs instead of SitnGos like us more seasoned degenerates.

Now Showcase only plays Limit Hold'em. Actually, he regularly destroys me heads-up. He's played the 3-6 at the Mirage and the 4-8 at Mandalay Bay and did OK. We even tried hitting Commerce a couple of times together, but his idea of a session is 3 hours and mine is about 8 so that never really worked. But he's never tried a SNG. Until now. We fired up Pokerroom and I showed him where the limit ones were, how to buy in, and told him to play super-tight until some donkeys knocked each other out. Then, if he felt stuck, I said I'd help him out.

Whatever. He didn't need my help. He came in 3rd in his first one and won the second! The only advice I needed to give him was to stay aggressive and play more hands when it got shorthanded. He's played six now and cashed in three. I think we have him hooked, people. Now we'll just have to see if he cashes out after hitting 40 points or comes back for more. I'd put money on the latter.

As I said to Rini, I'm 50% in for WPBT Imperial Palace. The only thing that could stop me is my company's holiday gala, which is sort of an un-missable thing, even if I'd rather swallow razor blades than attend. Things happen at this shindig. I was promoted at this shindig two years ago. And unfortunately, I still need a paycheck. I really hope it's not on the 10th.