In early November, a golden envelope covered in glitter and sparkles dropped through the letterbox with my name on it. This doesn’t usually happen. Immediately, I thought I’d done it – I’d finally got an invite to look around Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory! When I opened it I was initially a little disappointed that no chocolate was inside but instead UK’s poker own Wonka-like figure Neil Channing was inviting me to a mysterious night out at the Ritz Hotel to discuss Black Belt Poker.
As I used to work on PokerPlayer magazine for a few years I know Neil a little from various interviews and chats at live events. Having interviewed most of the big-name pros in the world he’s definitely a favourite, the highlight being when he described how he pulled off a big bluff at the WSOP because he was eating sushi at the time and suspected his opponent would believe him due to the stress of breaking away from tending to his Japanese lunch. However, I hadn’t really seen Neil since I’d left PokerPlayer to play cash games professionally online just over a year ago so I was surprised, and honoured, to be one of a group of 50 young UK pros that Black Belt announced they’d like to sponsor throughout 2012 if we put in the hours to become Blue Belt by January 1, 2012.
The night at the Ritz was great. I’d never been inside the grand palace before and it was quite the spectacle. Ginormous priceless artwork covered every wall, London’s posh set enjoyed £70 cream teas and a throng of Americans were attempting to take photos inconspicuously. Finally, in a separate room around the corner was a worldwide first: a large group of online poker players dressed respectably in a suit and tie. Though I don’t play much on the live circuit yet I recognised quite a few faces such as Sam Grafton, Sam MacDonald, Rob Angood and all of the current Blue Belts like Jamie Burland and Kevin Williams.
Channing and Warren Wooldridge gave a presentation on the benefits of being a sponsored Blue Belt to us all and I was left feeling it was just the sort of fresh start and challenge that I wanted. My first full year playing online has been pretty good – I play anywhere from $1/2 up to $5/10 on PKR - but I was in the middle of my first major downswing and was struggling to find motivation. Despite never getting involved, I’d always been a fan of the community aspect of Black Belt Poker and knew this was something I could really benefit from.
I’ve made my own way in poker without much help from friends at all – none of my ‘real life’ friends really play or understand poker. It’s always been something that I’ve wanted to address as I know that probably the fastest, most effective way to get better at the game is just through talking about it with players that are on your level or, ideally, better than you. Joining a ‘team’ as such like Black Belt is perfect on that front. Also, I play a lot less live poker than I’d like to. Unlike most online grinders I actually enjoy playing live and think I may be a better live player than online (as much as I’d love that to be reversed!) so the opportunity to play in a ton of live MTTs next year is great. From my limited experience I’ve already had some relative success, and a few close calls, so I’m confident I’ll be able to do well in 2012. Also, the amazing Ritz canapés and constant supply of pricey wine helped convince me Black Belt was worth a shot too.
After about 5 weeks of solid 12-table grinding, I’m nearly 75% of the way to becoming a Blue Belt so should reach it just in time for Christmas, which would be a nice present. I started out playing $1/2 but hadn’t foreseen how differently the games would play on iPoker to my usual site and I got absolutely clobbered for a week before I started to adjust. Day after day I would lose four or five buy-ins and have no idea why. It took me about $3,000 to realise that the games were just so much tighter preflop than what I was used to. In the PKR mid-stakes games it’s quite normal to be five-bet jamming 9-9+ and A-Q, and for it to be pretty +EV. On iPoker though I was just running into A-A and K-K literally every time. As I’m a little slow on the uptake sometimes it took me a while to work out that some players literally don’t have a jamming range outside of these two hands. I feel like I’ve finally adjusted pretty good now and am having some consistently good sessions playing $100NL at the moment.
I wrote out a small list of poker goals at the start of the year that I really wanted to achieve. I made them quite ambitious on purpose so I may not have achieved them all but if you achieve all of your goals then what more do you have to strive for, so I’m not disheartened at all. Here they are and how I got on;
1. $80,000 total profit including bonuses, etc
I started 2011 just playing $1/2, so this was definitely the most ambitious target of all. At one point in September it looked like I would have a decent shot at making it but then I went on a $10,000 downswing unfortunately. Still, it was a decent year and I ended up making around $53,000 excluding all my part-time journalism work.
2. Stop being so nitty with bankroll management
I used to play $1/2 off a $20,000 bankroll which was pretty ridiculous in hindsight. I’ve definitely took some decent strides in moving up to higher stakes this year, playing 100,000 hands of $400NL and 5,000 at $1,000NL. Happy with this one.
3. Play 500,000 hands online
Completed this one pretty soundly, and am up to about 620,000 hands so far for the year.
4. Play the WSOP Main Event
This didn’t happen. There’s always next year….