The final week of Grading is upon us and due to London Live this weekend, and a trip to Dublin tomorrow, I only have two more evenings to complete the required hours. Luckily, I’ve only about 30 more hours to go so this shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
At the time of writing my last blog, I’d just busted from the Main Event of the Manchester UKIPT. After regrouping myself I headed off to play the £330 side event which ended up with a sixth place finish and a nice profitable weekend. Would have been nice to get a decent score but I blew it with a badly timed three-bet with the mighty 7-3 off-suit at the start of the final table.
A non-Grading good run continued a week later when I managed to luckbox an Irish Open package when I decided to take a night off from cash to return to the MTTs which I was beginning to miss a bit. Obviously it’s nice to have the package in the bag so that it takes some of the pressure off for the rest of the Grading but I was still determined to give Blue Belt my best shot so decided to finish the six weeks regardless. Black Belt have been kind enough to let me take the equivalent of the Irish Open package in points should I become one of the lucky three and as that would put me within touching distance of obtaining a Brown Belt, it’s a huge incentive.
Unfortunately, the Grading hasn’t been going as well. After a promising first two weeks, I hit a large downswing at the start of Week Three which I couldn’t turn round no matter how hard I tried. This continued for the best part of three weeks before my profit line eventually stopped its rapid southward decline. It’s been pretty swingy since then but I do think my cash game has improved considerably during the first five weeks, I’ve been particularly pleased by this as if I did ever decide to make the transition to playing full-time I’d probably want to devote at least some of my time to grinding cash due to the high variance in MTTs.
London Live is coming up this weekend and coming home $25,000 better off sure would a great way to finish off this six-week adventure! I think the majority of the Graders are going to be playing so it’ll be good to have everyone back together one final time before we head off on our separate journeys.