… I did it my way. :-)
Week Six is underway and a huge feeling of relief is running through my poker veins. The Grading has been an incredible process and I am extremely happy and proud to have been selected. In my mind, I have two cast-iron favourites without knowing their exact hours and profit; I feel they have done more than enough to be guaranteed a place in Dublin and a nice new Blue Belt. The third space is up between three to five people. I would like to think I am on the edges of that group, if they had a category for live winnings during the Grading, then I would be ordering my Guinness already, lol.
However, even with my two wins contributing greatly to my life and poker bankrolls, I have not managed to get the hours in at all the required stakes. It all looks pretty easy when you see it laid out in three or four paragraphs in the Grading page, but none of us can say we were not warned about how difficult it would be to get the required hours/stakes done.
Ironically, my best performance has been at $0.50/1 cash, although it is a much smaller sample size. STTs have been not as good as I would have liked or expected. I have learned a lot about bankroll management in both cash and tourney play. I hope to take this on board for further play on Black Belt Poker and, of course, my ‘spiritual home’, Full Tilt Poker. I have missed playing there these last six weeks, and given my preference for playing the night shift, iPoker just does not offer enough variety.
Black Belt Poker is one of the best places to play iPoker and I intend to hang around, especially for all the satellites into the land-based tourneys, I will see how many points I get out of the Grading and try to spin these up through tournament success. I may dip my toes into the shark pool of cash now and then. Good luck to all who make it their full time poker occupation.
London Live will be a fitting end to the Grading Process and a great boost to the Black Belt community, I am really looking to playing a deep stack tourney again after a couple of GUKPT Main Events in the last two years. There are going to be some juicy bounty prizes as well and it will be good to meet even more of the Black Belt community in the real world.
Time to zip up my latest series of hand history files and send them off for eventual analysis! Three more full days available to cram in as many hands as possible. I am playing London Live on Friday, and I hope to get through to Day Two, so there will not be too many hours left for Grading.
Three days to make up a lot of hands and a lot of losses, can it be done? Whatever happens, I will have done it My Way. :-)