TWTGTW? Not one of the latest Poker Tracker stats, but older readers may know what I am on about…
‘That Was The Grading That Was’
And what a Grading it was: six weeks of brutal, intense, close scrutiny of our poker playing credentials. Not a walk in the park by any means, and the three successful ‘winners’ will have earned their prizes.
My Grading ran out of steam towards the end of Week Five / beginning of Week Six. I had reloaded once, held it together for a while and then it just slipped away. At our last workshop Neil had reminded us that he did not want any of us to go busto, there is always time to work up the levels and, of course, there will almost certainly be another Grading at some stage.
My journey on this incredible process only began when I was ‘lucky’ to go eight hours deep into a Full Tilt MTT, $9,000 for first. I was ecstatic with $2,000 for fifth. I reloaded into Black Belt Poker, had a stunningly successful run at STTs during the ‘Pre-Grading Selection’ and was up $700 to $800. This gave me a seat in the Dublin Two-O and off we went.
I tried to focus on STTs as I still feel this is by far my best chance at long term success, however, the ‘rules’, which were fair as the Grading had to be on a level playing field, were single table STTs only. On iPoker, there are some really good two or three table STTs and some good Double Stacks, but these do not fill up as fast. Also, the increase to $30 and even $50 stakes towards the end of the Grading was tough to keep the hours up.
Cash for me is a love/hate thing! I love playing it, but suck at the lower levels. Ironically I am much more successful at $0.50/1 and live I can play pretty well at £1/1 or £1/2.
If I had played cash from the start I would have made the hours, and would have gained a Green Belt, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. I will be more than happy with a stack load of points for the weeks that I did complete.
Many other Graders have put into words all the things I would have written, so I will keep this short and finish by saying THANK YOU to the Black Belt Poker team for choosing me to take part. A very big thanks to all the great people I have met during the Grading, I have learned so much off you all, I could never repay you, it has been priceless. Good Luck to all of you still in with a shout of the 3three Irish Open / Blue Belt packages.
As you may have gathered, I am pretty confident in my live tournament play, and over the next months/years I will certainly be using all the knowledge I have gained here, I have consistently said over the years there is a ‘big one’ waiting for me just around the corner... the cashes/wins have been getting bigger and more frequent and if, or when, I take one down the first people, I will thank will be Black Belt. However Bad Beat will also be up there.
The End… but also The Beginning :-)