So, that’s it, all done. The last hands have been played and all of my hand histories have been zipped up and are winging their way to Black Belt HQ.
I played Day 1A of London Live on Friday and really enjoyed it. The structure was excellent, giving you plenty of play for your money. I busted towards the end of the day. Pocket kings have been my version of kryptonite over the Grading period, so it was no surprise that they played a part in my demise. Midway through the day I managed to have them cracked by an opponent, who I got to commit 25 percent of his chips preflop with pocket twos only to flop a set. Later in the day I ended up pot committed with them against suited connectors that had turned a flush, and missed my 11 outs on the river. What a pair of bloody cowboys, the cards that is.
I thought I’d provide a final summary of my Grading results but rather than just detailing hands/hours/profit, I thought it would be more interesting (hopefully) to give an insight into how my Grading process went by providing details of some of the more obscure stats. For anyone considering signing up for the next Grading process, this will give you an idea of some of the challenges you might face. So here’s my Grading by numbers. Some of the numbers are accurate, some less so.
0 - Number of runner-runner hands that I won during the Grading.
1 – Mice broken. Sadly, not a random act of violence, the left mouse button stopped working during a session whilst 6 tabling. How I laughed as I started timing out on all the tables.
1 – Royal Flush. Only made a small profit from it. Click to view the hand
1 – Times I lost to a rivered set. I’d flopped a set and had built the pot up enough so I could shove the river…. which I did, straight into his rivered two-outer, zero percent unlucky according to my EV line.
2 – Times I had to play a session with a hangover from the night before. Never a good idea.
3 – Dreams about poker, all of them were winning sessions. I run good nocturnally.
4 – Number of times I wondered if the Random Number Generator was deliberately set up to shaft me.
5 – Times I successfully got people to call when I made a big overbet on the river.
6 – How many times I ran pocket kings into pocket aces. If anyone has outperformed me on this ‘achievement’ please let me know. For now, I’m claiming this as a Grading record until informed otherwise.
8 – Highest number of tables played at once.
17 – Number of times I wished bad things on a loose aggro regular.
21 – The 21st Feb was my biggest losing day.
22 – The 22nd Feb was my biggest winning day.
29 – Moments of irrational hatred for Scandinavian players.
93 – Amount in percentage of equity I had in the hand that tilted me the most during the Grading. Click to view the hand.
114 – Miles ran during the Grading. 10 weeks to go until the marathon.
118 – Profit in big blinds from my favourite hand during the Grading. I’d got the opponent pegged as a maniac. Click to view the hand.
191 – Number of big blinds I lost in my biggest losing hand.
223 – Most amount of big blinds won in a single hand. Here it is: Click to view the hand.
372 – Expletives uttered during the grinding at the tables. Less than a swear word every table hour, not bad, my mother would be proud
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2453 – Most hands played in a day.
42,067 – Total hands of cash played.
418,077 - This the number of hands you should typically face in six-handed poker before you flop the ace high flush, only to find someone has flopped a straight flush. I had to wait until my last session before running into this: Click to view the hand.
So that’s the end of Grading and my Grading blog. I’ve a number of tasks to get through over the next few days that have built up over the Grading process. Tuesday is my birthday, so I’ll probably be taking an overdue day off from poker. On the 24th March I’m flying to Las Vegas for a few nights. As a break from grinding the online tables, I’m off to hit some live tables. I guess some people might refer to that as having somewhat of a poker habit.
The 24th March is also the day that the decision on the belts is being made, so I guess it seems fitting that I’ll be in the home of poker when I find out the news. Either way I’m more buoyant about poker and what role in my future it will play than I have been in a long time, so I’d like to thank the Black Belt Poker team and the other Graders for that. Pocket aces and not kings to you all.