Well… things have taken a turn. I had a pretty smooth five weeks and had no big downswings to speak of. Week Six has been different. I have 100 percent done my balls in the past three nights. On the wrong end of a lot of coolers and my timing is a bit off as a result. Part of me wants to take a day off and clear my head, but that isn’t an option with Black Belt London Live this weekend so I’m going to have to change approach tonight. My image is fairly cultivated so I figure I can try and grind a pretty low variance style and still get paid in spots so I’m going to resort to that. Fingers are crossed for some run good. My graph looks like it died.
 
On a plus side, really looking forward to the tournament this weekend. It’ll be nice to get back to playing live which I haven’t had the chance to do over the past few weeks. While I love the handiness of online poker, I just prefer live poker. I started playing live before making the transition to online, and the novelty value has not, and I hope never will, worn off. Field looks pretty tough as well, and the fact we start relatively deep means we get to have some good times and set up some fun plays. Pretty sure my girlfriend has forgotten what I look like over the past six weeks, so I think I will take a well deserved night off on Monday… maybe.

As the Grading draws to a close, I have to say what a valuable experience it's been. I've met a lot of nice people, and learned a lot about poker and myself. I think the workshops were really great, everybody was involved, and my only complaint would be there weren’t more, as I think they got better and better as the weeks wore on and we all got to know each other.

… I did it my way. :-)

I truly think I have been looking forward to this week more than Christmas or birthdays!

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.

Well, we are into the final week of Grading and this is my first ever blog.

Last week of Grading… Is it wrong that I do not want it to end? It has been fairly gruelling at times having to regiment hours, but it has been great to have something to help me focus on playing better and fixing my leaks. The workshops have without a shadow of doubt been the best part of the Grading process for me. There is very little I love more in the world than sitting down and talking about poker. A lot of emphasis is put on training videos, and books and magazines, but I genuinely believe there is no better learning tool than just discussing the game and breaking down hands.

Like many people, I love playing and watching a lot of different sports, with one of my favourites being golf. I’ve had golf on in the background on many Sundays whilst playing poker, and always enjoy seeing one of my favourite players in contention over the closing holes of a tournament. However, there is a single golf tournament that stands out for me by a long way and that is the Ryder Cup. This biannual tournament that pits Team Europe against Team USA over three days of golf is manna from heaven for me.

Ugggghhhhhh, it's been Black Wednesday for me. My fear before this week was to have a horrid day like today. I wasn't overconfident and was playing my normal game but somehow things just never seemed to fall my way, even the coin flips with the ‘$20 special’ players were going against me. I won't bore you with the bad beat stories or how I always seemed to get K-K when someone else had A-A, etc (OK, just slip that one in), but the end result is that I have basically done my bankroll. From being upbeat and confident 24 hours ago, I am staring at a definite possibility that I may not be able to complete this week’s Grading hours, let alone next week’s as well.  It's very depressing, but looking on the brighter side, I have a woman that loves me… and she might lend me some money :-). In all seriousness, I would never normally borrow to gamble, but knowing my bankroll was not really sufficient from the beginning, I have already borrowed to get this far.  

As we enter the final week of the Grading, thoughts turn to our lives beyond these six weeks. My Grading experience has been pretty torrid and has really tested my ability to conduct myself as a professional. Professionalism is a word not used enough in our industry, probably due in no small part to the number of 19 year-olds that have pulled ridiculous amounts of money out of the game in a such a tiny space of time. Bitter? Of course I am. But I genuinely think that anyone intending to make a 20 plus year run out of this cannot afford to ignore the concept.