Bloggers / Dave Allan / 18 May 2009 / Leave a comment

It's Week Three in the Black Belt Poker Grading and we are once again delighted to welcome back popular blogger Steve Holden to the Betfair Poker Blogs.

This week the stakes are up to $0.50/$1 NLHE 6max/HU, PLO or $30+3 minimum STTs. Before the week starts I'm already down £324 from Weeks One and Two and need to get into the black.

Stevie Wonder could do better than this if he was to play Phil "The Power" Taylor at darts. Another 7 hours completed and I've dropped £526 into the black hole today.

Monday

So we're now at the halfway stage and I'm desperate to get myself into a winning run. So many bad beats, suckouts and bad play on my side as well as some of the muppets I been up against.

After a good nights sleep I am feeling awake and quite confident although my confidence is shattered when I'm down £90 after 2 hours, after 4 hours I'm down by £165 and at the end of the day my funds have decreased to the tune of £274.

Tuesday

I do the early session today as I promised Andrea that I would go to Bridgnorth tonight and rail her in the last live sat for the Womens World Open to be filmed next week in London. I get the graveyard shift in from 1am to 7am with this session turning out to be a decent session, as there seemed to be other graders playing in most of the games that I logged onto. Six-hour session and a profit of £85 cheers me up. Andrea finishes 7th down at Bridgnorth and I obviously have to pick her spirits up on the drive home.

Wednesday

I do a 6 hour session, I'm trying to find tables where the other graders are registered as I think these tables are offering a lot more play and some sensible poker being played although tables in the middle of night are hard to come by anyway. £10 down for the day. Workshop in London tomorrow so looking forward to that.

Thursday

After having a crap night's sleep, think I'm coming down with something - I oversleep and am playing catch up before I even leave the house. At one point I'm even thinking of calling Neil Channing to say I feel like shit and can't make it but knew this would be looked upon with some scepticism. I finally leave the house for 9.30am getting to the Loose Cannon for around 12.30 the place was quite busy with graders already there although you could see by the numbers that there wasn't 40 of us graders left.

Jen Mason sent us an email on Tuesday with this weeks agenda:

1pm Introduction by Neil Channing featuring Blue Belt information, Q&A

1:30pm Brief presentations by selected Graders (Nik will have been in contact if you're one of those)

2:30pm Break

2:50pm AA meeting: "What did I learn most about poker and myself in the last week?"

3:10pm: Review of Pokerstars/PokerXFactor tournament (dependant on availability by Thursday) or TV hand discussion

4:10pm: Break

4:30pm: Guest speaker: The WSOP, Q&A

5:30pm: Break

5:50pm: Small group hand discussion - if possible of buddy pairs' reviewed hands

6:45pm: Any other business
However, like all best laid plans and all that, they didn't go to plan.

Three graders phoned in at the last minute to say that they wouldn't be attending and had quit. One of these was due to be giving a presentation so because of the lateness of him dropping out it throws the schedule out for the day.

We finally get going around 1.30 with the floor being handed over to James Keys around 2.40pm, James presentation was a simplified version of a holdem HUD that was covered in week one by Mark McCluskey. James was obviously nervous and this was obvious in his opening speech although this seemed to disappear after about ten minutes and James became more confident as the time went on and got deeper into his presentation.

The AA meeting went on later than scheduled and "What did I learn most about poker and myself in the last week?" the mic came round to me and I said that I had learnt that updaters were under appreciated, this was something I had discovered after updating the Womens open from Bridgnorth earlier in the week.

The review of the private graders game that took place on the Sunday night with Ben Vinson winning was due to be viewed by us all with all the hole cards showing but PokerXfactor needed more time to do the project and this should be ready for next week.

The Guest speaker for the WSOP didn't show and we done some hand discussion as a group.
Nik then played against Neil on Full Tilt for around half an hour heads up with some of the graders then taking over.

The meeting today seemed to be all over the place and the fact that 3 people didn't show seemed to throw everything else out, the 20 minute breaks turned out to be 60 minute breaks.

I finally got away from the Loose Cannon at 9pm after sitting down with Nik to get an assessment from him. Cannon Street closes at 9pm so had to find another tube station, getting back to Stanmore for around 10.30pm and home for about 1am.

It seemed that we were stood around for long periods today and I'm not sure that I actually gained anything from today's workshop which is a shame as the workshop was intended initially to be an exchange of information day.

I'm sure this is a massive learning curve not just for the graders but for Nik and Neil as well and these hiccups will forge the blueprint of future gradings.

Let's hope that next week's workshop goes to plan as it's the last one.

We learnt today that we are now a group of 36.

Friday

Concentrating on STT's I fire out a 6hr session again targeting tables with other graders and I finish this session £36+

Saturday

Having decided that I will have this as a day off, I do some work on my Betfair project and I also update my blog. I then tell the missus that she's got my attention for the rest of the day. We head into Birmingham and catch the new Star Trek movie at the IMAX cinema. We then played the Broadway casino in the evening after having a lovely meal in their restaurant.

Sunday

I have one of the worst starts ever and am getting beaten up all over the place, 2 outers, runner/runner you name it I'm getting it all against me. Three hours deep and I'm down £255 so far so decide on a break. I then go back on after a while doing another 60 minutes and leaking another £95. I'm on tilt and need some dinner. I fire back up for another couple of hours and things go from bad to worse. Stevie Wonder could do better than this if he was to play Phil "The Power" Taylor at darts. Another 7 hours completed and I've dropped £526 into the black hole today.

Black Belt Poker Week One -£190
Black Belt Poker Week Two -£134
Black Belt Poker Week Three -£689

Total -£1013

Further Reading

Visit Black Belt Poker
Steve Holden's Blog