Getting Ranked

Pud's Poker Progress / Matthew Pitt / 24 May 2011 / 2

When I first started playing poker and I discovered the PocketFives rankings I had dreams and aspirations of logging on and finding myself sat on or near the top of them. I guess I wanted to be regarded as one of the best online poker tournament players in the world but then a few things happened.

The first was that I was not good enough. As simple as that. I still aren't good enough to be ranked amongst the world's best, absolutely nowhere near. The second was that although I wanted to find myself high up in the rankings I never put in enough volume in qualifying tournaments to ever receive any points. A check of my results shows that since 2007 I have only played in 111 tournaments that were not MTTSNG, which equates to an average of half a tournament per week!

After reading The Mental Game of Poker a couple of times something really struck a chord with me and that was co-author Barry Carter's story. I won't relay it word for word but he discusses when he first spoke to Jared Tendler and was asked what his image of a winning poker player was and Barry says that the image he thinks of is a poker player sat behind a huge pile of chips, proudly showing off their winning hand having won a major tournament. But the problem was that Barry was not playing in many tournaments so how could he ever become, in his own eyes, a winning poker player.

When I read that I was thought they had got into my own mind and were writing about me. I think it is a common problem with poker players who work in the media because most of their time is spent writing about players winning major tournaments and reporting live on the various tours around the world. Behind every poker writer and blogger is a frustrated poker player, trust me on that one. Working on the three EPT Main Events has made me want to play in some major live events but even if I won a satellite into one of them I would almost certainly be eaten alive due to my lack of experience in MTTs.

There have been other factors that have come into play regarding why I have essentially stood still for so long including the fact I was basically nuts for a while and was drinking heavily but now everything seems in place for giving tournament poker a proper shot. My life is much more stable in terms of my mentality and finances and now the kids are of an age where they go to bed and stay there until morning, meaning I wouldn't have any distractions on that front. And I have cut down on drinking a lot, mainly because I am trying to lose weight (I've dropped 6.75lbs in two weeks) and alcohol is just empty calories so I don't really have an excuse not to play tournaments.

Looking at my PocketFives profile reveals that the total tracked money that I have won is $962.07, my largest cash is for $477.50 back in March 2010 and my most recent cash was for $49.35 in July 2010. This places me a very disappointing 36 out of 38 of Leeds-based PocketFives members and a woeful 1,544 from 1,625 UK-based players. My goal is to try an move up the rankings during the rest of the year. I'm aiming to move up to the top 20 in Leeds players and the top 1,000 in UK players and whatever happens from there only time will tell. Whilst many will be thinking this is just another one of Pud's phases I can assure you that it is not and from now until the New year at least you will find me grinding out a number of MTTs in an attempt to push my sorry-ass figures up the rankings.

As always, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables.

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(2)

Anonymous | 25 May 2011

It's all about volume. Some of the players who are ranked don't even make money.
Kev | 05 June 2011

Good luck Sir, its good to have non-monetary goals.