Black Belt Poker

[DonkBox]

Not sure how many of you have seen/are aware of this, but Neil Channing launched his new site blackbeltpoker.com yesterday. It's aim is to be the best place to hang out for UK poker on the web. It's got a social networking side to it (v.similar to facebook) it's got articles, blogs and i believe they'll be a forum in the future.

Also there's currently 49 top players + me going through an intensive grading process in order to win some sponsorship packages. Basically for four weeks we've got to put in a minimum of six hours a day, five days a week, playing a minimum of four tables! You can play cash or sit and gos, with the minimum level rising each week.

So week 1: 25c/50c or $10+$1 stt minimum
Week 2: 25c/50c or $20+2 stt min
Week 3: $50c/$1 or $30+$3 min
Week 4: $1/$2 or $50+$5 min

The grading started on Monday and is taking place on BoylesPoker (ipoker network) I'm obv taking the stt route - my username is durrrrballs if you want to scope me. It's going ok so far but only played 110 games. The iPoker software is tilting me (luckily the players are tez) you have no timebank, can't cascade/re-size and most annoyingly of all when multi-tabling you can't choose which seat you sit in which is really annoying when you just want to glance from table to table.

There are some really well known players doing this (see the site for full list) some of you will know James Atkin who's also taking part, but the list goes on: Sunny Chattha, Mickey Wernick, Jerome Bradpiece, Chaz Chattha, Ben Vinson, Alex Martin, Tony Phillips, Dave Penly etc etc In short FML.

And it's no wonder there's so many top names as the prizes are pretty epic:

8/50 will become Brown Belts, they get: $4,000 of sponsorship to live events every month + $20,000 package to WSOP incl Main Event Entry

Up to 15/50 get Blue Belt Status, they get $1,500 of sponsorhip to live events every month

The rest: Green Belts, they get to skip about 3 levels of belts and are in poll position to move up to Blue Belt status.

It's not just a steady profit they're looking for, but also teh willingness to contribute to the site through articles, coaching, getting involved with the media (finally an edge!) and so on.

Frankly it's an honour to be in the 50 and i'll give it my best shot, if i get anywhere near blue belt though it means someone messed up bad.

I'll update my progress (like i'll have time with a full time job/6hrs playing a day) here and also on my blog - Nick Wright | On The Rail

Bring on the grind.

[PokerWoody]

good luck...I wish I had the time to play mad amount of pokers! Can I have your job pls?

[TomPich]

Best of luck Buddy

[TankmanDan]

Good luck Nick, You could be the next DeWolfe!

Only shorter obv.

[jingjangjong]

read about bbp in a poker mag souns like a very good thing imo.

[TylerStroud]

Looks and sounds like a cool idea and Ill 2nd what Dan said. Channing is a great guy.

[jingjangjong]

Ive signed up to bbp. Iain Wilson if anyone wants to add me to buddies.

[Barnfather]

Always been a big Channing fan - hope this venture works out for him. Will now have a gander at the site...

[DonkBox]

The story so far...
$212 up over 164 donk and gos, roi% of 6.98%. Have played about 6000 hands over the last two days, to put that in perspective i think i've played about 10k hands total on Full Tilt this month as a whole.

Now the more intersting stuff. We had a workshop day yesterday and one part of it was for everyone to stand up and introduce themselves and say what there most reliable live tell was.

[x] Sure didn't record this on my dictaphone
[x] Sure won't be reversing these tells on them in the future

The funniest one was Woody Deck, who said that overweight people had less self esteem and were more likely to be bluffing as they had less respect for themselves, whilst gingers were more self-concious and always have it - 'i've never been bluffed by a ginger,' said Woody!

There was also a really interesting presentation by Mark McCluskey on tracking software. Now i use Hold'em Manager but i haven't customised it in any way - HUD or otherwise - i just fire it up and let it do it's stuff and teh HUD alone has definitely won me more moeny than it cost in the short time <1 month that i've been using it.

What i didn't know was that there's also software such as spade eye, spade it that can datamine tables for you when you're not playing so you can have 1000s of hands on people you've never played a single hand against. Also there's some really cool table selection software which can tell you (through your HEM database) which tables are fishiest and so on.
There was one othere aspect that there are sites where you can bulk buy hand histories at a price - something like $30 for 1 million hands. Now this and datamining is prohibited by PokerStars and some other sites, but allowed on Ipoker, Full Tilt etc. Opinion in the group was split between those that thought it was ok to use tracking software and have stats on those hands when you've been at the table, but it was morally wrong to datamine + buy HHs of players you've never played against and those who's view was 'if others are doing it, i should be able to as well so to create a level playing field.'

What do you guys think?

[Wakou]

I just wonder why with all the money he's cashed recently he does not go to specsaver's and get some glasses that fit his head and suit him