Black Belt Poker Grading

On April 27th Neil Channing’s Black Belt Poker site launched. It aims to be the best place on the web for UK poker players to chat, talk strategy and eventually play once the poker site is made live soon. One of the main focuses of the site, though, will be its’ sponsored players.

On the same day the site launched, 50 of the UK’s top poker players including Sunny and Chaz Chattha started a gruelling four week grading process to earn some prestigious sponsorship from Black Belt Poker.

They will all have to play four tables for a minimum of six hours, five days a week. At the end of this process eight of the 50 will become the first Brown Belts and receive $ 20,000 in sponsorship at the WSOP and also receive $ 4,000 a worth of live tournament entries each month. Below them will be the Blue Belts who’ll receive $ 1,500 of live tournament entries each month. PokerPlayer’s own Nick Wright is amongst the graders and he caught up with four of them at their first weekly workshop.

Why did you decide to take part in the grading?

Neil Blatchly: The whole concept seemed really interesting and the idea of hopefully getting a decent sponsorship at the end of it from people like Nik and Neil who’re really into poker was appealing.

Stephen Hall: It’s an effort on my part to take things a lot more seriously, to meet more serious players and interact with them and really focus my thinking about the game.

James Keys: The discipline element was crucial for me, I probably put in about 10 hours a week on average. I thought it’d teach me to grind and treat it like a job.

Alex Martin: I thought it was a really good opportunity to get staked for live events, which is really hard to come across now. Black Belt Poker putting in the time to develop us as players was great. A secondary benefit is going to be able to interact with other great poker minds.

Do you play for a living currently?

Neil: Poker isn’t my primary source of income, I trade sports betting on Betfair and then play poker also.

Stephen: I kinda do, I don’t really consider myself a professional poker player, but it is currently my main source of income.

Alex: Yes.

James: Well, I don’t do anything else!

What are your plans for completing the gruelling grading?

Neil: It’s going to be a complete change for me, I’m not an online player at all. I mainly play live. I find playing online a bit like playing blind, there’s so much information you don’t have.

Stephen: It’s going to be a bit of a stretch. Sometimes I’ll put in 30 hours a week but I wouldn’t say I regularly do. The incentive and motivation is there though.

Alex: I usually put in about 35 hours a week, but six hours a day for five days a week is a huge ask. I’ll usually play when I want to so if I want to play golf or something one day I do. Having to play six hours a day is harsh. 50NL (the limit where graders play for weeks one and two) is not a walk in the park anymore; there are players who play that limit for a living.

James: I’m going to go for the brute force approach and play as many hands as I can to even out the variance and get a reliable positive figure to show Neil and Nik that I’m a consistent winner over a big sample.

How well do you think you can do?

Neil: Who knows! If I didn’t think I could do it [get Brown Belt] I wouldn’t be here. But looking around there are some really good players in the 50. There are numerous live tournament winners here and there are a lot of people I don’t recognise who are probably young internet gurus. So it’ll be incredibly tough.

Stephen: Obviously there’s a lot of good players. The interesting thing about this kind of project is that you get to know how much everyone else knows a bit better and what level of understanding is needed to be a ‘good’ player. Given the number of good players here my expectations aren’t that high. If I got blue belt at the end of it I’d be happy.

Alex: It wouldn’t be worth my time to play six hours a day for four weeks if I was shooting for blue belt, I want Brown Belt.

James: Blue belt would be a let down and disappointment, not a surprise but still a disappointment.

Who do you think has got a really good shot?

Neil: Personally I’d be amazed if Sunny Chattha doesn’t get Brown Belt, I see him as one of the best talents in the country. I think he’s a great player. I think they’ll be some surprises though.

James: I think Alex has a great chance and I also like Jerome Bradpiece’s chances.

Alex: There’s a guy called Sida, who most people probably don’t know, but he’s an online sicko and he really knows his stuff.

Do you think the grading is a fair process?

Neil: I think the grading process is fair even if you can argue that the sample is small. But it does give the people without a track record a chance to impress. There’s a number of criteria we’re going to be judged on it’s not all about results.

Stephen: I think it’s a fair process and it’s a big enough sample where Neil (Channing) and Nik (Persaud) can make reasonable judgements after the four weeks. It’s as fair as you’re going to get.

Alex: If you spoke to anyone who knows anything about poker, tournament specialists don’t know shit compared to cash players, it’s just a fact. I’d back a solid winner at $ 100 no-limit cash to out perform a multi-table tournament specialist in tournaments.

James: I’d agree with Alex that cash tests a players true skills as you’re usually playing at least 100 big blinds deep so you’ve to be right more often to show a profit. The
ratio of good to bad decisions has to be high.

Nick Wright will be keeping an eye on how the graders get on and also updating us on his own progress in the weeks to come.