Neil Channing Interview

Here in the UK there is one player whom everyone knows, whether it’s from playing live, listening to his commentary or watching him play on the TV.

We are talking of course about Neil Channing, a household name and really nice guy. An ambassador of the game and possibly the hardest working UK poker player with vast experience we met.

We caught up with Neil and asked a few questions that you may find interesting.

Uk Poker Player: For those who don’t know about Black Belt Poker can you give a quick explanation for our readers?

Neil: Black Belt Poker is a social networking site for poker players. It contains blogs, from some high profile poker personalities, interviews with some of the biggest names in the game, some excellent strategy articles and lots of video features.

Black Belt Poker has a poker room which is an iPoker skin and players who play there are rewarded with Belt Points. As people achieve more Belt Points thay can gradually get promoted up the levels from White Belt to Black Belt. As a Blue Belt or higher players are rewarded with generous sponsorship packages. Blue Belts gat $1500 a month to use playing live tournaments, Brown belts $4000 a month and Black Belts an amazing $10,000 a month so they can play EPTs, the WSOP main event, all the big TV tournaments, whatever they want.

Players who don’t quite reach those heady heights can still benefit. At each belt level players are rewarded with freerolls, video training, live training in the form of bootcamps and mentoring. The players who are below Blue Belt have the opportunity to be trained by those who are above that level and those who are our professionals have the chance to be paid as trainers

We hope to build a community of players who can all improve together and we’re prepared to gamble by backing our players. Don’t bother asking us about rakeback, sign-up bonuses or trying to compare our package dollar for dollar with other sites. That’s not what we’re about. There are plenty of other places that offer these things. Go to them. We want to find people who wish to improve and make more money by becoming better poker players. We then want to gamble on those people.

UK Poker Player: Does the work load you have now mean you sometimes struggle to play the cash games which you are best known for?

Neil: I really am struggling to play as much poker as I would like to. Three years ago I would probably do six ten hour sessions in a week in the Vic playing cash games. I would interupt that schedule maybe four times a year to go away and play tournaments, including spending seven weeks a year in Vegas. After the Irish Open win I stopped playing lower than £5/£10 and so I went down to playing around four days a week, as I could make he same money with less time. These days I’m down to about two sessions a week and sometimes less.

I wish I could play more, I still love playing and I miss it when I have a whole week off. Although the attention is fun, and I always try and make time to speak to people who stop me for a chat in the Vic, there are definitely days when I just want to sit down and play for eight hours and lose myself in the game.

It can be hard when I have four consecutive losing sessions now because they could be spread over three weeks. I never used to have losing runs that ran on more than a week before, but now they can stretch for a whole month. It’s certainly quite a mental challenge. I haven’t quite got used to it yet and I’m hoping I’ll handle it better next year. I’m worried it can make me a bit moany and moody.

UK Poker Player: What is your most memorable poker moment as a player?

Neil: The moment that the queen came down on the river for James Akenhead to hit his KQ and double up at the WSOP Main Event final table was probably the most exciting moment I’ve experienced in poker. I can think of hundreds of other memorable ones but this one was the most exciting.

UK Poker Player: If you could share one piece of advance to beginners what would it be?

Neil: My one piece of advice for beginners is don’t tilt and be aware of your table image. If you’ve just lost a pot then people will probably be looking to call you lighter – It’s probably a time to tighten up. If you’re playing solid and winning and people think of you as tight, that’s a good time to open up and play a little looser.

I like to extend my sessions when winning and play shorter sessions when losing. When you can feel yourself tilting you should switch to total rock mode.

UK Poker Player: Do you think that UK poker player numbers are still on the increase or is the boom we have all experience in the past few Years beginning to slow down?

Neil: In the UK things are totally different than the US where numbers are down in live tournaments, particularly the WPT and the Bellagio side events. We are seeing numbers down in the GUKPT but not significantly, and mostly the downturn can be put down to the economic situation and not due to a decrease in interest in poker.

In the Vic the tournaments are just as busy as ever. I’m encouraged to look around there on a Friday night and see the £30 beginners tournament sold out and the £1/£2 cash lists full of new names.

UK Poker Player: Which is better and why, WSOP or WSOPE?

Neil: The WSOP is WAY better than the WSOPE. The WSOP is something I look forward to all year, the winner gets notoriety, massive sponsorship deals and an enormous sum of money.Peope talk about the tournament for years afterwards. I can’t even remember who won the WSOPE Main Event in 2008 and I just had to check and found it was John Juanda.

As well as being historically more significant to me and a huge part of my life for the twelve years since I first went to the Series, THE main event is also so much better value. The enormous number of internet qualifiers and the great structure makes the Vegas version easily the best of the year.

In London it’s a tournament full of pros, I haven’t looked forward to it all year, it comes in a month when there’s so much other poker to be played, it’s not brilliantly organised and it’s in a casino that I don’t have an enormous affection for. I wouldn’t move it from London though. They just need tomove it to a ballroom of one of the Park Lane hotels and get a new sponsor who can actually provide some satellite winners. They may want to also drop the buy-in to £5000.

UK Poker Player: I hate No Limit Hold’em and much prefer Limit games, whats you’re favorite poker variation and why?

Neil: I used to love PLH and played it every day for years. It’s much more of post-flop game than no-limit which makes it more skillful to my mind. It also means that you beat people by the death of a thousand cuts, and not by simply winning one big pot. To me that’s one of the most frustrating things about NLH tournaments.

You can play really well but then one sick cooler ends it all for you.I think in PLH the best players are WAY more likely to win. The final table of the $10k PLH at the WSOP this year was one of the toughest I’ve ever seen.

UK Poker Player: Have you made any plans for 2010 yet?

Neil: I have made plans for 2010 already. In fact my diary is continuously booked up three months in advance these days. I shall be playing most of the tournaments I played this year, including the TV events, Austarlia in January, Monte Carlo, Ireland, Vegas for the whole of the WSOP, London in September/October and a few smaller trips in between including possibly to Uraguay.

One tournament I’m looking forward to more than any is Black Belt London Live which is a $220 buy-in NLH event at the Vic on March 12th. We’ve already got James Akenhead, Praz Bansi, Jesse May, Marty Smyth, Julian Thew and Chufty coming along to be among our twenty bounties and it’s a great chance for the Black Belt players to play with some big names in a tournament that has the feel of a big event with a much smaller buy-in

UK Poker Player: Should we expect to see Blackbelt student dominating the UK poker scene in 2010?

Neil: Obviously all the Black Belt players will be playing and anyone Green Belt or above who wins our tournament will get a $25k bonus on top of their prize. Although I really rate all of our sponsored players one who I could see breaking through is James Mitchell.

He recently finished second in the World Heads Up Tournament and has what it takes to be a big name. 2010 is the first year that he’s been able to go to the WSOP.

Thanks a lot to Neil for taking the time out to answer our questions. More interviews to follow from some of poker’s biggest names!

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