I also have thick, dark, fast growing, stubble that needs extra close results to look OK after lunch.

When I'd been shaving with a straight razor for 4 months, I needed to do 5-6 passes and all sorts of pass directions & special types of strokes to get BBS results (which was the only thing that looked OK all day for me).

During that time, I did ATG starting at the corners of the mouth and going straight up to where the upper lip starts to curve inward. For points above the curve, and the center, I used a 2 handed ATG pass. Both were easy to do as long as the razor was sharp enough to go ATG. If it was a little dull, it seemed fine for WTG and XTG, but got stuck and needed some "pull" to cut ATG - and resulted in irritation / razor burn.

Now that I've been shaving with straight razor for 6.5 months, I find that I get BBS results with 1 WTG + 1 XTG + 1 WTG clean-up pass on 3 small areas (1 area gullotine works best, for the other 2 areas sything works best).

I believe this is 25% due to improvements in my shaving technique and 75% due learning to hone myself. (ie: I no longer wait for the razor to get dull "enough" to send it out for honing). When the razor is super sharp, I get the same results with 1 pass as I get with 3 passes using a razor which seemed sharp - but really wasn't.