A lot has happened here in the recent past and all of it far from unexpected to many of the good players online. There have always among my poker friends, been talks about 'how can this guy be a coach' on X site? I can think of a few guys on all the training site I wouldn't even talk about a hand history with let alone pay for something. One scammer in particular, I called over a year ago because I watched one video for ten minutes, and was speechless at the things he said and did. Ultimately if you are coached by these individuals you were the sucker. Not the site that you found them on, because you paid to have that service.

I am not an ATT customer any longer. It is not because I think they don't deserve to make money. It is because their service was not of a quality I expect for my money. Their network sucks where I live, but in all honesty if they want to pay ESPN for 5 minutes of commercials per hour not a single one of us has the right to say they can't. They have a right to advertise coverage to 97% of Americans without disclosing that they mean for voice calls not data. They have a right to say they have as much data coverage as anyone else in the country but not tell you what speed it is. Our right comes in not giving them our money if we dont think they deserve it.

Ultimately thats the truth and thats where the blame lies.

Part 1
First and foremost your coach should have references. REALLY REALLY GOOD REFERENCES. If not he should be coaching you for free or for 1/2 the BI of the stake you are being coached at. IMO if you pay half to a coach with no ref's you are a sucker. He needs to prove he can effectively coach and doesn't deserve anything close to his hourly in his 'regular games' before he can provide this. I know probably 10-15 guys I talk to across AIM/Skype/MSN that are or have been coaches personally and they ALL coached a few guys for free. Afterwards they asked the player things like:

• Did I explain my thoughts well?
• Did I answer your questions effectively?
• Did you learn from me?
• Do you think you can apply this now?
• Will it make you a better player?
• Would you pay me for what I just showed you?
• If you paid me for this session, would you come back for more coaching?
• Would you be a reference and if we keep lessons coming would you eventually graph your progress for me?

No honest, articulate, confident person would take your money until they KNOW that players like yourself say yes to all these questions.

Part 2
Maybe there is a coach that isn't outed on one of the training sites. If there is that site is a sucker. Your coach should have his site names revealed in his ad, along with a graph. Not only that but ask him to send you a penny from one of those posted graphs. It's nit picking, its a bit of hassle but its not asking too much.

"Hey I see that you are a 3.2bb/100 winner at 400nl 6max and you say you 12 TABLE! That's awesome. Your graph looks good, you seem really nice and I like your posts in forums. Would you mind shipping me a penny from (screen name for that site). I just want to be careful with my money. Ill send you $5, you send me back $5" That didn't sound obnoxious did it? He/she should oblige this request immediately. If the site has a minimum transfer its going to be approximately $5. Ship him $5 and as him to ship it back. Make sure the names are EXACT.

THIS IS SO IMPORTANT. PTR (PM ME IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT THAT IS) AND MAKE SURE THE PTR MATCHES HIS GRAPH AND NAME THAT HE SHIPPED FROM.

Part 3
This is SOO simple. I have been doing this since 2005. Nobody knows everything. Nobody plays every hand of poker they play perfectly. So what does this mean? Its really simple.... read on.

Sometimes I read a strategy thread. I see posts and agree with some and not with others. I typically at this point know who is right in the responses if I didn't know that answer right away. But when I first started and to this day I will search someones posts if their answer is terrible bad are terribly interesting. If they are always interesting and get people thinking then cool. But if its always interesting and wrong, or just plain wrong I am putting you on the forums 'ignore list' with lightning speed. I play for fun, but its a positive income hobby. I am not here to waste time. I save that for BBV and Reg threads.

Apply the same thing to your coaches. Find out their training site name for the forums, their 2p2 name, their P5's name (lol if they post there) or any other site. Read their STRAT THREAD posts and see if they are smart. Are they right. Do other good players agree with them? If the good players don't then they better be really solid in the other aspects of this thread, and probably you can find a better coaching option.

Part 4
Post count and tenure dont mean they are rock star poker players. They go a long way here. Finding swaps/stakes/friends on 2p2 is not hard since I have been here since 2005. But I am by no means a great poker player.

In summary you can find out a lot on the internet with a little work and ten minutes of your time. Do it. These guys outing bad coaches are far from articulate, seem to have terrible social skills and are not intelligent enough to know before hand they are being scammed but still eventually figure it out. Prove you are smarter and do these things.

yawn. this should be obvious.

reputable on 2p2 + quality strategy posts + current winning reg + good PTR = solid coach.

Yes, but the people it isn't obvious are mostly the people becoming victims.

If you had a coaching thread and good results I would consider you, if I was looking for coaching of some sort. I don't think we have ever talked beyond a thread at any point but I know you have a good reputation. I wouldn't even research you. If I needed to I would know how. A lot of people don't even know they can.

6 asterisks in the title so you know its important

good post op.

eff the haters

Great post although I think it's kind of cerebral for something that's definitely going to end up just getting skimmed. Stuff like the AT&T example. The point is clear but I wouldn't be surprised if somebody skimming 'yet another sticky' just well.. skimmed.. and missed it.

I 100% agree. I just can't help but have a sorrow for people who pay or coach that this is happening.

I'm sure the mod forums are all over this issue. I hope they take the approach they take on scammers in staking and swap threads but feel like coaching probably is gonna be removed all together.

Great post OP. I agree with everything you said...5 months later.

Yawn? Alternatively how about showing some respect for somebody who put a lot of time into a detailed post. Yes, a lot of this stuff is inherently obvious but at the same time this is arguably a sub-forum where a lot of people will be rather new to this community and subsequently require this information.

Thanks to the people that gave it props. I forgot all about this post.

I actually put some time in this one, and I am surprised after reading it just now how much more I could have elaborated on thoughts, and how bad the spelling/grammar is. Quite embarrassing tbh.

I remember in early 2004 when I would put $50-$200 on and didn't know what 2p2 was. I eventually binked a five figure score plus a limit tourney one night on PP, and some other really nice cashes came on Paradise the following weeks. I found myself playing 10/20 and 15/30 as well as up to 1knl with no idea what I was doing. Id get up and keep going, no business playing that far out of a roll and didn't even know it. I ran pretty good in $50-$500 sng's (mostly $50-$200's) but realized I had no idea. I found this site and made it work though. It was much easier back then. I was able to learn before the forum exploded and training sites became prevalent. I developed good relationships and learned from them. Knowing who was good at poker and who gave good advice was simpler. Gambler2k4 is a great example. If you saw how much money he made you would listen to him. But then it was easier to find out that he was a tilt tard player you probably shouldn't take advice from (to this day better than me at poker still).

Reflecting on that it is so easy to see how people get scammed on coaching. I just feel there needs to be something people read before they get into it. Someone that is smarter than 99% of us and reads about how to get started with BR, learning etc will look for a coach much faster than most of us did three to five years back. While its the right thing to do, they wont know how to effectively find this person yet. And while the training sites are on a whole started and ran with the best of intent we hide behind a screen and keyboard and people can clearly portray something other than who they are, through a coaching option or an application to a training site.

Good post Mate!

I have never been able to get over the fact that there are so many experienced posters who go out of their way to belittle someone who is trying to help out.

If you don't like a post then why not just ignore it? Or maybe they don't have a life and that's their idea of fun. Who knows?

Anyway back to the post. About six years ago I signed on with a guy for coaching lessons. Total scam and got nothing except an E book. Luckily it didn't cost me much.

About a year later signed on with a guy who had his own online site and posted on several of the forums. Got another E book and then after two lessons his kid was sick, or he was busy that day or whatever. That experience cost me about $500 and I was still no smarter (pokerwise).

I recently got another coach (through this site) and he is good and we've had half a dozen lessons but now I am looking around for another coach. Why?

You brought up a very good point! Some people are good at some games but few (if any) are good at all of them. (If you hired a boxing coach to help you play basketball he would probably improve your fitness but not do much for your game.)

So after checking my present coach's credentials I found that he is good in some areas but I will need someone else to help me if I wish to become proficient in others.

So, thanks for your post and as one other poster so eloquently answered to the haters "eff em!"

i pretty much agree with OP just wanted to add two thoughts -

check coaches feedback threads(2+2 and/or other training sites)

talk with coach before hiring and trust your gut