I'm looking to work on a specific areaof my game and wondering whether to invest in a couple of sessions of coaching or invest in PIO instead. Any thoughts on which would be best?

If you have to choose between one or the other get PIO.

If you don't, then get both.

depends on what areas of your game you want to work on and the game/stakes you are playing

Thanks for the replies guys.

I'm only playing 25nl so hadn't really considered PIO but my thinking is for the $250 cost I could maybe get 3 coaching sessions but with PIO, as well as looking at the spot I want to work on, I'd get further use of it down the line.

The spot I'm wanting to look at is mainly around resteals, especially postflop play.

I'd say get both if you play close to 200nl and if you have to choose get PIO.
At 25nl PIO almost does more harm than good.

PIO will likely damage your game without a decent grasp of the fundamentals.
get some coaching maybe and invest some money in will tiptons hu no limit books. They will serve as a really good primer to gto and exploitative play . He uses HU as the examples but it applies to all no limit formats.

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I think PIO is very powerful tool. If you are looking at running some preflop solutions for BTN v SB or something you will need more than the basic version and decent computer.

I would guess at 25NL you could find some good material one of the training sites that might be most cost effective use of poker $$

This here times 100.

Tools without the skills needed to use them are very dangerous. If you're at NL25, you got other leaks to fix.

I'm still old-school and think a human coach is better because the most valuable part is to be around a winner. But tool + coach is best.

At 25NL you should be focused on a lot of fundamentals, eliminating a lot of major leaks. You can do that with top tier video material that doesn't cost very much. Stuff like RIO basic membership can do that pretty efficiently and for just a fraction of the cost of a private coach. Buying a coach at that stage won't get you as much bang for your buck as it would when you're at a higher level. It's kind of like hiring a professional cook to teach you how to make a basic dish, it'll be effective but it really is overkill.

Once you start reaching 100NL and beyond, consider a solid coach that is using PIO in a valuable way and pay them to teach you.

I have a totally different opinion than ChicagoRy here as I believe the higher the stake, the less impact the coaching will have.
At lower stakes you can pretty much just apply what the coach is saying without more requirements and you'll do v well.
The higher you go the more your individual ability/talent and really hard work, especially on your own, will matter.

Memberships like RIO often do more harm than good for lower stakes player because they need to select whatever applies to their own game.
I've heard countless times during coaching sessions with a 25nl player "I watched over 100 videos and I did this bc I saw <<insert zoom 500nl crusher name>> do this in a hand".
Someone also told me he saw Doug Polk call a 3bet OOP with AQ and then call off 3 streets(river shove) with A high.
That is a more extreme example but point is you do stuff like that seen at 500zoom and mid-high stakes at 25nl it will not work well most of the time.

Both Chicago and Jonirenicus are right.

Problem with coaching for lower stakes: Price and ROI of the right coach telling you those things. While a coach will speed up your process by a LOT, it only makes sense if you're committed.


Solution:
Coaching for profits, that's why so many different teams are doing it now. Coaches have an incentive to share high-quality material that actually works (in order to save 1-1 time with the student).

Ofc RIO is crap for smaller stakes players or anybody below NL200, but it's more of a big circle jerk for nerds.
But how this old way of doing videos is still accepted is beyond me anyways. To be fair, it has been like this forever and the students who watch a mid/high stakes video and try to apply it on lower stakes are just as much to blame.

I mean, the fact that OP even asks the question shows how well the indoctrination works.

The thing that every coach learns...once you actually have to get results and deliver, you change your approach very very quickly. Funny, a friend told me that Doug Polk once said that Coaching for Profit is the most honest form of coaching.

Well, when your only objective is to sell and you are not forced to produce results, it's very easy.

Some decent discussion going on here.

I should probably add some more info regarding my own personal situation. I consider myself a recreational player, albeit I've always been a winning player over the years and enjoy the challenge of working on my game. I changed from full ring to 6 max last year and after a rocky start I now appear to be a small winner (as far as I can tell). I have no ambitions of moving to midstakes etc and would be happy to win at a decent clip at 50nl, or even reach 100nl at most. I've had a Pokermetrics report done a while back by Alan Jackson and I find this particularly good for picking up spots where my game appears to be off and then I tend to work on them myself to try to plug leaks. This is the main reason I thought Pio may be a decent option.

I had some coaching way way back (at full ring) and found it handy at the time.

With normal coaching you also have to produce results to have good reviews.
Or you can take the shortcut of asking a friend to create a 2+2 account in 2017 with 1 post writing a super-positive review about you 5 minutes after you open your coaching thread. :-)
Seems to have become a standard for many coaches nowadays.

I actually took a break from coaching at one point because it was annoying to see a new regular(non-CFP) coaching thread appear, not give out his real SN to be verified and 5 minutes after opening the thread he'd have 3 positive reviews already half-page long each.
I used my real Stars id from the start and all my reviews were/are real and it was frustrating to see others take such shortcuts that I don't wanna take.

I agree that Coaching for profits is the most honest form of coaching.
The issue with that for the coach is that his skills need to go beyond having poker skills and teaching ability.
ThinkItThrough can likely relate to this as he's been doing CFP for a long time.

I've had students that I managed to get to 6-7 bb winrates(around the same as mine) but who simply would not play 20k hands a month.
Despite not doing anything else beside poker.
Sometimes to motivate them I was doing friendly prop bets like "If I, who also spend decent time coaching, and plenty of time taking care of other small business+enough $$$ to afford to sit on my ass for a good while, will play more hands than you(the student who is a fulltime poker player) this month then you're getting a T-Shirt that says <<I'm a lazy ****>>".

Or someone breaking up with his girlfriend at 20 years old for non-poker reasons and would completely stop doing any kind of work and just sit in a corner and cry about the breakup.
No, not for the first 3 days. For 1 month+.

So basically you are a father of a ton of babies not just a poker coach.
You're kind of forced to accept only ppl who have proven they can play 50k+ hands a month on a consistent basis + make a bullet-proof contract as well with a decent initial deposit.

@Husker, totally agree about Alans service. We focus more on population reports and lines with him, but he got the analytical part down like nobody else.


LOL Jon, i even had a guy writing me once that his girlfriends cat is not feeling well and he has to take a break from playing and study only. No joke, in our last years camp i showed the email convo (student stayed anonymous, of course).

First, i thought I was getting trolled, but the guy meant it . Having that said, while he had some mental leaks, he did manage to make a few k.

I view it as part of the job of a coach to take full responsibility, even if the student is an idiot. Sure, there are some limits, but you can threaten to send them Dildos or gay leather pants (if they live with gf/parents).

Depends how analytical you are. I'm biased as I'm extremely analytical and have already found PIO to be very valuable to me.

A good coach can spoon feed you some dece information and point you in the right direction on things to improve.

When I coach my students I try to teach them how to think about a hand and different ways they can solve the problem on their own--that way they don't need me and any question that comes up can promptly be solved with a little hard work.
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If you're lazy/less mathy/analytical a coach is probably higher EV than PIO. If you're willing to put in some time then I think PIO is >> coach.