Has anyone here ever taken life coaching lessons geared towards poker? I see some poker coaches who offer this and I'm wondering if there's any value? If so, is there anyone in particular you would recommend? Also I'm wondering what the basis of these lessons entail? Thanks

I'm not familiar with poker oriented life coaching but I can tell you that I find the general concept of a life coach laughable. There are no qualifications necessary to be a life coach and the kind of people typically drawn to that "profession" are some of the last people who should be coaching others.

Keep in mind that having a mentor is different from a life coach. Someone offering to mentor you is much more interesting and palatable than a life coach. Be wary of anyone who calls themselves a life coach.

It's good advice and I will take it into consideration. That being said, where would one find a good mentor?

Easiest would be someone you already know from your circle of family and friends and it implies a person older than yourself. If you have someone w/i that group that 'has their act together' you might seek advice from that person when faced w/ a decision you're struggling with. If you're ever lucky enough to find someone who sees great potential in you, enough to commit to your development and is connected enough to see you succeed, you would be called a protege.


ETA: Having thought a bit more about it I think I should point out that most ppl outside of the poker world would tell you not to pursue it as a career which is why I suppose you included 'geared towards poker.' That's going to be the tough part.

That's just it, there aren't many around who have sought out poker as a career enough to understand the dilemmas involved. I just emailed Pawel Jablonski as I saw he offers coaching to many individuals (poker included). Before I jump into it though, I will be Skyping him to see what he can offer.

QFT lol too true

I just had a look at Particia Cardner's site and she doesn't appear to offer coaching as far as I can see. In terms of 'the stuff you should do around poker' I think she went into that in some detail (based on empirical, mostly qualitative studies and came up with a bunch of stuff). I've not gone into it in super great depth but it did seem pretty sound and legit to me. If I find any BS amongst it I'd be the first to say, I don't have any allegiance to her, I don't know her. Maybe check out her books. She targetted a bunch of top players (as subjects) for her work.
I've looked here and there into Tommy Angelo's stuff and heard a lot of him on audio. He's played a lot of poker, has come through life's wringer once or twice, and has worked with a lot of players. When I see all that I begin to think that is someone I definitely want to hear more from.
I've had bigs ups and downs in my life but few things kick you in the teeth quite so squarely as poker so I think that's definitely something you should seek to prepare for as broadly as you mention. Cardner talks a fair bit about good players failing not so much due to poker itself but due to exogenic factors like BR management, sleep hygeine, booze, relationships, working to ensure general mental good health.
Lots and lots of BS out there too. Anything Psychology is hugely exploitable due to the general ignorance/lack of critical appraisal by Joe Public. Couple of qualifications and a good marketing campaign is all you really need to get going.

+1

I'd be interested in seeing how you get on. Pawel Jablonski's profile doesn't inspire confidence, but $75 doesn't seem to bad for some "life coaching" - certainly compared to what some people charge - but you have to consider what you're getting for your money (i.e is he just going to listen to you for an hour, or will he put some kind of plan together based on the initial interview).

Yeah the initial interview will be the test.

So little time, so many great coaches to choose from

http://iveyleague.com/video/attentio...tration-part-2

Jared Tendler is the leading expert from what I read. He took Dusty Schmidt from $50K/month to $200K/month by coaching him
http://www.cardrunners.com/poker-vid...jared-tendler/

Very different approaches but they all have one message in common: the Mental Game is where the modern pokr professional gets his edge. I dipped into my bankroll quite heavily to get my mindset right and play my C game less often and breathe properly. That meant I had to move back down to grinding the micros but at least I lose much less money now.

Changed my life.

Yep, that's great but Tendler has coached over 450 players according to his website, so just cherry-picking one big name who has had a big upsurge as a result of coaching doesn't really tell us how effective his coaching actually is.

Coaches. He coaches 450 players according to his website.
Does that one player's upsurge on its own speak to his coaching? P<...
Are you knowledgeable in psychology? It seems so from your posts.

Although I'm a psychologist, I'm actually pretty sceptical of a lot of the research and applied work that goes on in our science.

Perhaps all science is like this, but it feels like a lot of the research going on is driven more by self-interest (i.e maintaining the integrity of your own theories), than by any desire to do good quality research.

I think emotion is probably overlooked in Sport and Exercise. I guess is it's just much easier to measure and develop interventions that deal with behaviour.

Yes! And if your study goes counter to the status quo, good luck getting it published in a respectable journal.

Hi Chris:

Here she's asking for $150 an hour:

http://www.floattheturn.com/coaching.php?a=view&cid=37

Best wishes,
Mason

Chris:

When I began to look and understand what people like Cardner, Roe, and Tendler were advocating, what I noticed that much of it came from the sports world and was designed (in the sports world) to improve things like speed, timing, and coordination.

I've played tennis since I was a kid, and that's over 50 years with a lot of time on the tennis court, and as an example I've known for years that a good diet will improve my timing a little bit. So a serious competitive tennis player will certainly want to eat well.

But poker, being a game of mostly knowledge, is not a game of speed, timing, and coordination, and while you need to pay attention, having the type of focus to return a 120 mph serve doesn't happen either. So I concluded, and it wasn't hard to do, that these people had very little worthwhile to offer to poker players.

I can also go into much detail with similar conclusions on much of the other stuff they advocate, if you have any specific questions.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi Elrazor:

This is another example of what I'm talking about. By improving your emotional status, you'll probably becme more relaxed and this should have a positive effect on things like speed, timing, and coordination. Thus your athletic performance, which we can call execution, should be better.

But what does this have to do with poker? Does improving my timing help me throw the chips in the pot better which in turn makes me play better? I doubt it. Furthermore, if you want to play better, and I emphasize this in my book, it means that you must play some of the hands differently than you're currently playing them and this new way of playing has to be superior than the way you use to play them.

However, and this is very important, due to the large short term luck factor present in poker, in can be difficult to look at your results and conclude that you're really playing better. Thus to play better, you'll need to improve your understanding of poker theory and the specific strategies for the game that you play. Compare this to tennis where you can see the difference between hitting a backhand in the net versus one that goes over the net for a good shot.

Best wishes,
Mason

I guess the problem for Sport Psychologists is that they are going to be judged against measurable outcomes.

So, lets say for example you want to improve your performance in the gym. A psychologist might suggest stop counting your reps. The trainer can then measure the athlete's reps, lean muscle mass, body fat, etc and see if this leads to an improvement. If it does, the psychologist gets a pat on the back and keeps his job for another couple of months.

Improving emotional status is both difficult and hard to measure. A psychologist can use CBT or other therapies to help regulate and understand our emotions, but the feelings will still be there unless we treat the root cause. The root cause could be anything, so if we look at this thread we can probably suggest things that might help, but our work as a psychologist will be done in a somewhat unsystematic manner. However, we still might not see any improvements, which if we are being employed, might see us lose our contract. Sport Psychology is a notoriously insecure as a profession, and therefore you're constantly under pressure to justify your role. Hence the reason for behavioural interventions.

I really don't get why you still pretend that improving emotional status has no impact on one's ability to think better and perform better at mental tasks, such as poker.

Hi Elrazor:

Very good post. And in poker the logical thing to measure is your bankroll or your recent results, but with the large short term luck factor present in poker this is unlikely to have much value.

Best wishes,
Mason

What does thinking better mean? Does it mean you better understand the strategic concepts that govern play? And you do realize that this is where the large majority of players need improvement. Thus my conclusion that much of the advice coming from most poker mental coaches, despite the high prices, will have virtually no value for most of their students.

Best wishes,
Mason

No, it means being better able to apply the understanding someone already has. It's about being more attentive and being able to tie more information (from within your head and from your senses) together and with fewer mistskes.

Okay. If you say so.

By the way, how do you know if you make a mistake? This is a point that the poker mental coaches, the ones which I think are worthless, constantly emphasize. They're worried that the mistakes you make will cause you to become "a little tilty."

But poker is not a game like tennis where you can see that you hit the ball in the net. In fact, in poker, you can play a hand well and lose the pot, or play a hand poorly, making a number of mistakes, and win a huge pot and think that you played it quite well.

And of course you need to pay attention. But is that the same as being highly focused like a baseball batter who's trying to hit a 95 mph fastball where he may have perhaps half a second to make his decision? Remeber, in poker you can take time to make your decisions, another thing that the particular mental coaches who I think have little to offer don't seem to understand.

So how exactly do you go about applying that understanding you already have? By the way, if you read my book, you'll see that I agree that your point has a little bit of value as opposed to no value. But it's certainly not the same as an athletic sport which is where most of this stuff seems to come from.

MM

There seems to be a position that nutrition affects the health and performance of cells in the physical realm but not those in the mental realm. What documentation is there for this idea? A starving person suffers both physically and mentally ... and profoundly in each. A person with lousy nutrition and lousy physical activity levels suffers also in the mental realm. It's all intertwined and to assert that lousy nutrition doesn't affect mental functioning, or that mental functioning is a constant while physical performance varies greatly ... seems just arbitrary ... kind of an assertion to defend a preconceived bias. I'm betting pretty much any neuroscientist would be in the camp that nutrition affects the cells in the brain just as it affects the cells in muscles. Why would it not? Because you can see the muscle and what its doing easier than you can with the brain?

Would you care to provide examples of where Tendler does this in his first volume? I have read it and I didn't see any so based on that, it seems like you are jumping to conclusions.

It seems like there could be worse choices than Cardner. Her first book got good editorial reviews from no less than Dr. Alan Schoonmaker, who wrote the TwoPlusTwo published Psychology of Poker, and Zachary Elwood, who wrote the two best book on tells and has a section here on TwoPlusTwo.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have never had a life coach or a mental poker coach.