OP lacks stats to back up claim. im pretty sure prices have gone down a little bit, and we have no way of knowing how many customers people are getting.

There is a free market in coaching so in theory the price should be approximately correct. However it is also a market which suffers from a degree of information asymmtry; anyone selling a service is selling a combination of skill and hope, the trick as a customer is isolate the skill element and pay accordingly.

But doesn't the complexity of information involved in rational choices affect efficiency of the market in question? Could we say that it does so proportionately?

The information here is a coach's ability to improve a student's performance at poker. So the information required for a rational choice to be made should be equivalently complex to the the game of poker itself.

Whereas a coach in the best case is an expert analyst of the game of poker a student will not be. How then could the student possibly make anything resembling a rational choice?

How inefficient is this market? Maybe we could quantify it precisely.

You also see some coaches who charge whatever they can get, and by doing so are willing to deal with the smaller group of people that are willing to pay the max price. Add in a little fame for the coach, and you have to assume the people paying might tend to be people who actually can't much benefit. It is free market and well and good, but you'd assume the coach is just muting the mike and banging his head on the desk at times with some % of students. Is it the coaches job to say, "I really think you should go do X or Y on your own, or see someone cheaper to learn fundamentals"? If the biggest benefit to a student is to hang out with a star player, maybe he's getting exactly what he wants.

Same goes with a coach who only wants to work with people he thinks he can most help and those he most enjoys working with. You'd have to assume he can't charge the highest rate and be picky with students.

tl;dr to say that the market probably isn't efficient in either return on investment or in coaches maximizing earn.

People in this thread saying "lol coaching" are quite wrong. Sure, everyone learns differently. It is possible that there are a large number of people who would get no or negative benefit. However, the idea that no one ever gets any benefit is more of a hater's meme than reality. You'd actually have us believe that out of all activities in the world, poker is the one where coaching has no benefit? Good luck proving that assertion.

Theres another thread going now about crack cocaine usage, full of haters. Are they prepared to say that the first topical anesthetic never provided anyone with any benefit?

Bad standard.

Forget coaching just do this

There isn't a notion of the "correct price" of product. The market sets a price, sure, but that's all it is. It isn't like there is theoretically correct price, and then markets end up close to it. For individuals, they have to determine whether it is +EV to purchase a product given the market price. Thus for an individual it can be "correct" or "incorrect" to purchase, but the market price is not in any meaningful sense the "correct" price.

What individual poker players have to determine is whether, given the price, coaching is +EV or not. They may struggle with that calculation because of information asymmetries or whatever else you mention. But that wouldn't imply that the coaching market prices are "incorrect".

But here we can talk more rigorously about the correctness of prices because the concept of utility has little bearing on our discussion.

The fact is that students will struggle with information asymmetries because they are necessarily incapable of accurately assessing the information required to make a rational choice. That information is extremely complex, it is as complex as the game of poker itself.

Coaching prices are a reflection of the market. There are plenty of good and bad things you can say about that. One thing that is better, is that information is easier to come by today, both for researching poker rooms and coaches. One thing that is bad, is that so many customers of poker rooms and poker coaches do NOT take the time to do research before they part with their money.

As for the difficulty of online games, online games are always going to get more difficult, that's a fact. In 2000, games were easier than 2003, were easier than 2006, were easier than 2012, etc.

If you want to speak about the difficulty of the games relative to other time periods, this is nowhere near true, and you can't generalize with "online poker is so hard now." You need to look at specific game formats.

Several games were far easier to profit from in 2010 than 2003, and several games today are easier to profit in than in 2009.

Except that the games that are easier to profit from today in comparison to 2003, are running twice a month. You can make enough money off of them to live in a bungalow somewhere in Southern Hemisphere.

What would those games be?

coaching rates will adjust based on what people are willing to pay for coaching

nonsense, utility is incredibly important. How useful coaching is to an individual - the utility of the product to the individual - is clearly going to vary significantly between people. Some may get a lot out of coaching, others very little.

lol coaches

My experience with hiring a coach didn't go very well. I'm not going into a lot of detail into who or which game but I'll tell my story.

In the game I play, I was coming along very nicely and profit for my level was fairly easy to come by. My thoughts were that if I'm profitable now, a strong coach could really put me over the top by spotting my weaknesses or giving me tips to boost my profitability.

The coach in question came with a good reputation and was quite profitable in his own right, however, that didn't translate into improvement in my game. Whether I didn't catch on or whether his style didn't work for me or whatever it is, not only was I no longer profitable, I couldn't seem to get the game back or play the same way that was previously profitable for me. It wasn't long after that cash games were shut down in the U.S. Without question, hiring a coach was horrible decision for me.

After that debacle, I've done some thinking that maybe a coach isn't a necessity and in some cases (at least mine), it can do more harm than good. A style that works for one, may not work for another.

One example is heads up sngs (look at leaderboards in 2008 vs 2012 or 2009 vs 2013... also in 2013 there are a few million dollars in profits from guys missing bc they blocked stats).

Good post. First off, I don't believe coaching is necessary at the lower levels and I believe it is often a bad value for low stakes players. The training sites have great material for far lower prices, and if you're going to ever make it in mid to high stakes, you'll need to learn good work ethic. So if you can't motivate yourself to go through an hour of video per week consistently, at the very least, then I don't think you're going to likely make it at mid to high stakes anyways, even with a coach.

Second, I tend to dislike coaches that teach a "style." I like coaches that can tell me "hey, this is how you interpret information from your opponent. Based on what we've seen, we can conclude his 3betting range looks something like this, and this is a good range of hands for us to be opening/reraising/calling with, as it exploits his range/strategy."

I like coaches to teach how to think, rather than just telling me to play aggressively in certain spots "bc it's good" (or some form of that that boils down to "bc I do it and I win.")

I like coaches that teach me how to exploit opponents. The game theory optimal stuff is great, but I don't think it's as applicable to lower levels, where mistakes are huge (mistakes are probably huge in midstakes too).

Of course, if you're 16 tabling games and can't really work on reading your opponents well bc of how much action is up at once, I can see just mimicking the style of a winner and thinking about decisions very generally.

I'm a heads up sng guy historically, so take that for what it's worth (our game is far more exploitive play and focused on the opponent in front of you, so strategies change very often from opponent to opponent, and things like "what kinds of open % and 3bet % should you have?" are not relevant questions in the least bit, the answer is always "depends on your specific opponent.").

That seems like a slight exaggeration to me (look at the leadersboards on highstakesdb, or sharkscope).

That said, I think a lot of problems come from poker rooms being too complacent about addressing structural issues.

When people can sit down and wait for hours for a weak player, and then only play vs that weak player, avoiding strong players (this was/is most evident in hu cash for years), that's not really good for the poker economy.

If you add a ton of players that can/will only play and beat weak players, that takes a lot of balance and competition out of the game imo.

But for whatever reason, sites were so complacent in fixing issues like that over the years. Not even sure they are truly fixed, but progress finally seems to have started being made, many years after the problems surfaced.

If you don't believe there are structural issues, take a look at the health of mtts and sngs, compared to cash games. In the latter, you can basically choose the quality of opponent that you will face, in the former, you largely cannot.

2-7, some mix games, and maybe PLO, if for no other reason then because these games didn't run often enough in 10 years ago as to be profitable.

Look at the nosebleed draw games. Even the NL players are playing because there is so much money at stake.

Also can this sort of stuff even be coached?

I mean when I was young I thought try hard and anything is possible... Well, it simply isn't true lol

Some people are born to be great at certai things.

Pick any world class sports man. They were born a 98/100 at that sport. Sure coaching may take them to 99/100 but fact of the matter is, they were utterly class without the coaching anyway.

Look at isildur he once took 3k and turned it into 200k in two days. How can you ever teach that? Like if isildur was a coach, what can he possible tell some one from his thought process that will make them as good as him?

But i gess maybe coaching can improve you at the lower levels. For example some one may be a 48/100 and with coaching could become a 62/100 player.

Finally.. The old argument as well about "people weren't as good back then" makes me laugh.

I once got a soccer DVD about Manchester United in te 1960s. As the first thing that struck me by a mile was how different they played. The passing, the speed, the tactics. EVERYTHNG was different to now. And yes those teams would peno ably get destroyed today because the teams have adapted to the change.

However, what I also noticed was the absolute quality of the individual players. Twy were fast, fit, had great passing ability, fantastic touch and control.

I have no doubt, what so ever, that each and every single one of those players could ply soccer today (as a young man). They were all extremely talented. The only difference being that the game is played differently now.

In fact I'd even say thu may even be better than today's players. I the 1960s soccer was played on pitches like marshes, the ball weighed like a brick. Vastly different to today's modern technology. With perfect equipment an pitches.

So I believe the same goes for poker players.

Sure whwn we look back we may say they were all fish. But at the time they were playing the game at the latest tactics. And we're good players at the time.
They still woulda been quality for that time period

To say people like stu ungar wouldn't be good today is just utter BS. Look at phil hellmuth for example. Perfect example right there. He's still crushing 20 years later.would a 20 year old Michael Jordan be **** today as the game has changed so much??

There was an interesting article about this sort of thing a while back here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26384712

Juk

A coach that taught you that kind of brm would be a pretty crap coach.

100% agree with this post. Most of what makes the great players great is intangible. Ivey, Isildur, Helmuth, Ungar etc didn't get to where they are by overpaying for coaching, hell I doubt they've discussed in depth poker strategy more than some microstakes players.

Coaching is just a scam for some greedy players trying to make a few quick bucks end of story.

weren't a lot of coaches advertising huge reductions after BF? The market is not self adjusting,despite what capitalistards tell us, it's often very slow and lumbering.


Are there any well known coaches stilll charging huge rates despite not having played much or made much in last 1-2 years?

This is true regarding the paying for coaching but they certainly did discuss and study the game with their friends and peers.

Few important distinctions with poker coaching relative to other things.

1. With variance it would be tough to be able to sort out how much your coach actually helped you play. There was a post by a player who said he was winning, got coached, would up losing. Perhaps he was on a massive heater before and was actually losing player the whole time, but at end was a better player.

2. having prices up is not the same as getting them. Even if I sign up at a price, I can negotiate once I become a regular student. No way of comparing list price to price paid. On some sites, like Edmunds.com they compare suggested retail car price vs what was actually paid by those posting. Would be nice to get that going somewhere. But have not seen anything like it really. Not really much "valuable" feedback on coaching like yelp.com and other social media has as a routine product.

3. Poker is still pretty new as a 'coaching' vehicle. How many golf pro's care about winrates of their coaches? I mean, the idea that you have to crush to be able to teach is lame. Is Butch Harmon or Hnak haney a Masters Champion? Many great players cannot coach. Many journeymen are great coaches. The idea is that the transfer of ideas and abilitiy to improve is what is important. But with variance, it just gets hard to judge quality. So we jump mindlessly to winrates.

So, figure that quality is hard to judge due to variance. Info is not shared freely. Online results are being blocked. All these things make for a muddied landscape.

We have a site here that has thousands of members. We could as a group figure out who the 'better' (that is as far as I would guarantee) choices are for coaching at various levels and games. But we have not yet.

We could start blaming ourselves instead of blaming the 'scam artists'.

which