Why? It happens all the time in most other endeavors. You think David Leadbetter "crushes" at the US Open? Tom Coughlin never even played pro football, let alone "crushed" at the Super Bowl.

The coaches you mentioned don't take average people and turn them into "crushers". They start off with talented people. That's why it's difficult to assess the real value of any coach who coaches beginners. If they're talented they may well start "crushing" but that's probably just down to them learning the game rather than the coach. If I had taught durrrr how to play poker when he was a beginner I couldn't take the credit for his subsequent success.

This is an awful comparison.

A football coach has the ability to understand the field lay-out from a bird's eye view. He understands what formations will work and which will not. He understands that the left wide-receiver must turn right after 12 steps, not 11, not 13 and he understands the why and when of many components of the game. In simple terms, he is a strategizer, NOT a player. Yeah, he can tell a player to run faster and push him to his physical limits, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the over-all plan. Playing a game of catch doesn't have to be, no, it SHOULDN'T be the coach's forte. He cannot tell a team of circa 2000 Browns to do the same thing as circa 1976 Steelers and expect to make each team the best they can do. This follows into another mistake of your logic: you assume that all teams have an equal balance of talent and that a great coach can turn a bad team into a Super Bowl team. Not going to happen. I see very little connection between the physical attributes of the players and the ability to strategize, when to go for the field goal, when to punt, when to go for it, when to run, or go with the hail mary. The physical attributes are left to the physical sphere (players) and the thinking attributes are left to the thinkers (coach).

A tennis or golf player needs a coach because the perspective of proprioception on theirself is flawed. Yeah, it takes a guy with a computer and film to see that the timing of a hit, or an arc of a swing, is mathematically incorrect. Once again, nothing at all to do with play.

A poker coach must understand concepts of actual play to understand the when and the why. Yes, he can read books and even find out the mathematically correct strategy, but the timing and implementation of these strategies is something that can only be gained from experience and trial and error. There's just too much stuff that must be learned at the table, and if you can't implement that stuff yourself, is probably because you aren't aware of it, thus you can't teach this to a student. Poker is a direct game where your knowledge and ability directly influences your results, and that is the one component that is missing in your other examples.

This is a valid point but my contention is not to take credit for the accomplishments of my former students as much as to make the claim that I helped them accelerate their pace of learning.

Ask Diebanksters how long he was not beating the $6.50's? I can tell you it was at least a few months because I was not his first TeamMoshman coach and he was still not winning when we started working. By the end though he was a winner. Maybe he would have gotten there eventually, but his goal was to get there ASAP.

I can tell you for certain I struggled for a long time with SNG's in the beginning and benefited from Collin's coaching. I believe I would not have made a lot of the connections that I made, as quickly as I made them, without his help. In my mind his coaching is what made the difference.

At the end of the day it is hard to quantify whether a coach is even necessary. As you say, eventually smart people will figure things out on their own. However, imagine if there were no 2+2, no 2+2 books, no learning resources on the market. Do you think people would be able to learn the game as quickly or to such a high level? Poker has been around a long time and I would say that in the last 10 years what has been learned about the game has far surpassed the previous 100 years just due to the availability of good resources. Are these resources necessary? People seem to think so.

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I disagree (but that probably does not shock you). It is my contention that really good players actually think this way whether or not they realize it. The reason is that when learning you must have a framework from which to begin making decisions. A lot of good players have base ranges that they start making decisions from. I just don't think that they ever identified such a complete set of them before my work. I simply believe that I pointed out something that good players already do.

As far as equity jumps, I address this subject thoroughly in the book, talking about the play modifications that develop from the structure of a SNG as well as doing a very thorough mathematical explanation of ICM tax and how it influences the adjustment of pivot points. In fact I believe that the way that I describe the stack based dynamic of the bubble with a mathematical framework is an entirely new and important way of looking at the bubble and how much to adjust your base pivot ranges. I believe that this is a significant contribution to SNG theory, even though for good players it really just confirms the types of adjustments they already make.

Regards,
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It's nothing new then. Of course players learning sngs spend time learning push fold strategy. All you have done is suggest that they should pick out a few ranges and guess the ones in between. I think this partial rote learning approach is bad and that players should be paying attention to equity and what happens to it in various situations. This will give them an understanding which can be applied to all games.

Looking at Diebanksters sharkscope graphs it looks like he started very well and then flatlined for about 2k games. This is quite normal variance with an roi of 5-6%. He may have needed to make some adjustments but it's not clear how much value was added as these kinds of graphs are typical anyway.

I can only assume is an implied criticism of the strategy we installed. However, there are many other reasons than variance why a winning player might also have a bad run. However, we straightened things out.

I am not comfortable saying too much more relating to the specific issues facing a former student but if anything I believe that this is a sign that coaching was actually a benefit.

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Why assume anything ? I'm just going from his graph. I am more interested in why you think your "pivot points" concept is so different and so good. This is what you seem to place great value on.

It is new and it is not. I have already stated that it is complementary to strategy that is previously available. There are also find similarities to ways that people implement that strategy. I mean it is the same game we are all talking about so some similarities are bound to exist.

What is new is that it is a self-contained detailed system to learn SNG's. Prior to this, I am not aware of one that existed. I spent time verifying that it is a fast and easy to implement system by coaching it to many players who were able to implement it successfully. I spent time coaching it for free and then at very low hourly rates just to verify that I was not "ripping anyone off."

It is also a complete system, not "just a few ranges" as you state. I am also agreeing with you that understanding why to adjust is a very important point, and not only are adjustment strategies laid out in detail, they are the very foundation of using these base ranges effectively. It also outlines how a player can use SNG Wizard to look at situations they are not familiar with and create new pivot points to handle them making them a stronger more self-reliant player.

The key idea was to create an easy to implement system that works almost immediately and only gets better the more experience someone has in using it. Here I think I succeeded. I have also already pointed out in previous posts some specific concepts that are in the book that I don't think anyone has published ever before.

Those are the reasons why I consider it new. If you simply want to say its old because its not the first book on holdem, or SNGs, or because it is a natural extension of how some people already try to learn SNGs, then we will simply have to disagree. However, even before starting the book I had created the basis for the system and when I discussed it with people who played a lot higher than me, they also agreed that it was new, and that it was worth putting out.

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So what are you saying? Nothing really, as far as I can tell, related to whether or not someone should buy a book, or whether someone is qualified to coach.

No poker coach is going to take an average beginner and teach him to crush of that person has no talent either. The question is, can he teach someone to be better enough to make it worthwhile, relative to the other coaches out there.

Everything you wrote is in fact evidence that my comparison was quite good, not awful.

It's all there in black and white.

A good example is the P90X program. There are tons of exercise videos and gimmicks out there. Every single one of them is being sold by someone who has a chiseled body. P90X is legit though, and it absolutely, 100% has absolutely nothing at all to do with the fact that the creator of it has a chiseled body. It has everything to do with the fact that the system is legit, and that would still be true if the creator were a 300 lb slob selling the system from his LaZBoy smoking cigarettes and eating Doritos.

This is not that hard a concept to figure out guys.

The standard should not be whether or not he's qualified. That has nothing to do with it. The standard should be whether the product or service is good.

If you're good enough to determine that, then view the product and make your claim. Otherwise (if you're not good enough or you're not going to spend your time evaluating it), you're missing the point and wasting bandwidth.

spike, i get that you're not going to understand why you're wrong (you are) and why your comparisons are awful (they are)...(also p90x isn't a good program, so, yeah)... but was there any reason you had to break that up into 5 separate posts within 10 minutes?

Hey guys,

I purchased this product. I'll put myself up to the challenge and see how it goes with a 50 buy-in bankroll at the $7 level.

I'm a winning player at the low stakes in a couple varieties of SnGs, one of them being DoNs, though I've hardly played them since Stars got rid of them. I've always had trouble adjusting my DoN game to 9-mans, especially on the bubble where my DoN aggression needs to actually be toned down for 9-mans or so I'm told. 9-mans is something that I've always wanted to get better at. I'll come back with a review of the book but I'll also post results in the Poker Goals & Challenges forum.

So far the interactive vids were a nice touch.

edit: this will all probably take about a month since I have a busy job and am taking a course right now as well

This will be interesting, and I will be closely following your results. Please feel free to contact me (as others have) if you need clarification on anything. It will help me to clean up any areas that need revision for future versions so it is a win/win.

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SiQ - Any chance to take a look at it yet? I am especially curious to see what you think of the mathematical calculation of bubble factor adjustments I included (among other things).

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FYP,

lol trolling though

It sounds and looks to me based upon this thread and looking at the table of contents of your book that you provide a fundamental background in ABC sng play, teaching ICM and positional and stack size hand selection for example.

Then as a new twist with your system you learn how to apply your charts at various "pivot points" to various SNG situations? Kinda like finishing an opponent heads-up using: sage, nash or chubukov?

This includes using ICM based charts against a probable range at various "pivot points" and stack sizes when facing multiple opponents. And then finishing an opponent heads-up using your version of sage, nash or chubukov. You also include video's re-enforcing how to apply the system.

I would say that is a fair assessment of the basic system. One of the ideas behind pivot points is that you can find so many stable situations in SNG's that because of the tournament structure don't deviate much in range, once you know the basic info like Position, blind levels, and effective stack sizes. If you create enough of them close together you can start to help someone really realize how much adjustment is necessary for in-game situation. However, too many pivots would be impossible to implement, so I focused on creating a system that has "enough" but not "too much" or to little granularity to be effective.

There are also some individual topic discussions such as "playing loose in the low blinds." "Interpreting the HEM Redline" etc but what you described is the bulk of it.

I realize you are not trolling, and I am not feeling bad about any of the comments in this thread. I just want to give an accurate picture of what it is. Anyone can criticize that it is being "over hyped" or whatever but if they see a thread like this at least they will know what its about.

Thanks for the comment
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Fo

Ok, so here are my thoughts on the book.

The good:
1.) The best part is that Greg teaches you how to make your own push-fold charts (as well as calling charts) so if game conditions change in the future, you can adapt your charts to keep pace. Maybe this is second-nature to some but not to me.

2.) The interactive videos are a really nice touch offering many example hands in depth

3.) Zerosum lays out his bubble strategy in more detail than in his ABC's of SNGs series

4.) The post-flop betting strategy makes it really easy to stay out of sticky situations during low-blind play, which should preserve or grow your stack going into the push-fold stage of a sng so you've got solid fold-equity

5.) The excel sheet that comes with the book saves you a lot of time from making your own templates (and look far nicer than my own).

6.) The pivot-point strategy is simple, but highly-customizable. It's great for someone like me who just wants to get started but if I want to get more in depth with it, I can. Usually simple and highly-customizable don't go hand in hand.

Critiques:
1.) It would be great if the ABC's of SNGs series came with the book at its full-price. I don't know how feasible this is depending on who owns the rights, Zerosum or DTB.

2.) More text hand examples would be nice. I said earlier the interactive videos are awesome (cause they are) but sometimes I just want to read something instead of needing audio.

I'm looking forward to putting this strategy to practice.

Thanks for the review. I actually own the rights to the ABC SNG video material but not the videos. I could for example reproduce them exactly and ship them with the book, but at this point can't use the ones I used for DTB (for example) without their permission.

However, Hunter has been very supportive of the book project so far and I will discuss with him whether he might consider allowing them to be a separate download. We might be able to work something out.

When I was discussing this project with some of my people, I had thought I might write the book and do the videos as classroom format (like ABC SNG) but was convinced that the SNG walkthroughs would be of more value.

I know that the book is not super heavy on hand quizes. I will admit that this is partially because coming up with really good hands for a quiz is pretty time consuming. You need to make sure you can set up an example that is 100% clear cut. However, it was my hope that the walk-throughs would really pick up the slack. I definitely agree with you though that sometimes it is better to be able to simply read the concept and then have a few examples to reference. This is something that I have had a few comments on and will definitely focus on in a future revision.

One related thing I thought about the walkthroughs though is that they really do add a ton of hand examples to the book. A few of the other books on the market are pretty short on both theory and hand examples, but put a single SNG at the end of the book. I had thought of doing the entire thing in text form but the book would probably be 600+ pages long to have 3 full SNG's at the end. The funny thing is that in the end the videos were more work since I completely scripted them and ended up having to write out all the hand's anyways.

Before a formal revision is published though, I may try to create an addendum document that can be sent to people who have already bought the book with some of the initial spots that people wanted more information flushed out. I still think the book stands on its own as a complete work but I would like to make it even better in the future if possible.

Thanks for posting a review!
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Btw, people keep mentioning my Stars stats and graph. I played a lot more sites than just Stars. For example, almost all of the games on my FTP scope came during and after being coached by Greg.