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.

zero

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,
zero

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.

zero

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.

zero

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.