there is no currency argument. he offered to refund me in EUR. i asked if he had any USD on a poker site he could send instead, so i don't pay paypal fees. if he says that's not possible - no problem. i have zero issue with being refunded in EUR if that's the only method he has to refund me. was just hoping to avoid some vig.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jUBbCgMWmE

Introduction

Hi. My name is Daniell and I am the owner of SOLVEOPTIMIZED, a website that specializes primarily in Monkersolver coaching and consulting. On the 23rd of March 2020, BkiCe, that from here on out shall be referred to as OP, purchased a 5 hour coaching package for the amount of EUR600. Payment was made in USD for USD652 through Paypal.

What are my qualifications as a Monkersolver coach?

As I mentioned above, I run an online business that largely revolves around Monkersolver consulting and coaching. I started using Monkersolver a few months after it came out. I noticed early on that a lot of people were having a hard time getting to grasps with the solver, and that there wasn't much information available on the topic, so I started to offer my services as a coach, since I sensed that I was ahead of the curve, and could provide value to others.
There is some evidence of my knowledge of Monkersolver available on this forum. If you vist the MonkerSolver thread and search for my name, you will find that I have been providing others with free advice fairly regularly over the last two years or so.

Outside of Monkersolver I also worked as a coach for Legopoker (later bought by Phil Ivey and renamed Ivy Poker), that has now been shut down.

Over my career as a Monkersolver coach I have coached dozens of poker players, and have sold several coaching packages. During this time I have had no conflicts.

Why is it an exploit of the pricing model to refund at the pro rata rate (mathematical proof)?

I am going to outline here why requesting a pro rata refund for a prepurchased package is an exploit of the package pricing model.

OP was given two options. Option A was to book individual lessons at an hourly rate of EUR150 and option B to prepurchase a package deal of 5 hours at a discount of 20%, a total price of EUR600.

If a student were able to request a refund on a prepurchased package at any time and for any reason, it would not be rational for the student to choose option A, since the EV would always be higher from option B.

I will use mathematics to show that this is true:

Under option A the student simply pays for each session at a rate of EUR150/hr. If the student were to use 5 hours, the student would pay a total of EUR750.

Under option B, the student agrees to pay EUR600 in exchange for a package that allows the student to receive 5 hours of coaching. In the event the student decides to use 5 hours, his net gain is +EUR150. The net gain is calculated by deducting the pro rata for 5 hours from the package deal price:

EUR750 – EUR600 = EUR150

If the student can simply exchange the package for the pro rata at any time, the student has nothing to lose by purchasing a package, since he can never pay more than the pro rata, but potentially stands to gain EUR150. In poker terms, this constitutes a freeroll on behalf of the student.

We can also put this into more mathematical terms:

Let us introduce the variable α, where α represents the probability the student will use 5 hours of coaching.

For 1 ≥ α > 0:

0*(1- α) < EUR150*α

On the left side of the inequality we have the student's potential net gain from paying by the hour, which is always 0. On the right we have the potential net gain from the package price, which for an α > 0 is always a positive number.

A positive number is always more than 0, and this proves that if a student could always refund the package deal, he should always purchase the package deal. This would be rational behaviour. Likewise, it would also be irrational for the coach to offer two pricing options where one of the pricing options would never be chosen.

This is why requesting a refund at the pro rata is an exploit of the pricing model: A rational coach would not make such an offer, and so it can not be assumed a priori that the package is refundable at the pro rata rate.

Introducing a penalty to prevent exploitation of the pricing model:

Hypotehtically, if we were to allow a student to refund the package deal without being able to exploit the pricing model, we would need to introduce a penalty for the option of refunding. The fee required to prevent any kind of exploitation of the pricing model is EUR150.

We can see this is true by introducing this penalty to the left side of our inequaltiy:

(-EUR150)*(1-α) < EUR150*α

Now any time the student wishes to request a refund, the student has to pay a penalty of EUR150. There is now no scenario, or no α value, that allows the student to gain from requesting a refund. The student can no longer freeroll the coach.

A pro rata payout where OP accepts a penalty of EUR150 was offered, however OP declined this offer.

Package Policy

My policy is that prepurchased packages must be used within six months of purchase. Thereafter any prepurchased hours are expired.

Evidence thereof can be seen in this email, which was sent a little over a month before OP's purchase of a 5 hour package. This email was sent to OP's friend and referrer, who both purchased and used a 5 hour package. I am leaving the friend's name out of the email for privacy reasons, but OP can easily verify the authenticity of the email through his friend.

On the 6th of February 2020 I wrote:

"Hello X,

I do offer such coaching and can guide you through the process.
My rate is 150€/hr, billed in 30 minute increments. I offer a 20% discount on packages of 5 hours or more. Any prepurchased hours must be used within 6 months of purchase. Please let me know if there is anything else you would like to know.

Kind regards,

Daniell"

I was unable to find correspondence with OP explaining the time limit. For this reason two compromises were offered out of good faith to OP. The first compromise was that OP can still use the hours after six months of his initial purchase. OP declined this offer. The second compromise was that OP could receive a partial refund based on a penalty of EUR150. As already mentioned, OP also declined this offer.

What about OP's claim that the coaching was inadequate?

OP is claiming that the coaching provided in the initial 90 minute session was inadequate. The evidence that OP is offering for this is that he didn't give any feedback for six months, and this constitutes proof of his dissatisfaction.

Evidence against OP's claim:

OP didn't give any feedback for six months.

I am a well established Monkersolver coach that has coached dozens of students.

I run a website that specializes in Monkersolver solutions.

OP's friend both purchased and used a 5 hour coaching package.

OP's friend was the one who referred me as a coach to OP.

OP's friend is a more advanced user of Monkersolver than OP.

From my coaching notes I can see that by OP's own admission from our session on the 24th of March, he had only ran a total of two Monkersolver sims on his laptop. The discrepancy in skill is evidence thereof that OP had potentially more to learn from my coaching than his friend who was satisfied with my coaching ability and service.

Furthermore, consider the following evidence from an email sent by OP:

"On 23 Mar 2020 at 15:56, Andy wrote:

Hey Daniel, sent the Paypal over. Tuesday afternoon GMT works for me - is 15:00 GMT doable for you? As far as the length of the first session I don't really have a great sense of what we'll cover or how the sessions are structured. Is it possible to tentatively plan for an hour and if we're making good progress and our momentum feels good we can extend it to 90-120 minutes?

Thanks,
Andy"

To this I responded:

"On 23/03/2020 16:00, support wrote:
> Thank you for your payment. Tuesday (tomorrow), 15:00 GMT is still available, yes.
>
> Yes, let's plan for an hour. I can't promise we can go longer, but I think that should work out that we can expand the session if that makes sense for us.
>
> Looking forward to speaking to you, I will send you an invite for Zoom later.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Daniell"

Our session from the 24th of March was 90 minutes long. OP wanted to extend our booking of 60 minutes to 90 minutes if "we're making good progress and our momentum feels good".

Why is OP claiming that a refund was initially offered?

Consider the following chain of emails:

"On 16/09/2020 04:21, Andy wrote:
Hey Daniell,

So as you probably could tell from our first session I didn't get too much out of the coaching and am not interested in continuing. Can you refund the money I sent for the package minus 150 euro for the first session?

Thanks,
Andy"
Initially OP emails us asking for a refund of EUR450, because he didn't get too much out of the coaching and is not interested in continuing. To this email I sent the following response:

"On Tue, Sep 15, 2020 at 11:43 PM Daniell:
Hi Andy.
I am sorry to hear that you didn't get much out of the coaching. Our session was almost six months ago now, so I don't remember too much detail, but I can see from our email correspondence that you wanted to do more than 60 minutes if our progress was good, and we did end up doing 90 minutes that session. Do you have any feedback for me what you think could have been better? I think perhaps you didn't give the coaching enough of a chance, since we just did a single session and I also didn't get any feedback from you after the session.
If you would still like to cancel, we have done a total of 90 minutes, so that is EUR 225 at my non-discounted hourly rate. The balance from the original, EUR 600 package is EUR 375. I can see you paid in Paypal USD. I don't have Paypal USD at this time, so a refund would be in EUR.
Kind regards,
Daniell
"

I responded with concern for the student, and a request for clarifaction regarding his claim. I also clarify that the requested payout can not be EUR450. OP's response:

"On 19 Sep 2020 at 12:56, Andy S:


Can you send BTC? Or maybe ACR or n8?

Thanks,
Andy
"

OP does not address any of my questions in his response. His response is very curt, simply requesting BTC, ACR or n8.

There are several red flags in this chain of emails. The first being that OP is asking for EUR450 initially. The second red flag is his unsubstantiated claim of adequate coaching. The third red flag is that he wants to request a payout to a different payment method.
Requesting EUR450 is a red flag, because OP could be speculating that I don't remember the exact amount of time that was used from the package and is hoping to exploit this in order to get more money from me.

The second red flag is that OP is being very vague about why the coaching was unsatisfactory. OP declines to explain. If OP's claim is not valid, then it is potentially fraudulent.

The third red flag is that OP is requesting a refund to a different payment method. From a business perspective it is bad practice to refund to a different payment method, since this exposes the business to the possibility of fraud. An example of this would be if a customer opens a Paypal account and funds it with a stolen credit card, then requests a refund to a different payment method of which he/she is the owner.

As per the agreement with OP, I am not required to offer any refunds, only to offer up to 5 hours of coaching in exchange for a payment of EUR600. OP was neither able to demonstrate that I was in breach of the agreement, nor made any attempt to do so. Furthermore, as an individual and as a business, I must protect myself from any suspected fraud.

My response to OP:

"On Sat, Sep 19, 2020 at 5:03 AM support wrote:

Hello Andy,

I have had more time to think about this now, and I have also consulted with other coaches, and I think that given the circumstances a refund is not warranted. Especially after so much time has passed.

If there was an issue with the coaching agreement, this should have been communicated much sooner, and not nearly six months after the first session. My policy is not to refund under these circumstances.

Kind regards,

Daniell"

Clear evidence that OP is a bad faith actor

The following is a sequence of events that shows that OP is acting in bad faith:

"On Sat, Sep 19, 2020 at 12:44 PM support wrote:

Six months is my policy, but I can see from our correspondence that I did not mention this. I only mentioned my scheduling policy. I agree that it wouldn't be fair to not let you use the hours given that I didn't mention this beforehand. Just to be clear though, you are still within six months of purchase.

Fact is we made an agreement, you prepurchased a 5-hour coaching package for Monkersolver coaching and you are not willing to use the prepurchased hours. We made no contingency that the hours can be refunded, and I don't feel obliged to do so. You are still free to use the Monkersolver coaching as per the agreement.

This is standard practice in the industry, as I have confirmed with my peers.

My decision on this matter is final, and I will not be responding to any more emails requesting a refund, only to emails to schedule a coaching session within the guidelines of my scheduling policy.

Kind regards,

Daniell"

After failed attempts to reason with OP, I make it clear that I will only be responding to emails to schedule coaching sessions. I also make it clear to OP that I am not saying that because I have a six month expiration policy his option to use the hours will expire, because I can see that it was not part of our correspondence.

"On 22 Sep 2020 at 04:08, Andy wrote:


Well I guess we better schedule the remaining hours in the next two days then. What is your availability?"

Assuming good faith on part of OP, this seems to be the most reasonable email I have received from him up until this point. OP says that he is willing to continue with our agreement and request dates for availability. My response:

"
Hi Andy,

As I mentioned in our email correspondence, we did not agree on a set time frame before hand, so there is no rush to complete the sessions before the 25th of September. However, I would appreciate it if you used the remaining hours soon.

For scheduling, I am currently available Monday-Friday, 08:00-18:00 UTC. This week so far I am not available Wednesday, 10:00-11:00 UTC.
Please observe the scheduling policy when requesting times, and give me at least 24 hours notice before your intended time slot. Availability may change as other students book time, or if I have to attend a meeting.

Kind regards,

Daniell"

For the second time I am emphasizing that OP's hours will not expire within the usual six month time period that I alot to students to use 5 hour packages. I offer OP dates for availability, and remind him of the scheduling policy that was part of our correspondence.

Shorlty after this email, OP posts the following message to 2+2:

"I guess because he's trying to scam me. He has since walked back his claim that he has a policy that all coaching must be completed in six months, as he agrees this was never stated anywhere. But he still claims that he has a no-refund policy (again, never stated anywhere) and has now told me he will no longer reply to any e-mail about the refund, he will only respond to e-mails about booking furthers sessions."

There is no more follow up from OP regarding booking coaching sessions after this. It seems the sole purpose of OP's email request for coaching lessons within the next two days was bait, designed to extract any kind of statement that he could use against me.

What are the key facts?

• OP waited nearly six months to give feedback after our first coaching session.
  
• OP has declined to substantiate his claim that coaching services were inadequate.
  
• OP has declined a payout that doesn't allow for exploitation of the pricing model and that was offered in good faith.
  
• OP has stated that he is not interested in continuing any coaching.
  
• OP has demonstrated that he is not acting in good faith by pretending to want to continue his training with no intention of doing so.

In Conclusion

I have good reason to believe that OP is acting in bad faith, trying to discredit me and potentially to defraud me.

OP has proved very hard to reason with. An example of this is that he thinks that not giving feedback constitutes a reasonable form of feedback. I think it's fair to say that this is irrational.

His claim that he didn't get anything out of the Monkersolver coaching session, from a well established Monkersolver coach, is simply not credible. It is unclear how that would even be possible for an effectively novice student, and begs all logic.

I leave the body of evidence to speak for itself, and this concludes the matter.

I had 5 lessons from IsaacAsimov. He has great knowledge of Monker and he is very professional, on time, precise etc. He was once nice enough to cancel the session after starting it, because I had flu. I would recommend Isaac as a coach, because I never had any issues.

Fwiw I can say Daniell is definitely professional coach, I never had any kind of problems with him. His understanding of solvers and poker in general is on very high level and definitely would recommend him to anyone.

daniell,

i have no clue why you asked past students of yours to post in this thread. what bearing do you think they have on our disagreement?

you mentioned you spoke to several coaches who told you that it would be out of the ordinary to offer me a refund. where are these coaches? you clearly invited multiple people in your network to post in this thread, yet it doesn't seem like you have a single source willing to back up your claim that i am not due a refund

as to that massive wall of text you posted, i'm not even sure how to respond. this situation is not complicated. there is no need to introduce mathematical formulas to argue your (incorrect) point. please read and address the previous posts in this thread (none of whom i know or have any personal or professional relationship with).

I think you should have contacted him sooner fwiw. But, I do coaching and in this situation would just send the refund and ask for an explanation/feedback on what you felt was inadequate.

Just my two cents.

in what possible world could i be acting in bad faith? if i thought your coaching was worth the money i was paying for it, i would complete the package. it is you who is acting in bad faith by refusing my request and attempting to charge me 150 euro for requesting a refund.

how am i trying to discredit you? i asked you for a refund privately and only had to make this thread because you initially refused to refund me and are now trying to implement a 150 euro penalty for returning my money. you are discrediting yourself.

how am i trying to defraud you? i am attempting to settle a debt with you for your full hourly wage. i still don't understand how you still think you are at risk of being defrauded you when you are being offered your full hourly rate for any time of yours i used. if you value your time at 150/hr how much money have you cost yourself by engaging in an extended e-mail thread and then writing that essay in this thread, rather than just issuing my refund the second i asked? you are defrauding yourself.

most importantly, consider how absurd it is to tell a student who says he didn't get value out of your coaching that his opinion is not credible simply because you are a "well established" coach. it doesn't get much more entitled than that.

I understand your logic about getting freerolled, but I think charging 150 euros as a penalty is unfair, too.

Basically you offer 2 Options:

A is 150€/h which equals 750€ for 5 hours

B is 120€/h which equals 600€ for 5 hours

So effectively the student "freerolls" you for 30€/h and he used 1.5h, so he should pay 45€ as penalty and receive 600-225-45 = 330 euros back.

i am offering to pay him 150 euro per hour. if i was attempting to pay the 120 per hour price for my pro-rated amount, i would agree with you, i am freerolling 30 euro/hour. but that's not the case.

I have no idea why former students are posting good reviews as it has nothing to do with this. Furthermore the coach has posted a wall of gibberish that I don't understand how anyone can take seriously - we're talking about a simple concept of pro-rating and there is some completely irrelevant non-applicable equation involving alpha lol.

For the coach - your fee is $150/h - you offer a discount for 5 hours because it benefits you to sell a larger amount. The client took this discount but then did not want to move forward after a lesson and requested a refund for the other 4 lessons. He would normally be refunded $480 of the $600, but as this would be unfair to the coach he should be charged $150/h instead of $120 and forfeit the discount. The client says that is fair and is willing to pay $225 for the 1.5 hours and would be owed a $375 refund. That should be the end of this.

For some reason it isn't so the coach is discrediting himself - things like the client not following up are irrelevant - the coach has an equal obligation(if not more) to follow up as he is the one holding funds. Now he seems to be making up some kind of no-refund policy and holding the client's money hostage.

As a coach myself I would just hope for a review of "It wasn't the best fit for me but he is very professional and his knowledge could be helpful to many others" - instead this particular coach is making some imaginative explanations and I would question his ability to apply concepts in the correct scenarios. Seems just like a guy that has used MonkerSolver and charges $100+ an hour to teach people its basic functionalities. You can find way better than this.

Definitely sounds like this is the case lol.

it's funny how daniell and his shills keep making completely irrelevant posts ITT to distract from the actual issue.

i think we can all agree that i shouldn't have waited six months. but lol @ reading all the posts in this thread and only being able to offer "bkice must have money problems!" as a response. as if that point has any bearing on anything.

Thank you for your input R4iseItUp.

In the argument I outlined, EUR 150 is the maximum penalty to prevent any kind of exploitation a priori. That means before any hours from the package have actually been used. That way, no matter what the student's a priori preferences are, there is no way the student can gain from paying by the hour versus buying a package. The student is indifferent between the two pricing options in terms of EV.

In your example, the freeroll is the amount of hours that the student has used, but the freeroll is for the amount of hours that the student could use. It's a free option to the student that he can exercise or not. That's where the excess EV lies for the student.
To put this differently, following your logic the freeroll before the student uses any hours from the package would be 0 since he has used 0 hours, but it is EUR150, the most the student stands to gain from the pricing model.

That being said, there is still merit to your intuition that a better price is possible given that the student has already used some hours from the package, and will be charged for them at the full hourly rate. In this case you can argue that after the student has already used 1.5 hours, he can only freeroll for the remaining 3.5 hours. At a freeroll of EUR30/hr, this is equivalent to EUR105, the remainder of the freeroll that was left from the package.

New payout, taking into consideration the amount of time that was used:

EUR600-EUR225-EUR105=EUR270

I would be willing to offer this partial refund to OP.

I would also like to reiterate that this is simply a compromise offered to OP in good faith, and I stand by everything I wrote in my response. I think that under the circumstances this is more than fair.

I was actually wrong about this. This is still exploitable by OP if he knows before the package is offered that he will do at least 1.5 hours, but can cash out for a penalty of EUR105. The freeroll is still the same in that OP stands to gain EUR150. OP only has to be 42% sure he will do the full five hours to benefit from this.

x is the probability OP will do the full five hours.
OP either gains +150, or pays a penalty of -105:

x*150-(1-x)*105=0
x=0.4118

So if OP thinks there is a 50% chance he will do 5 hours or more, he is still exploiting the pricing model.

How is this still going and WTF are you talking about? There is no exploit. There is no freeroll. He is not gaining any money from you. He is paying you $225 when he already feels he hasn't gotten value. Give the man his remaining $375 back.

i don't know how to put this any more simply, and i truly have no idea how there can be any debate about this. your hourly rate, before any package-related discounts, is 150 euro per hour. you coached me for 1.5 hours. that means you should receive 225 euro for your time spent coaching me. under no circumstances should you receive more than 225 euro, as that would represent YOU freerolling ME.

once again, i offer to pay you 225 euro and request you refund my 375 euro. it is very strange how you keep insisting that someone compensating you at your full hourly rate constitutes a freeroll for them.

It would be completely different if he had blocked out time for you and you didn't show up. He lost the opportunity to coach other students or do something else. If what you are saying actually happened that way, there's no valid reason for him to deny you a refund. Seems really scummy.

Yeah, what he is posting makes 0 sense. There's no freeroll if the OP is paying the standard rate for the time used.

You are being irrationally aggressive in your pursuit of getting back a few hundreds. Doxing and deliberately hurting someone else business.
It appears both sides can’t come to an agreement. Would suggest to ask an outside party for ruling. Clearly public discussion won’t give a fair resolution to any dispute in 2020.

doxxing? i never once outed the coach's name or site, every post i made in this thread withheld identities until he outed himself. i was hopeful that he would be embarrassed to potentially have his name attached to this and would just refund my money after hearing some other perspectives. i never imagined he would eagerly out himself as the coach and write an essay complete with mathematical formulas tripling down on the idea that i am freerolling him.

i do agree with you i've wasted an irrational amount of time chasing daniell around and trying to reason with him. i would happily agree to arbitration. are there any mods in this subforum or well respected posters who arbitrate disputes like this?

This.

There is no exploit Issac, pay him the refund minus the full hourly rate for the time he used.

If you have issues with this, then just do a model where players get their 5th or 6th lesson free after paying for 4 or 5 lessons. There's a reason why coaches don't do that though: The sort of "dirty little secret" is that students pay up front, enticed by discounts, and plenty don't end up using all of their hours over a long period of time. Also, many that would drop out after 1,2 or 3 hours on a backended free lesson deal will use all the hours on a bulk purchase.

Coaches need to be aware that they benefit from this and handle refunds in these spots quickly and fairly.

There's also the issue of just standing behind your product. If someone does an hour and doesn't like it, you're really not going to stand behind your product/service? It's not like he wants a refund for the 90 min he used.

If you go onto virtually any reputable product that sells monthly subscriptions and offers a discount for a yearly rate, you can get a refund minus paying the full amount used.

If you disagree, I'm happy to bring in plenty of other coaches who have coached players for 5-10, even more years, to talk about pro rated refunds on bulk purchases.

Discussion in this thread seemed neither productive nor impartial, so I requested moderator input from Matt Sklansky, who in turn deputized ChicagoRy.

To keep matters short, I have decided to accept ChicagoRy's recommendation for the resolution of the dispute, and have issued the full pro rata refund of EUR375 to BKiCe.

i received 375 euro from daniell today.

one last huge lol at the way you conducted yourself throughout this daniell. i question your sense of ethics as well as your logical reasoning skills and have no idea why anyone would pay for coaching from the type of person who continues to irrationally insist the sky is red and the only reason everyone around him says the sky is blue is because they're impartial or don't fully understand

I'll be fully honest, it's been a while since I've trolled 2+2, but this thread just kept getting more out of control.

I'm reasonably familiar with you IRL BKice from many years back, so I'll publicly admit this bias, but I also am pretty sure you wouldn't (or shouldn't) know my name, but honestly, this is just business ethics 101.

This read like a sci-fi novel where we are trying to talk logic into a robot that wasn't programmed for logic. As a poker coach myself, this is one of my biggest fear. The minute a student had any negative feedback for me, I would literally just want to know more, how could I improve, what would have been better.

I am shocked it took this much effort to get a refund and this should absolutely be considered a major red flag about doing business with this person going forward.

This ^

I'd never heard of this coach before but now I have and know that I would NEVER deal with them ever.