I think the disclaimer should link to the sticky that helps people on how to choose a coach. People are lolstupid sometimes about stuff and the stickies aren't always easy to find for everyone.

my opinion: first off no title, except "see my listing in coaching forum" if coach wants it. presumably, potential students will do just that. they won't assume the coach is somehow endorsed by TwoPlusTwo based soley on that I hope.

second, when someone goes to the coach listing forum they'll get a pop-up like we have on the transfer threads (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...ng-rules-1529/)

within that popup one of the things we can STRONGLY ADVISE is that you verify who you are speaking to. I don't want to make coaches post their screennames if they don't want to.

of course, a coach who does so voluntarily, probably has just utilized a good marketing tool.


that's my opinion. if forumcop and the other mods agree they can begin implementation immediately.

i like the idea of a pop-up

This is a good idea. I like this

You don't think there's even a wee bit of conflict of interest given that most mods in this forum, so far as I can see, are also anonymous coaches? Perhaps it's simply a coincidence most of them also seem to be strongly in favor of changes that are mostly superficial as well.

To say nothing of the fact that having a green name also immediately adds more reputability to somebody even though history on this forum has shown that's not necessarily deserved. Do you really expect a potential student with no real understanding of what's going on actually going to a grill a mod who gives him a half-answer as to his identity?

Actually let's make this even easier. Would there be a problem with a thread listing people advertising coaching and giving a brief objective overview of their recent results/accomplishments? If people wished to opt out of providing screen names they could do so. Basically some sort of format like:

Dansky | dnova9 on Stars, Dansky451 on FTP | Dansky has seen poor results over the past year as a result of shots at games from $25/$50NL to $200/$400NL. His older results have him as one of the top winners in games up to $10/$20NL.

FastHabit | screen names available on PM | Author or coauthor of several popular poker training e-books. Verifiable results of winning above 2ptbb/100 in games ranging from $3/$6NL to $10/$20NL.

breathweapon | refused to provide active screen names | no verifiable results available

Dire, I sympathize with your stance in this thread, but you are asking 2+2 to do something no publisher does--investigate the claims made in a classified ad. It is as simple as that.

The changes that will apparently be adopted are all that can reasonably be expected from a publisher who simply provides a marketplace for buyers and sellers to meet.

Seriously, do you criticize your local newspaper for not inspecting the cars listed for sale in the ads section?

Did you read my simple solution? This requires literally zero involvement from 2+2 yet still actively ensures some degree of integrity amongst the coaches here. With regards to the thread listing coaches, I again was not suggesting that be maintained by 2+2. I'm sure plenty of posters would be willing to create/maintain it. It'd be quite a useful service with no serious upkeep necessary.

I don't think analogies for this situation really apply simply because there's basically zero in the way of consumer protection or scamming repurcussions available here. Lemon laws in the US provide customer protection against misleading car sales not to mention potential civil or potentially criminal charges against people who intentionally deceive when selling cars. If you try to sell misleading goods on ebay, you may find the FBI knocking on your door. But on 2+2 if you completely misrepresent yourself, make up some fake identity and scam people out of thousands of dollars, the worst we can [within the law] do is call your mommy and tell on you even if we know exactly who you are and even where you live.

This isn't like any other market. People are getting scammed out of thousands of dollars which would typically make this a high grade felony, yet here - there are absolutely zero major repercussions for looting as much as you can before you get busted. And once you get busted there's absolutely nothing to stop you from starting the scam all over again under a new identity. And this problem is just going to continue to get worse as fewer and fewer people are able to legitimately earn a living at this game.

Dire, I used to sympathize more with your approach, however, I've come to learn that there is a bit more at play here.

Example: Recently a person made a thread in HuNL saying he got scammed for $500 from a user that had previously scammed. Over the years I got some personal information about that user. I offered it up with the idea that the scammed as well as previous scammed could perhaps file a lawsuit to try to get their money back.

First reply? From the guy that lost $500, "well that sounds extreme."

Apparently people in this thread have information about BW. If somebody feels he did something illegal, what is preventing them from contacting the authorities?

I still do think you raise some good points, but just as often as there is no information about the scammer, there is information and the victims just don't pursue it.

I'm sorry if this point has already been raised but I think the main problem here is the name of the forum. The word listing to me implies that coaches have been registered is some way. I think the whole point is getting users to realise that they are clicking into an independent advert. If these are effectively classified adds that are posted by coaches then I think the thread title should say so.

Starting to pursue the matter further is not guaranteed to give results, and, not sure how jurisdictions in different countries differ from each other in this matter, but in the worst case scenario you might end up paying the expenses of the legal process yourself. Then again, to lessen the risk and ease the effort of one individual plaintiff, and I guess to boost the efficiency of the process as well, there's a procedure called mass action. Dunno about details how that would work out though, and if it even could be applied in this case, but something to consider.

File a lawsuit with who? An American living in Russia scammed people across the world using Skype, a service based in Luxembourg. Who exactly do you think is going to claim jurisdiction or take this on?

And also, yet again - have you read my simple solution? I don't understand this. Everybody keeps wanting to repeat 'well this is just out of our hands' when my simple solution elegantly makes it vastly harder to scam here with absolutely zero involvement needed from 2+2. If I'm making some logical mistake in my suggestion there - please correct me. As is, it's seeming to be just an elephant in the room since this solution is well.. simple!

Exactly, that is why the poker world is rife with scamming, its a completely unregulated wild west. Suggesting people take legal action is ridiculous, we all know from past experience that it's never gonna happen. It'd cost more than the amount that was scammed, their are question marks over juristiction and the FBI have more important stuff to be worried about than some online gambler getting stung for $500 by a guy living in Russia or China.

+1, your simple solution makes it much much harder to scam with no effort required from 2+2. The only negative I can see from their PoV is that coaching ads won't make them as much money as all the scamming/misrepresenting coaches will shut up shop.


Case in point, look at this coach who's sn I asked about before the BW scandal even broke, here the response he posted yesterday to me - http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=131

So in his response we have this coach mentioning
[x]crashed hard drive - the bane of so many coaches
[x]45+ reviews - Jason Ho and BW promoted their many positive reviews as a reason to buy coaching from them
[x]some graphs - next to meaningless when you can filter your results in HM and photoshop out those filters in a matter of seconds
[ ]some actual proof that this guy is a winning player - no screenname, he says it's 'personal and private' information and 'due to past events I have no desire to make it public'. Complete BS, a very large % of players sns are known and it makes zero difference to their game. These days regs have tens of thousands of hands worth of stats on each other in their HUDS, knowing player XYZ is poster ABC on 2+2 provides zero info compared to the amount of info the players have on each other in their HUDs.

This guy could well be another BW or Jason Ho for all we known. He is utilising his reputation, some meangingless graphs and several positive reviews as a means to generate customers. If Dire's solution was implemented and he had to provide a sn, I'm guessing the game would be up for this dude as he knows he would likely be found out in no time if he tried to impersonate an actual winner. I know of another high profile coach that is severely misrepresenting himself and charging big bucks, yet is guaranteed to get customers based on his reputation. He too, coincidentally, likes to keep his sn private.

Strange how the coaches who are winning have no problem providing their sns, and example being this guy who posted a coaching ad a few days ago - http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/16...-100nl-799849/

Here's another one - http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/16...pecial-714945/

Why not? Surely 2+2 should be siding with it's users and making the marketplace safer for them, not with commercial entities such as coaches, many of whom seem to be scamming/misrepresenting. Any coach who is actually winning at a rate that justifies his fees has no problem using their sn in their coaching thread to entice customers. Requiring sn's is only gonna hurt the dodgy coaches.

I have a personal hate for scammers after being scammed out of a few hundred euro a couple of years ago by a bogus online company when I was alot more naive than I am now. It is a sickening feeling to realise you have been taken in by a con artist. I am disgusted by what looks to me like pretty obvious scamming of fellow 2+2 members by several dodgy coaches who refuse to provide proof that they are winning.

Dire, Gball, my point is that when suggested that they could perhaps pursue a lawsuit, the person who was scammed called that "extreme." My point is that there can be recourse. In my example there sure is a great potential for recourse. I'm not saying that there's recourse against BW, but if he's an American in Russia, surely he will come back to America? If you have his full name, address, other family contact information, I can think of a few ways to pressure him into giving you a refund using a lawyer and the justice system. Again, I'm not saying all scammed cases there will be grounds for recourse, but if you had a lead on somebody that robbed your house, you'd at least probably follow that lead a bit, no? Why should this be any different? If you go get a free consultation and a lawyer says it's not worth it, that's one thing, but until then I think it's a mistake not to look into it some.

There are many other examples of scammed people on 2p2 sympathizing with the people who scammed them or just not caring enough about the money that they lost (strangely enough, many of us end up seemingly caring more than the victims themselves). I don't think that I need to go into more detail to make that point, but if you insist I can.

Nano, I like your participation in this thread, and at the risk of angering you, I think the solution to your last post is simple: Find out if the students the guy is coaching are real, find out what they learned and if any of it is suspicious report back. Even if you made people list their screennames, you would still have to verify them, then you would have to verify that they know what they are talking about.

The one thing that bothers me about "oh sn and graph, solution is simple" is that nobody seems to realize how much variance can really take place in this game. Just b/c a guy is beating a level does not, by any stretch of the imagination, mean he is a good poker player and certainly not a good coach. If you blindly give anybody providing a legitimate poker handle with decent winnings approval to coach, you're going to end up with a lot more "scammed" students, in the sense that they didn't get nearly what they were told they would receive.

So what is the solution? Well Nano did a good job of questioning that coach without being over the top and rude in that coaching thread. Now, somebody just needs to follow up with the guy's students and make sure he isn't obviously teaching them bad material, and if he's teaching them good material and those students/forum is legitimate, then you've now done a pretty good job vetting a coach.

You also lose good coaches that don't share their sns. I know some people countered that with stats and all everybody knows who is who, but some of the same people talked about how big of an edge Stox had by multi accounting. Even that aside, I don't know enough about 3+ player games to made a confident statement, but I know that in heads up play that being anonymous and playing people you know can be a very big edge (and can occur within ethical grounds or outside of them), both in heads up sng and heads up cash.

But seriously, everybody just needs to follow Nano's route and ask the right questions, that'll be much more surefire than just asking people to post graphs and sns, then still having to verify them, then still not knowing if the coach is actually teaching anything valuable or is just running well/is strong enough in one area that he wins enough to look decent.

I think one policy I will put in place when talking with new perspective students will be to have them discuss my work with old students. I think any of the guys I have worked with would be happy to talk with new students candidly and it seems much more straightforward than getting students to give reviews for a coaching thread.

Good idea (to who ever suggested it first).

I love it. A quick glance at his post history shows him asking for help in incredibly trivial hands at stakes ranging from $0.05/$0.10 to $0.10/$0.25 as recently as early 2009. Then in his coaching thread he claims to have coached over 100 players since early 2009 from 10NL to 100NL and that: "I have been helping people with moving up through the limits from 10/25/50 NL to 100/200 NL and above."

Here's a particularly fun post from him on deuces, where posts as Constantin. It's from late 2008. http://www.deucescracked.com/forums/...ne-poker-inter : Oh boy, that looks a little bad when he says in his coaching thread he's been playing live poker since 2002 yet here he claims to be new to poker in general in 2008? Youch. Oh well. In his defense he does go on to say he thinks he's really turned things around based on a 9000 hand sample played the week prior at $0.05/$0.10 on Stars.

It definitely is quite impressive to go from just starting poker to donking off hundreds at the nanostakes to suddenly specializing in coaching people on moving up from 10/25/50 NL to 100/200 NL 'and above'. I guess he's just that awesome. Although it's kind of odd that he seems to have recently been cleaning house a bit, removing graphs he posted on deuces cracked from the interwebs and apparently deleting his facebook page. I'm sure it's probably just a coincidence.

This is what you get when you deal with "anonymous coaches." And the problem is that student feedback is completely useless as was shown in breathweapon's case. Bogdanm's thread is also loaded with tons of great feedback. Does 2+2 seriously want this?

It's a nice thing that so many lawyers play poker. Here you go: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/57...g-scam-802167/

Sure people can run very hot over small samples. If a student thinks a guy who's played 50k hands lifetime, ran at 11BB/100 and hasn't played a single hand of poker in 2 months is the best player the world's ever known, then that's his decision to make. The big difference is the student would have legitimate data to base his decisions on rather than relying on invariably inflated and often times completely fraudulent claims.

What in the world? Have you been reading anything here? I'm a pretty tolerant person - but I've pointed this out about a half dozen times now and also mentioned as many times that the primary benefit of my suggestion is that there is ZERO VERIFICATION OR ANY OTHER SORT OF INVOLVEMENT REQUIRED OF 2+2: the simple solution

But it doesn't solve the problems we're having here. The solution could be fine, but I think there's still some holes. Again, like the current format, you're relying on students to read a short undertitle and understand what it means. It's obvious to me that it hasn't been happening that way, so it's not really a realistic solution to focus purely on what the undertitles have.

Also, what disadvantages does the following have compared to your suggestion:

- Undertitles say "View my coaching ad" or say nothing at all.

- A disclaimer is viewed before entering any of the coaching threads, warning students to fully check into each and every coach and that coaches are merely paying for ads, not vetted, researched and so on.

There we solve the problem of naive people getting taken advantage of because they are warned fully beforehand. We also solve the problem of having undertitles that are confusing/misleading/misinterpreted.

Your solution is more heavy handed in a regulation sense and I don't believe it actually full fulfills the goal of not having any misleading/open to interpretation type undertitles. "Known Coach" will still sound like 2p2 is vetting the coaches to some students and "Anonymous coach" is hardly clear to the random/naive users. In fact, I doubt either undertitle would be clear to everybody in that case. That leads me to believe that the best way to address the undertitle aspect of this is to minimize/keep it very simple and clear, rather than put more value/security into the undertitles, as your solution seems to do.

And I'm primarily thinking of the less detailed, more naive users when analyzing your solution/the other solution I mentioned and any other suggestions. I fully believe you, Nano, myself, many others giving opinions in this thread would get scammed equally as often (or less often) under any of these proposed changes are the current policy, as every one of us (I hope) would fully research these coaches if the time vs risk made sense to do so.

But please, just look at all of this objectively. You and Nano give different solutions. One of you has a better solution, but likely neither solution is the best. The same can go for the solutions I've offered in this thread. The best thing we can all do is not get married to any of our own ideas, but critique them and offer up improvements. I thought a disclaimer at the top of each coaching thread was a good idea. Others offered some negatives of that, and some good points. That's not what is going to happen now. I'm OK with that, and am trying to keep giving my input on what I feel is the best moving forward.

I also love how on 2+2 everyone is guilty until proven otherwise. I indeed have helped/coached over 100 players since early 2009. At first it was players that were either starting out or very low limits (friends, 2-10nl players). As I became a better player, thinker and teacher I've added higher limit players to my list.
There are students of mine that have been with me (on/off or more) since early/mid of last year. One of them in particular plays 200nl now and when we started when he was playing 50nl. Others have moved up from 10nl to 50/100nl. Others have turned their hobby into a more enjoyable experience. Some have had few sessions with me and I've lost contact with. Did I help them on their way up? I think I did. Was I the only reason they've moved up and done ok? Of course not. I was just there to lead the way, speed up the process and provide mentoring.


If you look at both my website and this thread on 2+2 I do say that "I've started playing online poker in early 2008 during my last semester at the University of Waterloo". Yes I was a newb at first but everyone went through that. Yes I've been playing poker since 2002 but nowhere did I claim that I was good at it. I was just another fish like most people when they started out. And throughout my university I played with friends and ocassionally in casinos.

When I started playing online I was a fish, again like most people. I played casually at first and then decided to take it a bit more serious as I was searching for jobs (when I finished school). When I take something seriously I put a lot of effort into it and try to get better (on top of being a fast learner). That's where that first post you linked comes into play. That was my turning point.



I never claimed to be a great player but perhaps a decent one. I found ways in which I can combine teaching with what I enjoy doing (poker) and I've decided that with my knowledge (limited as it may be) I can help others out. I am also a very fast learner (usually a visual learner). As you can see from my reviews I think I've helped (and still help plenty of people) quite a few them. And again my teachings rely on getting you to think outside of the box, getting you to do things or consider things that you have never even thought about. I'm not teaching you (or claiming to) my game or how I play (or someone elses game), but rather how I would think in a certain spot.
As others can attest I do this because I love teaching and helping out. There have been players I've helped for free (even as early as a couple of months back) and players I've offered big(er) discounts because of their financial situation.
If you don't believe me please get in touch with any of my active students (or past students) and see what they say. With their permission I can provide Skype contacts so you can talk to them first hand.

How exactly am I cleaning up house? My facebook account is still there and hasn't been touched in forever (I rarely use it anyway). As far as the DC graphs go I'm not sure which ones you are talking about, but since my posts there are pretty old, 2008, chances are they've been deleted/removed. My site, Skype and E-mail are also still active, and will be for the time to come.

How can you compare BW's feedback to mine? I think I have 4/5x times the amount of feedback he has(d) plus a lot of track record of students that have done very well with my coaching.


As I've posted earlier (and discussed with my students for a while now) during the World Cup (which starts Friday) I'll be very busy. Between coaching, family, side business, watching the games and playing both live/online that doesn't leave me much time to do other things and the first thing I cut into when time is short is the amount of coaching I do (which means I won't be able to accept many, if any, new students). That means that my thread on 2+2 will expire for the duration of the World Cup. Does that mean that I am cleaning house? Of course it does if you are looking for any reason to call me a scammer. Will I still have my personal site up, Skype and E-mail? Of course (and yes I will still reply to hands throughout the WC).


If the information I've provided, along with everything else that I've mentioned before is not enough for you then I have nothing more to say. I won't jeoperdize my accounts and bankroll in order to satisfy some trolls that take pride in trying to bring down other people's success.

I don't have the time, nor patience to sit on a forum all day and argue with you. I invite you to message my current or past students and get your own opinion. I've said all I've had to say and this post will be my last on this matter.

hi guys, seems like this thread has run its course.

thanks for all the work and discussion done in this thread.

new changes have been discussed and decided on, and we'll be implementing them this week. we hope they will make the coaching community a bit more transparent and safer going forward.

if you have further questions or opinions about this please PM a moderator.