I play PLO at the micros at the moment and a friend of mine is helping me out.
He plays higher stakes than me and I'm wondering what would be the best structure for coaching.
Obviously, there's a lot of theory that I have to learn but at the moment I don't even know what questions to ask and where to start?
All I can think of is reviewing specific hands, but I don't think this is enough to improve my game significantly.
What do you guys recommend? What are your experiences with coaching - good or bad? What are the things that should definitely be done or avoided?
learn the basics. that should be done before anything else:
try to play in position, dont draw to non nut hands, what sort of starting hands to go for and why.
after that, options are to go over board textures and how to play them with various holdings.
there are fewer different flops than different starting hands, so that might be a good way of flipping the script, and allows to speak about many hands at the same time.
ask why he would c/c on a t93 with KJQ but c/r raise with t9qj or stuff like that.
If you want to learn how to build a house, you don't ask the electrician how to wire a chandelier. You don't ask a roofer how to build a chimney. You don't ask a carpenter how to build the balcony.
You first learn how to create blueprints. You learn the steps that go into the building a house. Once you know the steps involved, you first start building a solid foundation.
Any coach that want to review specific hands to coach you is a useless coach. They may be a winning player, but they are for sure a bad coach.
yeah IMO this is true^, underingstanding the overall shape of strat is most important.
I thinkk its a good idea to focus on PF and flop because they decide the trajectory of a hand, and i think turn/river decisions are generally more intuitive especially if your bringing along the right ranges from the first two streets.
pre: positional dynamics, CC, RFI, 3b and 4b/call&GII ranges, considerations from each pos. how to react to single vs multiple opponents IP and OOP, how ranges change deep, 100bb, 50bb effective, etc
post: understanding how various textures interact with PF ranges at different SPR, EQ/polarity/positional advantages, and bet sizing.
one thing you could ask is for him to show you selected hands from his database, and explain the reasoning behind his deciisons
I dont think reviewing specific hands is thw right approach. You should start with coach reviewing a larger sample of hand history pre-flop and post-flop to see what leaks and areas of discussion he thinks are of most value.
Coaching really is not recommended until you have a stronger theoretical knowledge of the game, though high proficiency at another poker variant could qualify you.
Generally you should read a book or watch a training video series first, though i am not familiar enough with the different offerings to give a recommendation.
