I am curious to see if there are any posters here who actually use a training site/coaching for live NLHE.

My opinion is that the vast majority of the regular posters in this forum would get a very high return on their investment into a training site subscription/coaching/etc. But I suspect that almost none of the regular posters here use training sites/coaching.

I am not a world class pro in my player pool, but I got back into poker from a serious rec background after COVID. I didn't get training site subscription until a couple months after I got back into poker, but I have found that my live NLHE game has gotten significantly better ever since then I did make that investment.

I guess we could also discuss the return on investment that others have had with training sites/coaching. I am personally really happy with the investment that I made in myself.

I still have an Upswing Membership though I don't use it that much. I've had one for about 3yrs now and I'm not going to renew it once it expires since I feel I've pretty much outgrown it at this point in my progression.

I'll look occasionally to see if they have any new play and explains from David Yan or Ryan Riske or if anyone is playing ACR.

I've purchased courses like the Kanu course from a few years ago. That one was pretty good and was one of the first steps that really started to make a significant improvement in how I thought about the game.

I also had an elite RIO sub for a few years and didn't renew this past year. For a lot of the same reasons, but also because generally a lot of the content was so fragmented I found myself wasting so much time just trying to find something worthwhile. It's like trying to find something to watch on Netflix.
When I realized I probably watched around one video a month because of that I figured it's not worth the money for me.

I've received coaching for about a year now from several individuals. That by far has been the most valuable thing. I've progressed even in the past 2-3 months more than I have in the first 20yrs of playing just trying to make it on my own.

My regret is not seeking out help way sooner and trying to connect w/ more like minded players.

To give some perspective on the difference middle of last year I was a clearly losing 25nl player probably roughly -4 to -5bb/100.

Now I'm holding my own at 100 and 200 at around 4-5bb/100 in the last 2 months on a site people consider "only tough regs and filled w/ bots".

I would never have been able to do this via training sites and studying on my own even w/ access to solvers.

Some people can, but I'm just not one of those people or else it would've happened long ago and I'd be one of those high stakes crushers that you see.

Suffice to say I'm a huge endorser of coaching if you can find the right one.
It's not cheap and you have to put in the work, but if you get a good coach and you're like me it's proved to be invaluable.

I even have a couple of students of my own now who are in the same spot I was last year struggling to beat 25nl. And I have to say it's pretty rewarding to see them improve and break out.

That isn't surprising considering that you are one of the top regular posters in this forum.

I have spent countless hours studying videos on training sites. I have had plenty of coaching as well

As a former athlete who has been heavily coached this seemed like an obvious path and money well spent

There is plenty of information out there for free, and I also have probably read 50+ books on poker. I feel that ive taken a big step forward in my game recently due to the mental game of poker book. My mental is quite good, and I have basically never tilted, but the book explained to me how to learn, and the type of things I can do to bring my A game.

One of the things the mental game taught me is you can only be learning a few things at a time until youve really got them down pat, and as a person with a lot going on beyond poker, my time spent studying comes in spurts. Right now I have a good bit of time for poker, and im actively avoiding learning more new things until I get what im focused on down.

I will also say ive found Saulo Costa’s videos incredibly helpful.

I am somewhat interested in coaching, but i feel that many coaches teach for online play which is just completely different. Its almost funny to see a breakdown of btn vs bb spots for range advantage when you are playing every hand vs an incredibly loose player, thus at a massive range advantage, but also against 4 of them, so at a disadvantage against the field.

I have not done 1on1 coaching, but I know that there are poker players in my player pool who swear by it.

Online vs live is different but not in the way cash vs tournaments are different.

Almost every concept carries over you just have to know how to adjust which you have to do anyways within online play. I.e. lines vs fish and regs can be different but if you know why you can make the same type of adjustments live.

The advice you're going to get from someone playing 10/25 with a 50 straddle isn't tgoing to be very useful in your 1/3 game. Also, guess what someone like Jonathan Little would be doing if he was that much of a winning poker player.....he'd be playing 25 hours a week and making millions and not giving away any secrets. Is he doing that? Nope, runs a poker training site.

I haven't watched any of J Little's content so I can't comment on the quality of it. If I were to make a guess It's probably content geared towards losing 1/2 live rec players that want to be less horrible.

I have seen him play on a low stakes streamed game and maybe he was just donking around for fun or whatever but he never struck me as a person that I would want to learn poker from.

I have found GTO concepts immensely more helpful than I had suspected, so maybe thats true.

Not totally opposed to coaching, but the prices seem high. I can buy at least 3 or 4 books for the price of an hour of coaching, so the advantage seems to be having personalized content, but unlike online play, the coach cant watch me play, or look thru my hand history. I guess im not thoroughly convinced that the content behind a subscription based paywall is much higher than the content that can be found elsewhere.

Im also more inclined to buy piosolver than a coaching lesson, if i were to spend.

I disagree with this. I think that high stakes live NLHE coaches whose normal games are 10/25 NL+ could.be very good at coaching players for small stakes like 1/3 NL, 2/5 NL, and 5/5 NLHE.

Maybe the coaching rates would be pretty expensive though.

No comment about Jonathan Little.

@ tomark If u are logging professional hours and you can take 1 nugget of information from 1 hour of coaching and incorperate it into your game it is a no brainer that its worth it. At least thats my philosophy

I am a live NLHE recreational player, playing on average 7-8 hours per week, holding my own at the local 5/10 game but with huge room for improvement.
I used to play online back in the days, always as a rec, but haven't done it for several years now.

I've recently registered to a training site, and have mixed feelings about it. Overall, as the contents are (obviously) not taylored to my level and needs, it takes a lot of time to extract information which is really valuable for me, actually more time than I am willing to dedicate to this.

I've considered trying a 1-1 coaching but, not playing online, I do not really know how this could work out.
If anyone has experience with coaching specific for live cash game, I would be curious to hear about it.

Niemand,

There are rumors that there are rec players in my player pool who are being coached by the biggest winner in the player pool (I think he has been strictly a live NLHE pro/coach from 2007 until now with no online background). One of the recs who probably got coaching has gone from being a whale who only learned poker post-COVID to winning player in less than 2 years.

I know one 10/20/40 no max pro (who also grinds online) who has a high end RIO coach who really helps him a lot with his poker game.

Smoola: which coaching site did you join?

It's not really that different. The only thing is you won't have a database to review, but the lessons are still very similar and you can talk through hand histories.

For example you don't need an online database to teach someone that you shouldn't cold call a 5x open from the SB w/ 75o.

In that case, I agree it may work. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately..., there aren't more than 2 players in my pool who I might want to pay for coaching, assuming they coach at all.
I must also say that I would not feel comfortable playing at the same table with my coach.

Are hand histories provided by the coach in form of quiz or exercises?

Because otherwise, the spots which a student remembers or considers more interesting are not necessarily those where he can improve the most, actually rather the opposite.

So in my experience there's a structured curriculum that the coach takes a student through. Depending on the length of the engagement.
If it's a one off thing then maybe a topic is chosen and discussed like how to play vs fish or something. Usually the coach will give a few recommendations on what they think the topic should be.

But for a longer term thing like building someone from the ground up

they'll typically take you through the game phases.

This obviously isn't exhaustive but just to give you an idea:

PF:
RFI Ranges
3betting
BB defense

Flop:
Btn vs BB IP and OOP SRP
SB/BB vs BTN 3bet
XRing

Turn:
Probes as PFC, as PFR
Stabs as PFC, as PFR

on and on.

These structures are pretty common so it doesn't really matter that much you are playing live or online other than the fact that ranges will be different. But the situations you need to study are the same for the most part.

In short yes coach's (at least mine) sends hh examples as sort of a quiz or drill.
But also the student should submit their own hands they have questions on.
This can help uncover some areas to focus on as well. But of course it's not entirely reliant on the student to come up w/ the examples they want to study.

Most (not all, but most) training sites have Discord servers or other online discussion forums, and most of these (not all, but most) have strategy discussion among members that yields better information than here on 2+2, delivered in a more congenial and supportive manner.

So the sampling here is going to be biased: the people who benefit the most from joining a training site are going to leave 2+2 behind, so the people remaining on 2+2 are going to be poorer matches for training sites.

I subscribed to Crush Live Poker for a while, but their Discord server is even more toxic than 2+2, so I moved on to PokerCoaching.com, and I have been with them ever since. Their content is well-organized and easily digestible, and they have some tools that I find to be immensely valuable. I have also participated in Brad Wilson's Greatness Village, and wound up buying all of his MDA strategy infoproducts so that I could participate in the weekly Zoom hand review sessions. Last year when I was training for the WSOP, I hooked up with Faraz Jaka's coaching site, entirely oriented towards tournaments, and had great experience. For this year's training, I am getting private coaching from Alex Fitzgerald, and this is working out very well for me. I have wanted Alex for a coach since I first encountered his writing and training material. Again, this is primarily tournament-oriented, although he also has some great cash game material.

Maybe so, but opening up a database and filtering for hero flat-calls from the SB to show the student how much money they are losing there is rather convincing.

My point wasn't that you don't want a database or that there isn't value there. Of course it's immensely more valuable than not having one.

It's that you can learn the same things w/o one if the student is strictly a live player which was the question I was addressing. Also you missed the meta which was more of what I was going after.

I've been crushing live NL for 3 years fulltime. I've used some sites, but find they aren't really suited to me. Most sites are good info to go from losing reg to moderate winner and learn some fundamentals.

The only resource that I use is Modern Poker Theory (easily the best poker book I've ever seen). But I don't think that my experience is going to be typical. Many players likely would benefit from a site, as learning fundamentals and implementing changes based on general principals usually takes specialized education that many poker players lack.

So I think sites are a mixed bag I guess.