Hi, my name is Federico i play on pokerstars as majagua69, i have decided to créate this post to inform and prevent the comunity in regards the poker coaching of Tom Chambers.

As probably many of you know Tom Chambers its a pretty acomplish PLO book autor known for his theoreticall approach to the game, in the past i bough a few chapters of his book and his book about PLO live plus watched his videos in RIO, i contacted him early in 2017 in regards to coaching, on my first attempt of getting coaching by him things didnt really panned out , there were some comunication issues and i decided to look for other options.

A few months laters i received an email from Tom mentioning he was starting a new program of coaching and asking me if i would be interested, i had and still have great respect from the approach Tom has to the game of PLO so i decided to try again, the process of getting enough people to start the coaching toke a Little while but i was ok with it, we finally starting the coaching in December 2017, the plan was having a session a week, in all fairness there were weeks we couldnt meet for students reasons i did feel at the time that Tom sometimes was quick to also delay the class for a week, for example one week he mentioned that the group hadnt sent enough HH to review and i offer to send some more from my database but never got an answer and class was postponed, in any case this happened for a few months and we were going at a very slow pace.

By april 2018 Tom went missing for a long period of time, we couldnt get an answer of any comunication whatsover finally one of my classmates got an email from Toms wife that Tom had been in the hospital and that he would get back to us shortly, May came around and still no comunication, at this point i was busy with Scoops so didnt pay much attention, i did however send a few emails to Tom inquiring if it was worth it to follow trough with the program or maybe issue a refund, i was also a Little bit bafle that he kept poasting videos in RIO… i finally asked for a full refund on may 22th, on june 14th i sent another mail asking for an update, finally that same day i got a reply from Tom saying “I'm sorry, I have been in the hospital as you said. I can process a refund if you inform me when and how you paid for the course.”

I sent the requested info on june 25th, the again no reply, I sent him another email on july 31th

“Again it has been over a month since I sent the requested info, I can’t help but notice after I replied that you posted another video on RIO which leads me to believe you have been working ( might be wrong just explaining my train of thought )

I don’t know what affliction you are under and I honestly don’t like making a big deal of this sort of situation and I really hope you get better soon but I’m very disappointed in the lack of communication or effort for that matter, to solve the fact that me and some others paid for a course, in advance , and we get no updates or anything whatsoever , this is not the first time I have an issue with you in regards of lack of communication , I can understand someone being sick or busy for a reasonable amount of time but it toke you way over a month and several mails to even acknowledge my first concern , has been again over a month since I sent you the info requested to process the refund this is getting beyond what i feel It’s acceptable

Please I ask you once again to process my refund ASAP and at this point I do believe we are all of us in the group own an explanation “

At this point I also posted copy of this email on the Slack group that the other students were part of, finally this got a reply from Tom on August 2nd to which he said

“Hi Federico/all ill address this today”

He then asked how many sessions did we have per group , we responded to this toke him 5 days to finally reply saying he would process refunds but not full refunds ( he was going to charge us for the classes we did have ) and said he couldn’t do it that day because he needed to move some money around, I replied saying that I though it was unfair for him to charge anything because we paid for a full course that was not completed due to his unknown issue but w/e I just wanted to get this over with, this is in august 7th… we are today in august 18th and we haven’t hear anything from Tom once again…

Also I want to mention that one other person from my group contacted RIO asking about Tom because he found the coaching trough them and RIO replied to him informing him that they haven’t been able to be in contact with Tom in over 8 months and that the videos that they have been posting are from footage he sent before hand.

Im not sure what else to do in this situation but I think I should let the community know about the issues with Tom and recommend to stay away from any coaching he might offer, im not aware of what personal issues he might be going trough and I don’t want to be harsh but without any info or explanation I feel this was the best course of actions

Regards

federico

It is truly unfortunate, that as a whole two groups ended up losing not only their money but their time. Today, a lost year of study is quite substantial. I am not sure why no one has contacted Toms groups on his behalf. I am fairly new and am a recreational player and this is not the first story where I have been duped by coaches. I even thought that this is a representation of the whole industry that I am trying to get into. I reconsidered and I decided to try again. Yes, I understand that this speaks on my ability to pick top professionals in their field. Well, if a coach, who is the full-time coach on RIO and has been revered by many because of his work on PLO and his books i.e. APT is not a standard in the industry I am really lost on who is?

This has to be discussed and hopefully, people that are veterans in this industry will act and form some kind of association to protect new people that are trying to expand their knowledge and master their chosen craft from these unethical, immoral and plain criminal practices. This is exactly the image we are trying to avoid as a community.

Just maybe, this can be a pivot point where the poker community has to grow into the Worldwide entity and people who are coaches have to at least have some understanding that there will be consequences from their actions on all fronts, legal included. You are not coached about your finance from a Craiglist listing, or baseball, soccer, etc for that matter. These are all examples where coaches have to be certified they have external non profit entities that control their practices. Why maturing poker industry has to be different is baffling to me!

Forum posts will not prevent this kind of a behavior in the future.

Good luck on the tables and I want to thank Federico for posting on my own it would be hard to justify as I am new and maybe this how are things done int he poker industry.


Kirill

its looking like he's dragging his feet to pay you and maybe I suggest you try get a few hours coaching / hand reviews / of his time to repay the amount he owes.

I don't know the amount and don't believe its important to the situation and its between young tom but I def think you might have better chance of resolving the issue trying to get the rest of the time you paid for rather than actual cash money.

hope it works out for all parties involved

Well that was the initial intention , the coaching itself has been slow and as I mentioned on my original post it has been hard to get a hold of Tom , so my trust in him upholding any coaching / time commitment it’s zero , I might get my money back I might not honestly at this point it’s not about that , I feel I needed to inform the community about this

assuming this is the same Tom Chambers which i believe it is, he played a tourney in Vegas at the beginning of June and cashed http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=79360

As of today we have not been payed, he contact us in the slack group in August 22th saying he was getting money directed to his skrill and PayPal and then silence since then...

It is possible that he is very sick. Since this guy has been a reputable coach for so many years I think its fair to assume that something serious is going on on his end.

If you guys had an explanation that would make this so much easier. Im sure this is extremely frustrating. Il be interested to see how this develops, I believe you guys will get paid eventually and that Toms absence is because of something real. Maybe you can check with some of past students and see what their experiences were like.

Ben Tollerene (ben86) said in an interview that he first learned basic PLO reading tom chambers book, this guy has been working in PLO for so long I cant imagine that he would have made it this far if he was handling business like he is with your groups. From the outside looking in it sounds like he fell on some hard times

any update?

The money has been refunded and I am not sure on the status of health of Tom.