Quote:
Originally Posted by editundo
For poker coaching in 2024, it's absolutely standard that you provide qualifications in the form of results and/or references. Even with older books like Super System, Doyle's results are well-known and he has many references. The reality is both Mason and David are unqualified to teach poker in 2024. Back 20 years ago I can understand how you would just write a book and nobody cared about the qualifications, but it's 2024 now.
Offering individual poker coaching is a lot different than writing a book, and is far more expensive. There have been quite a few books where I have disagreed with the play recommended in a particular example, but I still felt the book had a lot of good material and likely made me a better player. If a book helped me to win one additional bet I wouldn't have otherwise one, it was a bargain for the price of the book.
That said, you can't truly know someone is a winning player without watching that person play for a substantial amount of time. Anyone can make up good results and show them to you, or have their buddies tell you they are a good player. Of course there is speculation like you mention in some poker books, but you can judge yourself whether or not you think each example is good or not. Would it make you feel better if S&M had given some numerical results of their poker play? You would have no way of knowing if it were true or not. I think having read prior books by a particular author gives me a much better idea of their qualifications than looking at a page of numbers.
Your example of Doyle Brunson is particularly silly, because his section of Super System is one of the worst poker books I have ever read, like bottom 10%. It's more likely to make someone a worse player than a better one, and I wouldn't be surprised if that were deliberate. It shows that being a winning player does not mean you can write a good poker book.