Maybe there's a recognised term for the effect I'm trying to describe?

Something like The Vortex Implosion Domino Effect.

Games get tougher, edges shrink, the number of players coaching as an income and variance buffer increases, a higher percentage of players are now coached so improve their game, edges shrink even more, yet more players therefore become coaches, and so on and so forth.

What is the most players at a table who are coaches that anyone has been aware of in a game or tournament they were sitting in?

Ask yourself, are you a coach? I bet you are!!

Those that can't do.... teach.

Lol one of your better posts Sage. Hit and Running Full Time Poker remains the goal that all should strive for. Until then though, it's pretty nice to set your own schedule, not answer to anyone, and make a living off playing a game.

This thread could be more interesting if you were to ask : When should a professional poker player call it quits ?
Many players who were formerly crushing are barely making it now, the highest limits in holdem for the average grinder are nl200/500 which caps what you can earn for a living.
You come to ask yourself at what point is it not worth your time anymore ?(and if so, how hard is it to change career with an empty resume ?)

These are important questions that I rarely see being addressed.

The poker pro/streamer Innerpsy for example is going through a big downswing but it's probable that his winrate is not that high anyway (https://i.gyazo.com/889b796386054f19...495cd41b66.png)
Should he persevere while having a ****ty daily grind with a lot of ups and downs or should he try to do something else with his money ?

most of the coaches are a waste of time and money

a lot of them don't play poker and show you old or tweaked results graphs

the most impact comes from regulators reservation

the less from natural evolution of poker players.

It's hard to achieve wealth when you have expenses. Income of course does not equal wealth. First step is to try to win enough so you are overrolled not underrolled. Then to set aside savings for X months. Then to buy crypto/invest in market/buy real estate. All while paying your rent/mortgage, food, bills, taxes, supporting family. Tough life but an exciting one as the uncertainty of what will happen can alone be intriguing enough to just go for it compared to the mundane desk job daily grind.

This question has been asked every year since I've been around online poker (10 years now), everyone always mentions about shrinking edges, games dying etc.

In some cases, they're right, look at LHE, look at 180 man SNGs. But in other cases, it's totally wrong, spin and gos, MTTs. In other cases it has changed, HU Cash got super profitable '10-13 range but has slowed some since then. These questions aren't easy to answer and generalities don't help a lot since they aren't often very accurate.

As far as the meat of your post, I don't think it matters how many actual coaches there are. The demand for coaching will really drive the amount of hours coached/money spent on coaching. It doesn't really matter if there are 10 or 20 coaches per 1000 players, if a player needs coaching they will choose the same amount of hours on avg from 1 of those 10 or 20 coaches.

There's always been really bad coaches, really good coaches and a lot in between.

I have noticed some of the top coaches are now coaching exclusively for stables, they want a % of the earnings for their time, rather than a strict hourly rate. I think that lines them up better with the students too. For awhile there, there were guys charging $200-400hr without a clear curriculum, and even if they had good results, you had no idea how well they could convey what makes them successful to another player (particularly one that doesn't play nearly the same stakes as them). It has gotten better imo.

1 on 1 poker coaching from high stakes players is almost always ev- for the student. esp if the coach is mtt reg

Plus of course different categories of coach.

So for all you budding poker coaches out there, if your A game is most students' B game then you can become one of these (poker) coaches:

A mind set coach
A lifestyle and nutrition coach
A bank roll management coach
A tells coach
A software tools coach
A game selection coach
A how to be backed coach
And with so many coaches we'll need a head coach to manage the other coaches

coaching is best designed for total recs or established pros trying to move up. the price is almost perfectly inelastic for recs, and for pros they should be able to determine if the coach has value / merit right off the back. i believe that's why it is mostly looked down upon (ignoring predatory aspects) by the community since most of the chatter is from neither of the two groups, despite it being a good practice in essence.

That's a great point, totally logical.

My serious (less tongue in cheek) point is that the recs group have more access to and more choice of coaching than ever, so there is a risk that they'll move up into the middle group.

The middle and possibly upper middle group can't make a lot of money anymore so many of them may consider becoming coaches.

Like two women who turn up to the ball in the identical dress, it's just a matter of time before two people across a poker table simultaneously say to each other, "are you interested in coaching?".

The problem isn't that there are too many coaches. The problem is that it isn't as valuable as it used to in the past.

Say for 6-max cash the value of getting the top end coach (say Paul Otto Internet or someone like him) is like 1-1.5bb/100 to your winrate after X hour of coaching but getting access to Bovada/Global Poker Pool for poker is worth like 4bb/100.

Add to this that for both Holdem and PLO now you can get solvers it is kinda more reasonable to buy a solver rent a sever and work on your game that way.

There is also a problem with dimininshing return. Say you are a part of the HU syndicate for 100$ HU hypers. IF you get coached by top end guy there is a big chance that yeah you are going to move to 200$ syndicate but you would still be probably better off learning Spins instead in terms of profitability.

This phenomenon is easily visible in what succesfull stables do they don't focus on making their horses better as much as you think they do. They focus a lot on putting their horses in the softest pools possible.

With the poker "enviroment" fragmented the way it is the value of playing the best pools is several times higher than getting coached by top end guys (especially now with solvers both for Holdem and OMaha already avaliable).

Maybe dogishead will make a comeback? He had most of these areas covered.

So true.

It is also true that every year there seems to be new coaches who are often(not always) guys in downsings. The overpriced/under qualified poker coach is nothing new.

Like everything else caveat emptor.

Hmm or maybe I go for the Private one-on-one weekend workshop With Alec Torelli, it's only $12,500. Tough one.

Private lessons with Jamie Gold? LOL, first step: set light to large sum of cash. Second step: hit ATM

I trained myself with the help of books, thinking, experience, software when it comes to 8-game (plo, nlh etc.), plo8, nlh mtts, but after years of study and play (and these are not the only games and studies I do) I have long been without will of much more study.

So, if I can get cheaply basic information that even any "dummy" can provide for some other stuffs, I would pay for it, if I will need it. You know, you can pay for someone to clean your flat also. If I could get coaching from my future self, I would take it.

When it comes to basics (plus) that are not in books, that is one area, but even when it comes from books etc., it is quite a bit of work and in many cases one can put good strategies even on single papers that take a long time to learn, so why not pay for it, when it isn't as expensive as your time? You know some other area of competition where top players don't value all kinds of coaching? Although Magnus the chess player didn't spend too much time with Kasparov, his father has been looking after him all the way, and I don't know what else, but top players there have all kinds of coaches and helpers. The latter word is especially indicative of what you can get.

What comes to all kinds of supplemental coaching, I am in favour, as they are professionals on the area and I am not and I value knowledge. I just happen to value my own picks also, so I am not all over it, but I could be, if I would see a top need to improve here.

Getting coaching from a lifetime grinder to how to grind the best way, all what comes to it, might be worth it; I would take my own advice when it has helped me, just that it would unlikely help you.

Above all, poker to me is about experience, and it comes by playing, the rest being the foundation (that many seem to relatively overvalue) and supplemental stuffs, that both are also necessary.

A study style is also an important consideration, e.g. you see a lot of hands posted on forums, and then everyone gives their opinions about them, and although I did read a ton of HHs from books (or plo and nlh mtts), and analysed half a ton myself, I never felt it being more than foundational book reading and then training analyses of nlh cash hands (I didn't see a use to do that much in plo).

NLH is more theory, one learns that form books, and then one can apply it, or the GTO, that being the foundation, and no coach needed, just doing some math like analyses of HHs after that.

PLO and mtts nlh was all about reading HHs and forming a system out of them, and zero analyses after is needed.

It takes just one book after plo to learn plo8 and it is mostly about experience and one gets good reasonably fast when the additional low side understanding click in.

Taking training for LHE post flop play, one would first use a software to get the calling ranges, and then ask if one needs still more and what it costs.

I could take some basic plus training for nlo8, 5-omaha, 20 bb nlh cash, one table nlh tournaments, even for all kinds of heads up poker (other than LHE that I already up to master, as I stole it from a couple of professionals, that took a couple of months) but I don't have a need for it.

I think the real question is, are there too many bots next to human players? Seems like a ton of online poker rooms are rampant with bots from what I hear and the place I play at seems to have a good amount of them. I'm not worried about coaches, I'm worried that when I sit down I'm in a game of mostly bots.

Yea cause paying to get your house cleaned is totally the same as expediting & magnifying the difficulty of making a decent living


Edit: Also, thread title is misleading...I believe we should be using the word "devolved"

Get an antibot specialist coach, duh easy game.