I think online rooms, especially at the mid to higher stakes need poker room game hosts.

Whales should be accommodated with players who socialize, and play looser.

This doesn't sound good to the players who play for the competitive aspect and think of poker like a sport, then again why would you want to play in soft games if that's your outlook.

Room manager would also punish players who berate weak players.

Essentially online private games.

There's a reason live poker is leaning this way, and it IS the average POKER PRO who thinks he plays poker for a living and forgets that he is actually an adult entertainer.

Ofc if it hurts your bottom line. Not sure why anyone who wants to win money would embrace that the field gets tougher. I doubt that for fun players enjoy an indepth analysis of a certain line in a poker broadcast.
Compare poker to other businesses who want to make money: Do you see anyone voluntarily spill their trade secrets? They try to protect these as much as possible.

This is a very Unabomberesque thread.

I guess we can debate it in theory, but here is the bottom line:
High IQ people figure out activities
Those who do not naturally understand activities seek to get better
High IQ people get bored of activities, but don't mind helping others
High IQ people create programs and material to get better at said activities

In what world is NOT having coaches a thing? Inb4 "b-but if all the best crushers got together and collectively decided to not coach, they could keep the games softer for longer" yeah until one of them decides to "**** that, there's more easy money in coaching" and it's GG.

Seems like this topic is more akin to "what would happen if your aunt was your uncle?"

kind of interesting that no one mentions any of the following as being responsible for helping kill action:

- unlimted re-entry/re-buy tournaments
- players swapping, staking/selling/owning 2% of themselves in everything and all the recs are aware of it now
- deep stacked cash games even at 1/2 & 1/3 NL now were people are sitting 200+BB deep or even 300BB in some 2/5 games where max is 1500
- HUD and other analytic devices and trackers to be used online vs. simply relying on recall/memory "paying for information' etc

I wonder why no one is mentioning any of those things?

swapping is ruining poker?

it makes tournament runs a lot more fun tbh

thats a good point

FWIW i think its valid when players are frustrated that the ecoystem is tougher bcz of coaching material, i just dont think we should attack the progression of ideas and strat

Gee, could it be because this is a thread about coaching?

Most, and probably all, of the other topics you've mentioned have been, and are being, discussed in numerous other threads.

This is the stupidest thread I've ever seen.

If there was no formal education system would people be smarter or stupider?

Coaching massively accelerated the convergence of the ecosystem towards equilibrium.

It's first important to distinguish if we're talking about post black friday/market segregation environment or not.

Because bf/segregation was the single most significant factor that contributed to the decline of poker. In pre bf/segregation environment coaching wouldn't have made as significant of a dent into the quality of games as it does in the current environment.

The second biggest factor that increases the negative effects of coaching is the high rake. Rake is deteriorating poker on many levels, most significantly by turning poker into an unappealing activity that is not worth while anymore. For players in a sub 200NL universe it's really hard to grind out their bankrolls and move up the stakes. Anyone new coming to the game most likely will not stick around because rake eats up their winnings and moving up the stakes is really hard, even though there are still many players making a lot of mistakes and games are fairly 'good'. So it's very easy to get deflated and disappointed with the game.

Consequently the universe above 200NL lacks an influx of new players to sustain a healthy cycle of playing fields being refreshed. Rake makes the thin edges even thinner and thus effect of coaching is magnified.

So yea, in the environment with the factors listed above coaching material is contributing to the decline of the game.

It's effects in the environment with single open market and the rake of 2004 would probably not be so negative.

No offense to the poker vloggers but I dont think this is happening. Vlogs are very popular within the community of live poker players, but if you look at the total volume of viewership its fairly small, I dont think anyone other than Neeme has over 10m views.

i totally agree with the bolded.
i've said there are many factors.
uiega was the first big blow to online poker.
people who weren't around back then don't understand what went on in some of these games.
neteller was basically paypay for gambling and it was so easy for americans to get massive amounts of money on the sites with the click of a button.
a few years later i remember having to go to the bank 3 times to get a 10k wire through to some site. what losing player wants to deal with that bs?

your point on rake is totally wrong.
in many cases rake is way less effectively than it was in the heyday of online poker. this was absolutely the case until a year or two ago when stars blew up sne.and games were a million times worse than during the heyday despite the vastly lower rake. yes rake hurts small stakes players than it does higher stakes players. but the game quality is the issue. when complete joke stakes have russian bots and people using all kinds of software watching training videos etc playing super tight somewhat agro poker even dirt stakes nl online games become snooze fests. that's not a rake issue.it's an everything else issue.like yea they're not wizards but there's no real gamble involved for fun players.lower the rake a bit and where's the fun?

this.

i'm sure it happens in other fields as well but poker players tend to get very poker centric and don't realize in the grand scheme of things these vloggers don't have a huge audience and their audience is basically comprised of people who already play poker.

Great job directing traffic, you should be very proud of yourself. Way to keep things on topic.

Ok, They are being discussed in other threads as one offs? So what? It’s not one thing in isolation, and if it was it’s certainly not coaching. Threads like these are just misguided one off smoke screens that cover up the elephant in the room that pro grinders just don’t want to admit.

The overarching point is that the pro and semi pro players have turned casual players off from the game because they are greedy, self centered, and can’t help themselves. Winning x per hour is never enough. They are cannabilzing the game by constantly pushing to create the most optimal game conditions for themselves in every single way and they aren’t even subtle about it anymore.

i don’t care that someone is better than me, has put the time in, has skill etc. I care that they are going out of their way to work every single tiny edge imaginable to reduce every single tiny element of luck or variance that they can. They are also not putting up their 100 percent of their own money, which I am, whicnmeans they are comfortably playing bigger stakes then they are rolled for, so if one of my few edges at the table might be to say put them in a tough spot if I sense they are shot taking, that potential tool i have is gone also. It doesn’t matter if it’s real or not, it’s the principal and the perception. Successful people who can afford to lose, and come back often don’t want to feel like an idiot or that they are being collided against. They want to have fun, and compete while feeling that “everyone gets the same cards so you never know” who wants to show up to a game where you know you basically have zero chance to win and oh btw, there is no dice to throw and you can’t yell and scream.

idk, it all seems pretty simple

Doc Holliday against eight random fish is a good night for Doc Holliday. But if he first taught them all how to play like Doc Holliday, then its only a good night for the house

so, at the end of the day, the value of the education of players depends greatly on your point of view

Seems like its good for everyone but Doc

What is the difference between neither of you having coaching material or both of you having the same coaching material?

If there were no training sites there is still 2+2, there are still books, there are still some videos and information on how to study your own play. You would be using those to study and so would they. You both have access to the same material, it's up to you to use it better than them and it always has been.

Well, the difference is that if neither of you have coaching material, Doc takes both your monies, and if you both have the same coaching material, the money moves around on the table until its all gobbled up by rake

This /thread

Except that I'm not directing traffic. I was simply taking issue with your "I wonder why no one is mentioning any of those things?" question, where you were implying there were these deep dark reasons that no one is willing to discuss, when that's not the case at all. They've all been discussed at one point or another, and some of them have even been brought up in this thread previously. Beyond that, I would agree with much of what you posted.

A current thread in "Beginner's Questions" is about GTO and PIOsolver.

Ten years ago, a BQ thread would have been "Am I playing AA correctly?"

QED.

Many of the threads in beginners questions seem pretty advanced for beginners. In the microstakes forum, people are talking about light 4betting and GTO frequences at 2nl. It's pretty depressing for anyone new to poker that this is what it's like, but I suppose it was inevitable that the game would end up like this.

This doesn't sound a bad idea.

I wonder if Phil and RIO poker would be interested in hearing about it?

Minor issue specifically with RIO: do any of the pro's who make training vids (** though I'm not sure if they would be the pro's on the poker site **) have any cache with a casual player, where their name means anything?

Phil's not allowed to play on the site. Outside of 2p2, even Ben Sulsky isn't really well known.

(i) It would've been perfect with Full Tilt who were happy to always sponsor local players on TV poker shows (as well as already having the big-named poker 'celebrities' attached to the brand.) ii) It may not have been that good with Full Tilt if the local players who had been sponsored were as reputable as the people running the company )

^^^^^^
Is it feasible for [pro for the site] to have the ability to invite/let certain players into the game, and by implication, shut out certain players?

Is that legally allowed (online)?

^^^^^^
What pro's in the community would this be suitable for ie reputation, exposure, availability/interest?

Shaun Deeb? Andrew Neeme? Matt Glantz? Cate Hall

well they still have no clue how to play postflop so it doesn't matter much

If you're playing 2nl against people who are thinking any deeper than "maybe I'll get lucky" you're probably not going to beat the rake. I remember when the average 2nl Stars table had multiple people going all-in every hand. Now the majority of players at 2nl on Stars probably have a hud and post on 2p2.

Has anyone watched Marle’s new video where she extols the virtue’s of Solve for Why’s live training course? It’s really disappointing to see. People either don’t care about, don’t understand, or are being paid to promote the degradation of the game. I can only imagine how much tougher the games in the LA area will get within the year of Berkey and Soto and co. pumping out course after course.