out of curiosity what site do you coach for ?

You didn't actually address this point besides attacking his obviously exaggerated example.

If a student wins over 100K hands and then loses over the next 100K hands, which is presumably very possible, you shafted them.

There must be a more fair way to prevent your business from being scammed?

To address this point, you get 1 1-1 per month, but also:

- 2 weekly interactive group sessions. ~10 attendees on average
- Average around 2 sessions a week of coaches streaming study (I think I've streamed 80% of my study on my journey from 200nl-40knl fwiw)
- Access to huge private video library
- Discord server with constant high quality discussion
- Secret other resources

I don't think it's really fair to compare bitB to other CFPS.
We only take very few students, we share all of our results, for the guy saying CFPS cherry pick results they can check our coaches thread or twitter where we shared all of our students results over a big sample.

We also:

- Don't take anyone who we don't think it's a +EV deal for, I've told multiple guys before I don't think it's worth it for them to join
- Have taken numerous guys from 25nl- 1knl+ when we accepted lower students
- Have the best profit chops, 50:50 moving to 60:40 when you have won 10k, duration only ever 12 months
- Keep a very small group

In the last years <20% of our students have left the group on completion of their contracts, almost everyone chooses to remain on some kind of deal.

If you start trying to scale a CFP and treat it like a business, incentives inevitably misalign.
All of our coaches make multiples more from playing than coaching and it will probably always be the case, for a long time bitB was just an extension of my own study and was definitely not worthwhile to maintain from a $ per hour perspective if I wasn't constantly improving from the interaction.

bitB can't really be seen as competition to the other CFPs as we offer the best deal in terms of chop, the best coaching roster, the most interaction with students, and have the best student results. Our aim basically is anyone that we would really enjoy working with applies to us first.
The only other consderation imo for other players playing 500+ and wanting to break into HS in none anon pools is guerrillapoker where they also have an extremely good track record and very strong coaches.

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Some other comments relevant to the thread:

If you join a group with 40+ guys, and constant affiliate schemes/ public courses or info, you know what you are getting in for.
If you join a group whose primary focus is MDA, you also should expect that they you will somewhat cap your potential to play HS.
This is fine, as you can make a ton of money in poker without playing in the highest games, and I actually think max EV for CFP owners is probably create some huge MDA farm with standard lines etc, it's by far the easiest way to turn someone from a losing player to a winning player.
But it's a buyer beware market, know what you are signing up for.

I'll check the thread a couple of times more if anyone wants to ask any questions about any of the points in my post.

Have you ever issued legal proceedings against any players that did not keep their end of the deal?

In terms of player audit, how would you know if a player deleted their successful sessions from the histories which you receive?

You sort of put your own business out there by starting the thread.

I think the main point that everyone should be able to agree on is no matter what the CFP is its up to you whether you agree to it or not. Dont sign a deal and then 3 years later complain about it.

Im just surprised BTS ever took/take micro stakes players to begin with, way too many dreamers who think joining a CFP magically makes you good.

Not really. You are coming at this from the perspective of a well established high stakes professional.

Most people interested in CFP's are struggling micro stakes players that don't understand why they are losing. The psyche is completely different.

So never a make a mistake? Thanks for the advice.

Also what is this magic rule where you are supposed to put your head in the sand if you feel thing's aren't fair. Contract's aren't written in blood, any contract can be thrown out. It happens all the time in business.

Tom Brady just violated his contract by retiring. But he signed a deal! Lol get out of here with that.

And one more thing - this thread will benefit a ton of people so I'm happy I started it.

So why don’t you just settle your debt and retire? I doubt anyone is coming after you if you quit poker.

Why the hell would I quit poker are you crazy?

I just spent 3 years of my life trying to get good at a game and now I'm going to quit. Makes zero sense.


2p2 where do you find these moderators from?

Nah im just saying do your own due diligence, also if the rise through the ranks isnt happening like you thought it would then surely youd realise this soon enough and be able to negotiate a better exit deal?

This is actually a good point which George has actually addressed when he says: but in all honesty it still lies on the player to do his own homework about deals and poker before he signs anything.

I think the only people this thread is going to help are people who are going in blindly accepting deals which shouldnt be many people. Do your own due diligence, if you enter the deal and you arent happy then discuss exit deals simple as that really.

So first you complain that coaching is so much easier than playing, but you don’t want coach.

Then you mention that contracts don’t mean anything because you could retire like Tom Brady did but you don’t want to do that. So what’s the point there?

People ask why the coaching model changed from the old “pay by the hour” system to what we see right now. The simple answer is that 10+ years ago people made so much money on the microstakes that they could afford paying coach by the hour. I had several students starting out at NL10 / NL25 who didn’t have an issue paying $80-120/hour because they made that back easily and moved up fast. That’s obviously not that easy anymore at those stakes.

So now we have a long term model where people who are unwilling to pay that much money per hour still have a chance to get coaching even if they start out at micro stakes. That’s a good model for some, bad model for others. Sorry if it’s not working out for you.

You sound like a self righteous type. Nothing is that simple when you are dealing with emotions and money.

Have you ever been in a CFP? If you haven't then you can't really speak on it.

"Do your own homework"
"Do your due diligence"
"Don't blindly accept deals."

If we had a competition for saying the same thing in multiple different ways - you win by a landslide. Your post sounds like an informercial.

By definition none of those thing's came to pass because I made this thread - so reiterating them is a moot point.

There's way too many coaches in the industry - the last thing poker needs is another poker coach.

The Tom Brady analogy wasn't about retiring it was about him not honoring a contract. Sorry if that wasn't the best analogy.

Okay it makes sense now why are you chiming in like this since you are a coach yourself, you have a vested interest in this.

The rest of you post is just an over simplification.

Do you think it is okay for your CFP to put out paid content to the public while you are under contract? Where's the uproar for that?

No i havent been in a CFP but i did get offered a contract by one, i negotiated a better deal for myself and then in the end still didnt end up taking the deal as i thought that even the revised deal wasnt what i wanted to pay for what i was getting.

Yea i mean there really is only one thing anyone in poker can do before accepting a CFP and thats due diligence and negotiating for a better deal if possible, you wanted to help people by making this thread and im making sure the main point is heard loud and clear.

Im going to stop posting in this thread now as its clear youre just unhappy and nothing anyone is going to say will make a difference.

I quit coaching many years ago.

Spent time in startup consulting after (and still occasionally do) and we had a pretty similar business model. Most startups can't afford to pay a regular daily rate so we took equity instead. Most poker players fail, even if properly coached. Most startups fail, even if properly coached. You'll never make your money back on those. Therefore you need to make your overall (time) investment back on the couple ones who are successful long term.

Right now we have one big project where the startup is owned by a company with a market cap >$100bln. They pay the daily rate because they can afford it and don't want to give up equity. If that project fails (it probably will), we made our money anyway. I much prefer that, the same way I preferred getting paid by the hour for poker coaching. Having to rely on your students to turn a profit at the table adds unnecessary stress and variance.

Yeah mods please close this thread. the entertainment is over.

Never, but also never been scammed for any significant amount.

Once a player has made enough that they could scam for a significant amount of money it implies they are established at HS. Normally at this point their reputation is worth far far more than the money, and also staying on good terms with the community is more +EV than not paying.
Future access to infinite liquidity, information about games and strategy is worth a lot. In poker your network is a huge part of determiner of your EV.

Aside from this, most people actually are just decent human beings and don't scam. Not going to go into audit details though for fairly obvious reasons

Full disclaimer: I have a cfp.
I think just like with everything else there can be good cfps and bad cfps. There is nothing inherently bad about the model. Imagine you are a coach with 5 students, and they can all attend each other's sessions. 5x coaching for everyone for the same time investment for you - this creates overlay where the students can pay more per hour and you can charge more per hour and both parties benefit.
How it's implemented beyond that... depends on the people involved.
Personally speaking I would have probably made more money coaching for an hourly than in a cfp, but the cfp's network/connections were worth infinitely more than some $, and also... it's a lot more fun
CFPs that appeal to microstakes players are always going to have issues compared to subscription model sites like upswing/runitonce since they can't justify investing much time into any individual player, so i'd expect they work like a private video library+some big group sessions - and then the main question is how structured/good the videos and sessions are.

Probably the last time that I jump into that thread,

I honestly could write hours about that part,... But let's keep it simple, the Academy is not a cash grab, our goal is to break even after all costs and our advantage (and also yours as a CFP student) is that we are able to offer 8 top quality webinars per month for free to our CFP students.

This also allows us to have more advanced GCs and 1on1 exclusively in the CFP as those fundamental topics already got covered with the webinars/courses.
We would not be able to produce this type of content with our CFP students alone as the costs for that content is close to 6 digits per year.

Another advantage for us is ofc that players who are playing micros eventually get better and might join our CFP once they play lowstakes. Obviously getting a better deal, as their starting point is not micros anymore.


As said regular accountings are very important for us to avoid the risk of getting scammed, 100K hands was so far a reasonable cycle size.

We are aware that it can happen that a student wins in 1 cycle and loses in the next one, but we are not playing roulette!

1. The possibility of a winning player having a losing 100K cycle is very low.
2. If a player has a losing cycle, it is usually a way lower amount than what he won. So he wins like 10K in a good cycle and loses like 2k in a bad cycle.
3. As we are aware that we gain some extra %EV with this method, we adjust our deals. Nobody has a 50/50 in BTS! We usually take 30-40% depending on the starting point of a student of course + 5% better cut if they play affiliated.
4. If an extreme case happens and a student has a big losing cycle, we were always ready to talk with the student to find a solution (raising the cycle from 100k hands to 200k hands for example etc.)


Just because a contract is written a certain way, doesn't mean that we blindly insist on it. After having some negative experiences at the beginning of our CFP, we talked with a lawyer telling him what we want to offer (CFP) and what our issues are and that's what he came up with. I mention OP hopefully the last time, but I think he is actually a good example. His contract states that he has to play 1,4mio hands affiliated and we only have to offer our coaching service for the first 18 months. Nearly 3 years in we were still coaching him and have no problem (actually were very happy) with him playing on an unaffiliated site.

If you take 50% of profit every 100k hands, student has incentive to play higher stakes whenever he is up any significant amount. Esp towards the end of the cycle.

The only players who coach are the ones who can’t make enough money playing. “Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.”

Do not waste your money on a poker coach.

You base this on your infinite experience getting coaching from established high stakes coaches?

great thread, really enjoyed reading it 10/10.

The only thing i dont understand is how can BTS have 6 digit costs? i mean 75% of their library are outdated videos from their previous product or are recycled cfp videos (which are probably 2y+ old), the rest are recordings of the webinars.
.
Also the quality of the webinars are at best mediocre imo ( maybe we have a different definition of "top notch" )

Don't want to quote a long post but the BTS guy said something about having elevated many players to "10-20k".

Does that mean 100/200 NL? Where are these games these days?

I would rather go the literature route. I have trust issues. Why would a coach reveal his best secrets to you? Anyone serious about the game at least, I don't see that happening to the extent they probably advertise.

And the client would never know a thing. No thanks. Experience over all