Hi all,

Recently there was a dispute in the Omaha forum about whether someone winning at poker over a long sample qualifies them to be a poker coach. Obviously there are many factors that go into teaching others, but being good at what you are teaching would seem to me to be a necessary, if not sufficient, condition to teach.

So, what do you think? Does crushing the games mean someone can help others crush as well? Or are other soft skills equally if not more important?

Thanks,
DT

Teaching ain't easy so no you are not automatically a good coach even if you crush. And those who teach don't crush everyone knows that. KAPPA

My ex-girlfriend is studying for a math exam that she needs for a certification to be teacher. She's not good at math. I am good at math. Going over practice problems with her that I can easily solve, I quickly found out that I'm a bad teacher. I spoke to a teacher friend of mine regarding this. He told me that people who are math inclined, like he and I are, that our step 1 is most people's step 4.

When something come's easy to you, you don't realize not only much more explanation is needed for somebody else but that you have a difficult time even giving that explanation because it's like second nature.

Look at pro sports. Most great head coaches were not great players. They had to work harder so they know how to coach better through the nuances.

To answer your question, other skills are definitely necessary to be a good teacher/coach.

the way you frame your standpoint is as if being a big winner excludes you from being a good coach, i don't think so since there are examples i can think of of elite players being really good coaches. i think they are mostly unrelated skillsets

Joke's on the Recruit thinking he can pay for General.

Is this born out of the criticism of your coaching thread

To succeed in poker you need to know exactly what you are doing. If you can't explain your thought process/reasoning in a hand, you are probably a fish or someone with a strange cognitive disorder that is able to play within logic but is unable to express it in words.

I've never played HS, and I'm almost sure that any 5bb/100 winner in HS would be capable of seeing the leaks on my game and helping me. Things I do that they don't do and so on.

I thought about this topic a lot 2 months ago and my conclusion is that anyone that plays better than me is capable of teaching me something.

It's easy to spot what a losing/breakeven/not so profitable player is doing wrong when you are a crusher.

The thing is: Is the approach of this specific coach good enough to make me understand my leaks and correct them? Sometimes what doesn't fits you, fits someone else. The coach you dislike might be the best coach in the world to someone else.

Yeah even the best coach in the world cant turn every client into a crusher.
I have not been coaching for years but when i did around 50% became pretty big winners in PLO.
(small sample)
The rest could not make a living from poker.

“Lets pretend for a second we aren't poker players. We are all lowly shoeshiners working our asses off for minimum wage. We all are unqualified and don't have any other opportunities for jobs. However, we all post on shoeplusshoe.com. We are friends. We tell our shoeshining stories, talk about shoeshining tips, the insides ins and outs of shoeshining, share laughs, tears, everything.

Then one day, while shining shoes, one guy, "we'll call him Baylor Taby" has an epiphany. He has a brilliant idea of mixing with chemicals and whatnot to create an instant shoeshine. He patents it, sells it, becomes a millionaire, and there is no longer a shoeshining station across the entire world because every single person that wants their shoes nice and shiny has Baylor's invention.

Some of our friends on shoeplusshoe.com can't afford to feed their kids anymore. Some go crazy. A few find other work, most commit suicide. Some lucky ones create spinoffs of the shoeshining invention for less money.

Do you think the shoeplusshoe.com members are going to be happy for Baylor? Or, if given the chance, would want to slam his face into a brick wall?” - Stealthmunk

Being a strong player doesnt automatically make you a successful coach, but being a bad player automatically makes you a bad coach.

I’m pretty sure some of the most successful players could become coaches they just choose not to because it’s a business decision.

Different skillsets.

To be a crusher you need a high IQ , to be a very good coach you need a high EQ. It's very rare someone has both, they usually have one or most people none.

Which EQ facets would you say are the most important to be a coach?

Interesting question…

It’s a different skill set.

But..

I’m way more likely to listen to someone who has had success in their field be it poker or business.

Teaching and skill/competency aren't necessarily correlated. Phil Jackson wasn't the best player, but he was undoubtedly an elite coach.

Poker isn´t basketball. Do chess grandmasters get coaching from a 1700?

You are obviously qualified to coach players in 4/5card plo. That monodik doesn’t want you to coach because live plo is a tiny market and if you coach up even 5 people that could possibly negatively impact live win rates across the country because plo players travel to play more than NL players.

You are a skilled lawyer and a winning player - you are a dream coach, that’s why there is push back to you coaching in a niche market. Take it as a compliment and keeping doing what you’re doing. Tale as old as time on the deuce.

You need a high EQ to scam people into your grift if you dont have the IQ and skill to actually make it on merit.

I haven't thought enough about the question but I'll give you my off the cuff opinion.

Poker is a very complex game, so understanding it at a fundamental level takes a lot of thought and practice. A lot of coaches who think they understand poker, don't actually understand it as well as they think they do. This manifests itself through their students, if a coach has had some very successful students that is a credit to the coach as much as the student.

You also have to be purposefully tautological when you coach, basically saying the same thing in different ways so the student has multiple chances to understand and grasp a concept. This is pretty hard to do and takes practice, coaching is a skill just like playing is.

That's all I have for now, it's a complicated topic. Good question though.

That's why good results are a good heuristic for a capable coach if you don't want to go down the rabbit hole.

Thank you for the praise, but I wasn’t trying to bring that up by starting this thread. I was just interested in what the community thinks about this issue. So far some great responses!

yeah idk man. on one hand he probably shouldn't have posted in your coaching thread and it looks like hes being vindictive and out of line from the outside, on the other hand its very much the status quo in the poker world to attack predatorily mispriced mark up / coaching (im not saying your post falls under that i have no idea how good you are at plo). one thing i do want to say, is its kind of wild to just use screenshots of a live poker tracking app where you manually enter results as your only evidence of being qualified to coach. im not saying you're doing it, but imagine how easy it would be for anyone to display results of them crushing (you can literally just make up numbers).

re the actual post, i think someone like jungleman is a great example of a good poker player that isn't good at coaching but i think he's very much the exception to the rule. very few people that are good are unable to articulate their thought / study process. yes they may not be as effective of a teacher as someone with a teaching background, but at some point subject knowledge is more important than teaching skill at least imo. also, i think communication is something that can be learned much more efficiently and quickly than high level poker skill.

Before anyone else fall for the bait let me clear something up here

OP has conveniently left out why the forum user (Monikrazy) thinks OP is not qualified to be a coach.

Monikrazy has been an active poster in the Omaha forums for a long time and he also used to coach. No, he does not coach anymore so OP is not his competitor for coaching.

Monikrazy have seen dozens of posts made by OP in the Omaha forum (OP floods the forum with questions everyday on how to play hands, usually as a short stack). Monikrazy thinks OPs fundamentals are weak based on the thought processes expressed in OPs numerous posts as well as his lack of attention to details. This is why Monikrazy thinks OP is not qualified to coach, in spite of the fact that OP boasts a high winrate in juicy live games over the past couple of years.

The title of this thread should be more like “Can someone who thinks like a fish but wins be a good coach”? if OP is trying to use NVG to prove his enemy Monikrazy wrong.

Poker isn't chess either. Simply being a grandmaster doesn't make you a good coach.

Like PokerEthics said, it's a different skill set.

Which is exactly what I said. You can however not be a good chess coach without being good at chess.

Anyone arguing you wouldnt have to be a highstakes reg to coach highstakes players has clearly never played the stakes nor coached anyone at those stakes.

To be a strong player you simply need to be a strong player.

To be a good coach this is the very first criteria, and then you need a bunch of stuff on top of it.