Easy you want to protect newer players from predatory coaches follow Twitch. I am watching a guy going from $50 to 10k and is at $2100. He offers coaching, not so much individually. If he can't make 10k in a reasonable time frame I wouldn't follow. I am getting free lessons watching.

There are other Twitch Streamers that will actively let you watch them live earn or not earn. What they offer... So you can see if they crushed in the day or now. If they are actually crushing on-line the sites you play if that's for you. If they have a YT and VLOG if they're crushing live.

And even that's not very useful. How Teacher A teaches isn't necessarily going to work for me. But maybe I can get a few hints. How teacher B teaches may be the right recipe for me. If am not the type of guy that does well with their chosen route then I have to find the right fit so that's not on them. They may have many successful students.

I ask reputable players about different Coaches before I go buy their program? People who have something to lose! Not some guy who has no on-line reputation that could be tainted? Someone who backs up their reputation.

Again a student who never studies or does a half ass job can't blame his teacher for the fact he isn't winning?

It's a complex issue unfortunately and with all the young players coming in it's going to continue to be. . . People will look at an Chart an assume a guy is good for them cause he can win 12BBs per 100 in their desired games or made X amount in MTTs. Most of the reading material I heard from 1 high stakes crusher is obsolete now. Then some say it isn't. So complex like poker now. Nothing is simple anymore. In the day you had about 100 required books to read and that was that.

P.S. Get references ... from 'friends who are winning' it's not hard now but it requires that, gotta have a poker community support group and they have to be more than casual buds. I'm making some, but it takes time!

HI Gzesh:

Years ago, when we first got our books into Borders and Barnes & Noble, we actually recommended to them other good poker books to carry (and there weren't many at this time). Our thinking was that when a new player (on his first purchase) bought a poor poker book he wouldn't buy any more, but when he bought a good one, he would often come back and buy a bunch more (which, of course, would include some 2+2 books).

Mason

Hi man:

It's always been this way.

Today, I'm still active in certain areas (on twitter as well as on 2+2) where I do criticize people mostly in the area of poker psychology and mental coaching as well as underlying probability and statistical concepts such as how much luck versus skill there is in poker.

And I think that's what needs to be done. When you, or anyone, sees advice that you think is highly questionable, call the author of the advice out. On some occasions he might explain the reasons behind his advice and you'll learn something. On many other occasions, especially if you keep it up, instead of explanations you'll be personally attacked, and then you'll know that you've done some good.

As an example, my understanding is that meditating can help you feel better, but does meditating help you play your poker hands well? This is certainly not true if your underlying understanding of how to play poker well is not that good to begin with.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi Arch:

Assuming you are a good coach, how may coaching hours do you think are necessary for a typical student? I believe it's not that many.

So, if you are able to transfer knowledge that will turn the student into a significant winner (or increase his win rate by a significant amount) then charging a large amount for a small number of lessons may be a fair price. But I do question those who charge a lot for a continuous amount of lessons.

Mason

One thing that might help in deciding on a good coach is reading anything they have written to give you an idea of their expertise. However, this can be more difficult to determine due to the large short-term luck factor that is present in poker. So, keep that in mind.

Mason

One other thing to consider is that there is still value in being coached by someone better than you, even if that person isn't good enough to beat the limits you are playing.

For example, let's say you have to be a "grade B" NL cash player to beat $1/$2 NL online beyond the rake.

So take John who is a D+ player, and not even close to beating these games.

John gets coaching from Mike, who is a B- player, and would be a slight long term loser in the $1/$2 NL online.

Even though Mike can't beat the game he's coaching John for, the coaching John is getting is still valuable, as it is taking him from a big loser to a tiny loser, assuming John can adapt Mike's advice to basically play like him.

You also need to consider that sometimes students can eclipse their poker coaches, once they get down the fundamentals that they've been missing.

Is it better to get coached by an absolute killer in the game, rather than a breakeven-ish player? Sure, but the very best are not likely to coach you unless you're going to pay them a fortune.

The coaches who are the biggest problems are the ones which exaggerate your likelihood to beat the game with their teachings, or lie to people regarding their own results.

I also agree with this. I have had coached and been coached by players in years that would be $1000 an hour to ultimately understand a coach that charges $140 an hour better. This lead to my progression in poker being far greater.

I think the disparity comes from when you pay too much for coaching and your progression isn’t as expected due to your own understanding of poker.

Either way I think it’s up to the student to make the decision as at the end of the day the coach is trying to sell their service.

Oh, you mean the one which he started with $500 and his first video is playing 3 tables of Nl200 & has skipped out documenting what happened before

In our family of books, we have several beginner books (a couple of which are not on poker) which we priced lower than our other stuff. And while we feel they are important to us so that our books are complete, their sales have always under performed relative to our more sophisticated titles. And I think the answer is that most people are not interested in breaking even. They want to win.

So, stating that a B- coach has value where you'll actually need a B coach to win is not something that the typical player would be interested in.

MM

It seems all these people selling "success" are into new age and some advanced type of yoga none of us has ever heard of. It's a red flag that never seems to miss.


I mean, as far as proof of concept this doesn't go that far. These people (presumably) make a living telling people they're massive winners. Theres ZERO chance they would ever allow themselves to fail as that would pretty much end their career. I'm not saying that their friend is dumping stacks or that they're doctoring graphs because I have no proof that would be the case. I wouldn't exactly bet against someone with this much incentive to cheat that stands to lose everything if they don't, however.

That being said, I think them showing their play for hours on a livestream can be pretty eye-opening and lets everyone judge for themselves. It's also often times very amusing to watch them play.

I agree with everything you said and I think this is to some degree how most of us learned poker in the first place. It only starts to become a problem if "Mike" is telling "John" that he's a billionaire highstakes crusher and charges him $6000 for his troubles.

Getting coached to reach the status of "tiny loser" ?

If the goal is the next step to Break Even,then "quit", (A goal of break-even* is readily attainable..... *not even counting all the free time gained ...)

That'll be Three-fiddy, please; and thus endeth the lessons

I agree, and good point.

Mason

Hi Gzesh:

I was trying to be nice. But taking lessons, probably for significant money, just to attain break-even status is fairly dumb advice. It's not the same as taking tennis lessons knowing you'll never be a world class player.

Mason

I have to disagree, it can be pretty much the same. Noting that although I'd frequently saw you carrying a racket over the years, I've never thought your tennis ambition was to be a world class player. I'm sure you do it for entertainment.

Break-even poker, like tennis, can be an entertaining past time. I'll never claim to be more than a break even rec, but there is entertainment value in just playing and sometimes in head-hunting some opponents who just happen to piss you off by blatantly obnoxious behavior and misconduct at the table during play.

A beginning poker player unavoidably may "pay for lessons" by playing, losing some, and observing and learning from mistakes. "All you paid was the looking price, lessons cost extra" - Lancey Howard, The Cincinnati Kid.

(The best lessons I recall in my initial Las Vegas experience came from playing regularly in tournaments at the DI, Mirage and Rio years ago; notably in small fields against some name pros and winning regulars who seemed to dominate in-the-money finishes, week in and week out.)

My tennis, when I was young, even though I had no illusions of being a world class player, was something I took very seriously and it did pay off for me.

I have some discussion of my tennis in my book Real Poker Psychology: Expanded Exition as well as how a game like tennis differs from poker.

Mason

as someone who made over a million in profits after he started coaching and who paid ~$10k over the years in getting coaching from other players, I deem myself qualified to say that the OP is quite some generalized nonsense.

Always bad actors in any field, but to just generalize and say all coaches are con artists is laughable

Completely not what he said, but take any chance to brag and try to plug your own coaching business.

I estimate ~3/4 of coaching products available in the cash-scene are complete garbage these days, not all of them, which was the format OP eluded to in his post.

However, if they:

1) Charge by hourly
2) Make you play certain app clubs that they affiliate for
3) Do not offer staking
4) Force you to make a down payment

they are 100% garbage.

I hope the community gets bad coaching and has their teeth knocked in

I'm sorry. But whenever I see things like "-visualization and -breathing exercises" I have my doubts.

Mason

he generalized and says exactly that basically all coaches are not even winning players with FEW exceptions. Not sure how you read out of that a nuanced criticism and make up that 3/4 of coaches number.
And what is it now, when coaches don't show their results they lack transparency. When they get attacked for being coaches and i state my results as a coach since coaching, im bragging? Funny Construction


I have no problem with that

This could be an interesting test for this thread. Why don't you tell us exactly what you mean by visualization and how it can help you play poker better. And if you like, feel free to do the same for breathing exercises.

Mason

it's a bit confusing to me, you ask that question as if this is a new concept that I invented. It has been around in all kinds of professions, from arts to sports to basically any other field. You really want me to explain this? You could just youtube visualization and find a thousand examples

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If0a...nnel=HoopsMind

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HQwMrK54494

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADwV...annel=LexClips

now if you want I can give you a practical example from my own experience in poker. When you are on an extended downswing, this can lead to a viscious cycle where eventually your mindset is your biggest obstacle to overcome to get back on the right track. Slowly but surely the negative feedback made all kinds of autopilot mechanisms creep into your game. Where before you could react dynamically and made decisions based on individual circumstances, you now are motivated by fear, your energy is low because you spent all that time worrying about your situation and how it is going. Your decisions are too quick, less thoughtful and automatic. Any poker player, especially MTT players should know this feeling.
What I do under those circumstances: I envision myself already being out of that downswing. May that be one big win or a streak of nice and steady smaller wins. I put myself there visually so that not only I just see pictures, I get the actual feeling of that. I envision how much stronger I am now that I went through this downswing. How nice it feels.
And this one of the techniques I use to make sure I never get stuck in autopilot mechanisms.

Now whether you think this works for your and others or not, I told you I have no problem with that if you do not whatsoever. Breathing excercises for poker serve a similar function.

I agree completely with this. Being around the highest of calibre of athletes most of my life, visualisation is something that’s regarded as a mindset technique to help trigger the body to get into a state of performance. Similar to the explanation above if you are about to race and you visualise how hard training has been or how hard the race is about to be, I guarantee you the race will not start with a fast reaction time because your action reaction part of your brain will deter itself from thinking it’s about to race.

When the gun goes off you will have adrenaline but that extra 10% of okay now the gun has gone off what do I do next, the second that adrenaline drops off and your brain goes into a mindset of fight or fight you will not fight and instead likely dump the race/game.

In a game theory sense a human needs such “triggers” you may call them. If it was simply a computer then obviously you wouldn’t need such triggers as adrenaline as explained in my explanation isn’t a factor.

Obviously there are many factors involved in this both mentally and physically, where as I do see meditation as a means to directly affect your poker results. It may de-inflate body stress by which when you are in a stressful downswing may lessen such stress as a whole.

This may be a bit of a derail here but I would like to add that routine is a major factor in the brains ability to complete tasks. If you wake up everyday and meditate and then following meditation you grind. Then likely each day you’re starting a task that is somewhat easy to do then followed by the next task which is obviously taxing. You are teaching your brain to allow itself to go into a stressful situation with no previous states of negativity.

In an athletes body you might refer to stretching. We all know stretching before an athletic event does literally nothing for you as the body is not warm and infact it can do the opposite you can injure yourself. But we do it to get in a state of mind where we know that each day before we train we are visualising/stretching previous to the stressful exercise it will help us simply get on the track so to speak.

Obviously how much and why this directly translates into poker I think is entirely individually dependent.

Because I know of most of the ones that run a public stable and made a qualified estimate. The critisism doesn't need to be nuanced because most are outright frauds and you couldn't make a rational argument to ever purchase their services if you had enough information.


I think you missed the point where this isn't your personal marketing thread.

For the sake of this thread and your argument about transparency, more stables should share their total stable results by winrates and not just share their own graphs or cherrypicked samples from the 3% of horses that godmoded.

Poker (De)tox is a great example, as Nick Howard will post stable earnings on Twitter with 0 context. The numbers sound large but the average student earnings is awful at around $10k going by their own information.

Any coach not willing to provide stake shows a lack of conviction in his own abilities. Any CFP without staking means 0 downside and incentivises the coach to take on as many students as possible which will have a negative effect on the service. Nick himself boasts about having coached over 1000 players.

The same argument obviously applies to your own form of coaching, since you earn the most by sandbagging people paying you your hourly.

A longer term coaching agreement involving staking is the only way incentives between the student and coach are aligned, and the more potential customers that understand this, the less these fraudsters will thrive.