Agreed, plenty of these "coaches" stream their microstakes sessions. Most of the time they'll just justify any play that might strike their audience as strange with a fancy sounding word salad, if it's awful enough they might be "unable to take this stake seriously/distracted by chat". Most of the time, a new player isn't in a position to judge their plays or logic.
It's very hard to create a reliable litmus test for how good someone is, ability to actively compete in the format at hand isn't perfect but it's the best we have. If someone can post a CURRENT and UNDOCTORED graph of them destroying midstakes it's a pretty good sign. Eventually, if you're good, I'm sure your name would carry enough weight so you wouldn't have to prove yourself to the same extent.

The type of coaching being offered is a good giveaway, someone genuinly interested in bettering your game might try to align your interest through staking. Analyzing large samples, finding key stats in your game/population tendencies is also a trillion times more valuable than live coaching/sweating/video of a session. The worst offender is the group sessions where the "coach" rambles on about his "coolest exploits" and "best tells".

Lol worst marketing attempt ever

Yeah, using EXPLOITS as an excuse for everything is the classic. For example I've had multiple discussions with players about RYE preflop ranges, which are really trash (I think they might have some newer actual GTO now, but probably still using the trash ranges in some of their material, because I still see them being mentioned) and every time the beginner player tries to explain it to me and defend them:
"You don't understand, these are not GTO, they are better, made to exploit population"
And of course they think that. Bencb is playing highstakes on Twitch, surely the ranges he is selling must have taken lot of work and there is some deep genius thought behind them. Right? RIGHT? ... no. They are just selling garbage content because beginner players will buy it. IIRC they have things like 30bb BB 3bet/folding 76s vs BTN open. Every solid reg would laugh at that, but how is a recreational supposed to know it is bad when there is a huge name behind?

The thing with teaching "exploit strategy" is that it is very hard to prove it wrong, you can't compare it with GTO sim because they will always say "well yes of course, but we are not playing GTO opponents, so my strategy is better".

Yesterday I stumbled upon a fun example:

PokerCoaching video (Jonathan Little's site) by Alex Fitzgerald. Obviously it is about EXPLOITS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6VMskKAR6o
It is a 25 min video about one single hand. 100bb BTN vs BB on 843r. He spends lot of time giving some very random thoughts about choosing action between check, b33, b50, b66 and b75.
And better players reading this might already be saying "wait wait, that sounds like a good flop for overbets". And you would be right, it is mainly overbet or check flop. And explaining why overbets are a thing and why are they used on 843 but not on 854 would be very useful for students, but nope, 25min video about ONE SINGLE HAND and the coach (who has his coaching website, has written a poker book (obviously it is called "exploitative live play" ) can't even pick the proper sizing on the flop.
But somehow in the video he starts talking about how the Navy SEALs train. What? WHAT? WHY? What are you on about mate? Why are you bringing the Navy SEALs into this?

And no matter how ridiculous this is to more skilled players, there are people in the youtube comments happy about how well it is all explained.
Just sound confident with your BS, write a book and people will buy whatever garbage you produce.

If a player cannot judge if a coach is good when he plays his own games and makes decisions in the same situations, he should not even think about getting coached until he can do that. He has other sources of knowledge until then

Anyone can easily fake graphs or even create profiles that appear to be other players. Apart from that a beginner player doesn't have a good network and could be easily misled that way.

And anyone can check sharkscope to see if those graphs are real and contact any of the players making the testimonial to ask them if it's geniune. Just do a basic research.

I'll take it one step further: If a player cannot find leaks in a coaches game and make better decisions in the same situations, he should not even think about getting coached until he can do that.

Please tell me how you check Cash/PLO/Spins or anonymous games in Sharkscope.
If you contact a fake profile or a friend that will not work

That is obvious - If you can't beat your coach for 10ev bb over 100k hands you should not even dream about getting coached by him until then.

Basic stuff Watson

Op talks specifically about beginners

We are not discussing players who play NL200 and need a coach.

Something that is very common in players with low limits is that they are trained and begin to doubt what they are learning precisely because they don't even have the basic skills that would be essential to understand some of the knowledge transmitted more effectively.

In my opinion, having a background that helps you to think and analyze what you're being taught and at least understand some of the logic is essential, and in order to get there you have to follow a learning path. (books/beginner courses/Forums/groups)

If someone, for example at NL10, is told to increase the size of 3b in specific situations because of X+Y and, after being explained the reasoning, doesn't understand why will that generate a higher ev, he must first get basic knowledge from other sources ( Where he can watch the content several times at an affordable price) because he is wasting his money.



------------What can we as a community do to protect newer players from con-artist "coaches"?-------------

Nothing. Players have to protect themselves and imo the best way to do that for beginners is to follow an alternativ learning path
(books/beginner courses/Forums/groups)
Only after they have a basic/solid foundation - of course this is subjective - that allows them to think and analyze in a minimally effective way
should they think about being coached

There is no perfect path, obviously there is inadequate content and mistakes will be made, but I believe that having this ability to consume a lot of content, to think, to compare, to study will increase the chances of them becoming better and later moving on to a second stage where they can consider a private coach.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

What you're saying in this post makes perfect sense. I have had coaches in a given pursuit that don't know what they're doing like a Flight Sim/Shooter Sim; much more than myself or don't convey any useful information. Even if I were to study, I may have a particular blockage. I may not be able to learn say a particular set of skills without starting from the beginning and taking years to be of equal skill to a opponent that's naturally gifted in those areas.

Information can be digested in lots of different ways. Exercising what you learn and getting as good as you're possible going to be able to get is dependent on your personal talents, intelligence and devotion.

So is there a cap on the abilities of a Poker Player no matter whose coaching them? Aside training a reasonably intelligent person from the ground up things they may not grasp. Lots of math in poker now, lots of memorization... People will sit on sims and exploitable aspects for hours upon hours memorizing the exact precise choice and still be wrong a lot. Though that should help crush 200 NL.

I wonder if say your talent, intelligence, applicable to poker is say on a 1-10 scale a 7 and I'm a 5... No amount of coaching I get from you is ever going to make me a 7?

Though of course if I am playing at the level of say 2...you might get me to a 5? So it's not always the coach...

You can kinda say the same about GTO play. Hey the solver calls a pot sized bet on the flop with my hand 3 percent of the time so my play was solver approved. Ergo im good at the pokerz. Only deference is in the solver scenario you're mainly justifying your **** play to yourself.

Don't want to make this thread abt bencb but could u elaborate a bit abt this? Bencb always gave me the more professionell less scummy vibes like others do. Never had any rye products though. I find it odd to instantly call someone out for one supposedly bad range construction (your 67s example). And yeah exploit range construction based on DB analysis is most likely much more powerful in win rate increase than sticking to pure gto ranges/deviation from it. Imo majority of players who need coaching are playing buy ins where exploit plays will make u much more money due to population over bluffing, underbluffing in certain spots etc. Hence a more exploit based range construction based on fundamental research is better than pure gto. U prob know this. So I find it odd to call out bencb in this example. Ofc if someone sells exploit ranges, they need to be based on large data analysis.

There is definitely clear scammy people out there, who just super obviously fish in the rec population for coaching money.
One that would come to mind is clearly that ginge dude, who correctly imo got called out for it by bbz once. He had once posted a utube vid with a preview of his "course" and it was basically some PowerPoint slides with shitty information abt some exploits and blabla.