Yeah I mean to be honest I don’t even think it would be viable for a student to join a CFP for 60%, the games are hard enough at it is. I think something like 10% of people that join CFPs make money, or something ridiculously low. The value comes in as that 10% move up in stake, then they have you got you for like 1m hands plus.

Yeah for the last 5 years probably.

This isn't unique to poker. Real Estate coaches and courses immediately come to mind, where some of the "best" charge upwards of $20,000 . There will always be grifters and scammers in every industry , nothing we can do about it.

Is it known what is happening with Carrel's charity, ThriveUK, which claims to be able to "end homelessness in the UK by 2025"?

The website is on all his socials but doesn't work. It has no records other than the fact it is registered. I couldn't find the app in the play store either (supposedly it was ready 18 months ago)

this technique is literally used in any area of profession and it is not a big leap of logic you need to make to apply it to poker. I used sports examples because contrary to you I think poker and sports have tons in common regarding purely the mindset aspects. That is overcoming and dealing with adversity. The same concept applies, you perform to your fullest potential in the face of adversity. Or get as close to it as you can. Also the greatest atheletes have mentioned the connection between mind and body, and that it is not your body that makes you stop at a certain point to push further, it is your mind.

How about Jason Koon talking about the benefits of visualization, is that Poker related enough to you?

https://www.runitonce.com/poker-trai...rom-the-heart/

the fact that you feel the need to lecture me on trivial things like luck factor in poker and sports and poker not being the same thing is funny to me

A lot of prep time goes into coaching that isn't really accounted for and justify what seem like extremely high prices.., Most coaches have players send databases, analyze it, draft an outline of topics to discuss with relatable examples and hand histories etc tailored to address areas the trainee needs to improve... Lot of work required outside of the session to have meaningful results.

Some just have a generic coaching package and put in very little effort.

It is up to reviews and consumers to do research and decide which are providing quality services and which are taking advantage of consumers. Unfortunately the people getting coaching usually aren't qualified to adequately judge the quality of training they receive so if you are really concerned about it why don't you review coaches and find which are putting in lots of effort outside of the coaching session which justifies the high prices and which are selling generic coaching packages at unreasonable prices.

Generically judging a coach by whether you like them or not/their personality/even their prices without knowing what they offer is ridiculous. Even their win rate could be irrelevant as a crusher who puts in no effort will provide little to no benefit while a losing player could have a really good understanding of a certain aspect (mental game coaches come to mind but some solver/math specialists also provide good coaching in specific areas without a full understanding of poker) and still provide quality products.

Honestly I think Doug Polk is one of the best HUNL/was when he created upswing but the prices for a generic non tailored coaching site is ridiculous even if less then personalized coaching from weaker players.

Sorry but mindset coach sounds about as scammy as self help guru.

Dont really know much about it just some people have used them and praised certain ones. I imagine they're more like a therapist then a poker coach though so might be a bad example. I do know there are some solver coachers or were when solvers were less streamlined that are very good mathematicians/computer scientists but not winning poker players or at least not enough to justify their pricing.

I've said this in several other posts but always playing your A game/not tilting is so much more valuable than most poker players realize. It's pretty hard these days for someone to make 100/hr in a public 5/10 nl games. It's real easy to torch 1000 an hour in ev on monkey tilt. A lot of pros spend a lot of time these days studying, trying to figure out how to eek 14 cents in extra ev from a certain hand in a certain spot but when they're losing, especially when they lose a few sessions in a row play horribly.

What works for me is realizing how stupid/costly tilting is and knowing how happy I get when I see other people tilting/about to tilt. You can see the look on someone's face/their body language when they're really about to go off and it's fantastic. Six months from now I'm not going to remember whether I won or lost on March 13th 2022 so why make a bad situation worse if I'm losing?

The rare times I genuinely feel angry at the poker table I'll just leave- unless the game is absolutely incredible and people are just punting all over the face in which case I'll tighten up a little just to make sure i'm not doing stupid **** due to tilt. The worst beat in my life I ever took was when I was about to leave since I started to feel angry from a few really bad beats. I was actually pissed at myself for feeling this way. Then I got all in with the nut flush against a lower flush on the flop. he proceeded to go runner runner straight flush. the entire table was going insane at the hand. My brain is weird and somehow the absurdity of this hand totally calmed me down. Internally I was laughing bc I knew it couldn't get any worse than that and I knew if it happened to anyone else at the table they would go off until they lost every dollar in their pocket.

It's also just a matter of perspective. We've all gone through bad things in life- some worse than others to be sure. At the end of the day poker is a game we voluntarily play- it's just not that serious it's worth getting that upset about.

I think almost all of them would be total scams- but if someone is at least decent at poker an elite mindset coach would be so much more valuable than a poker coach.

OK, hypothetical one for you - let's say I'm a breakeven 10nl reg. I don't know what coaches are typically charging nowadays, but let's say I booked five hours of coaching. How long would it take me to pay for that coaching through increased winrates?

Poker mental coaches use sport examples because that's where this stuff comes from.

The following is from my book Real Poker Psychology - Expanded Edition:

.............................The Components of a Game


While this idea has already been addressed some in this book, including the previous chapter “It’s Not What You Eat” starting on page 162, I want to go into it in more detail here. Part of the reason for this is that this idea is something that almost all the poker mental coaches don’t understand and thus get wrong, and is perhaps more than any other reason why almost all the poker mental coaches give advice that has virtually nothing to do with poker.

Basically, you can divide almost any game into two components, the knowledge component and the execution component. And the following is from the previous chapter:

To understand this better, let's take another look at tennis. Suppose you’re a good tennis player, are on the court, and your opponent hits the ball over the net and now it's your turn to hit it back. What do you do?

I believe that two things happen. First, you instantly know what you want to do. That is, you’ll decide what spot on the court you’ll want to hit the ball to, how hard you’ll want to hit it, how much and what kind of spin you’ll want to put on it, and so on.

Notice that so far we're talking about the knowledge component.

Continuing with the excerpt:

Next you’ll have to do this, and that requires speed, timing, and coordination.

And now we’re talking about the execution component.

Continuing with the excerpt:

Now let’s look at poker. It’s your turn to act and you have a decision to make. Suppose your opponent has bet and you have to decide whether to fold, call, or raise, and if the game is no-limit how much to raise. Of course, a good player will know what to do in almost all situations quite quickly, and the remaining spots will take a little more time

Clearly, this is the knowledge component of poker.

Continuing with the excerpt:

but will he need speed, timing, and coordination to get it done? That answer is no.

And again this is the execution component of poker.

However, notice something interesting, the execution component in poker either doesn’t exist, or if it does exist, it must play a minor role compared to the knowledge component, while in an athletic sport like tennis, the execution component is quite important, takes thousands of hours of practice to develop at a high level, and in my opinion in many athletic sports it’s probably more important than the knowledge component.

So why is this important? Well, the answer is that when reading the poker psychology books of which I’ve only read a few, and I also assume this is true of the coaching/counseling that many of these people sell, there’s a ton of stuff that clearly comes from the execution component of the sports world and is essentially worthless for the vast majority of players in poker. So, we hear about unconscious competence, how it takes 10,000 hours of study and play to be an elite player, taking deep breaths (which I assume makes you more relaxed), and of course being thankful for the hot shower that you took in the morning which has something to do with gratitude which I assume is supposed to reduce stress. But I also don’t see how any of this helps to improve your knowledge of the game, which is what you use to make your playing decisions.

To finish, I want to stress that this is a very important chapter. It’s not that it contains information which will improve your poker results but that it contains information which should help you avoid many of the pitfalls of the mental side of poker. And if you can do this and then pay attention to those things that are actually important at the poker table, and you’re let’s say an intermediate player, your chance of becoming a much better player (with more experience) should go up.

@Mason

How do you define "knowledge"? Are we talking only intellectual knowledge or also intuition/feeling?

For example, I'm sure you intellectually know more about game theory than Phil Ivey, but are you a better player?
What makes Phil Ivey a better player than you if you know more than he does?

My guess is that the argument for meditation improving us as poker players is that it helps us access "the zone" where we know more through intuition/feeling and not just intellectual knowledge.
And of course reducing the probability of tilting -- tilting meaning that we do things we intellectually know we shouldn't do.
And improving mental endurance so that we can play longer sessions at high levels of concentration.

I actually remember Elliot Roe coaching me 8-10 years ago when I was grinding HU hypers for sne on stars. I used to watch the videos and do the meditation and I remember them being super beneficial. The HU hypers are the most tilting game known to man kind. I remember he coached all the Bali guys.

He was so good I’m pretty sure Rocco made a rap video about him with Moca Choca ahahah.

“I make your weekly wage in a day”-rocmar87

I found one of the rap videos

https://youtu.be/zyh6qv3mRq0

Those were the days

This is from the "Conclusion" of Real Poker Psychology - Expanded Edition."

On a different tact, I want to take a moment and reexamine the idea of much of this poker psychology stuff. Is it really as bad as this book indicates? Or is my attitude too negative? I think the answer goes something like this.

Poker psychology, as presented in much of the current material that has made its way to market, probably has a little value. It certainly won’t hurt to be a little more confident, to pay attention to a higher degree, to have a good diet, or to even get a good night’s sleep. But if it means that you as a poker player latch on to this stuff and neglect to do those things that can improve your understanding of all things poker, and this includes the strategic concepts that govern sound play, then it really is quite detrimental to your long-term results.

Put another way, as long as this recent poker psychology material doesn’t hurt you, if you’re someone who plays live, in my opinion, it might be worth as much as one-tenth of a big bet an hour in a limit game. But if it causes you to neglect those areas of poker where you need to improve, and this is especially true if you’re someone struggling to beat the rake in a small stakes game, then its negative effect will lower your potential future win rate by much more than one-tenth of a big bet per hour. And if it encourages you to participate in games where your expectation is negative, then it’s beyond bad.

Now let's move on to a player like Phil Ivey. When he (or some other world class player) is playing in one of these ultra high stakes games against other top players, his true win rate is probably small relative to the size of the blinds. So, any small increase he can get in his overall win rate, because of the super large stakes, can still amount to a lot of money in the long run. Therefore, some of this poker mental stuff might have value for a player like him.

However, if, for instance, you're a live $1-$3 no-limit player and are struggling to do much better than breaking even, things like visualization and breathing exercises, and my favorite (from a different author) showing gratitude for the hot shower you had in the morning are, in my opinion, at best silly. And I believe that the majority of people who take these lessons come from this category and not from the category of player that Ivey is an example of.

And for your question as to how I define "knowledge," all of that is explained in my book Real Poker Psychology - Expanded Edition.

Hope this answers your question.

Mason

Mason Malmuth, I'd argue perhaps if you were multi-tabling 15 or more tables on-line that fitness could be very key. I don't think a person could even do that kind of grind for any length of time without being mentally/physically fit? I tried and my WR dropped as my energy level dropped.

In live poker I'm sure that you might miss a "tell?" Being more aware and present, not necessarily extremely fit could count a lot depending...Also playing a long series of MTTs or Cash games you need to be strong enough to sit there. Having pain in your back could hurt your WR?

I played a lot of tennis as a Jr from 8 to 12. I was very good and smashed everyone but when it came to competitive I found issues. Their style was ugly and I had to adapt. Needed psychological lessons to adapt to tactics not just mechanics. My mechanics were really good but their mechanics were almost borderline broken. They would mishit the ball as a tactic. Plus the pressure of winning against players I should beat with 1 hand tied behind my back was disheartening. Some pros adopted a strategy like that in the old days, "solly slop," and Brad Gilbert's play. It can be hard to defeat...

Poker is a game of calculations and I love your reference between tennis and poker. Tennis is a game of strategy too but you really have to have perfect muscle memory to win in it. Fitness and psychological perfection is the difference between money and none. (I've seen a lot of poker players win a lot who are definitely borderline heart attack victims and psychologically not there and with it) never happens in tennis ... lots of 25 wins 0 losses to the same opponent and you don't see that in poker.

I want to follow up a little more on knowledge. In Real Poker Psychology - Expanded Edition there are three areas I emphasize that would come under this heading:

1. Strategy. I think this should be obvious.

2. The short-term luck factor as measured by the standard deviation. When you read statements like "the variance over time just gets bigger" you can be sure that the author is at best confused on this subject.

3. Games, like poker, which are based on probability theory, can be counterintuitive to many people. I've never seen this important idea even addressed by a poker mental coach (though it may have happened somewhere). I give some examples of how this can affect the mental well being of many players.

Mason

I don't disagree. But keep in mind that when playing lots of tables at the same time you should go to a simple algorithmic strategy which should drop your win rate per hand played even though you should also win more in the long run.

Consistent with what I have written this might affect your win rate by a small amount. But if you're a struggling low stakes player there are many more important things you probably need to improve.

As a kid, I bet I played in at least 200 tennis tournaments, my high school team was Florida State Champions for two of the three years I was there, I was ranked in the top 20 in Florida, plus I played four years of Division I tennis at Va Tech, and I never saw a person mishit a ball as a deliberate tactic. You may be confusing "old time players" who put a lot of spin on the ball when making different shots. I also talk about my tennis and how it compares to poker in Real Poker Psychology - Expanded Edition.

Poker has a large short-term luck factor and tennis does not. That's what you're observing. If Player A is a little better than Player B, A will win almost all the time.

Mason

All I know is that if a poker coach recommends you watch this:









during your session, you are getting your money’s worth.

Stuff like this helps me execute

I would argue that getting a mental coach to tell you what year it is, and that playing in such a way that only ever made sense when chasing SN/SNE is no longer applicable, would do more to improve your winrates over the long term

I've seen Mason's writings on the "skill game" vs. "knowledge game" idea before, and I always felt it was a false dichotomy. Of course there are sports with little or no strategic element like power-lifting or sprinting, where it's almost all down to physical conditioning. But in a complex sport like tennis, the "skill" elements like technique, coordination, and timing are mediated through mental circuitry. It isn't really that different from a mind-sport like chess or poker, the essence of the game is to process information about the game state and execute the optimal action.

In tennis, factors such as physical prowess and conditioning influence your success, for which there is no analogue in poker. But I don't think there is really a fundamental distinction in terms of the nature of the mental processes at play in-game.

Arguably tennis also has a "knowledge" component in terms of the physical mechanics of executing the shots. You can spend hours hitting the ball against the wall to master the forehand and backhand. But it doesn't mean you'll be able to return your opponent's serve on set point - that's the mental game, being able to process information about your opponent's tendencies, his positioning on the court, the trajectory and spin of the ball, and so on, in real time. Similarly in poker, players memorize starting hand charts and learn the optimal bluffing frequencies in certain spots, but what separates the best from the rest is not the ability to recall such information from memory, but the ability to implement a decision-making algorithm in novel situations.

You assume that this supposed novice is going to say "ok well I guess I'll just forego the coaching and blow it all to ArcherOfLoaf" instead. Even bad coaches to some extend spark and grow people's interest in the game.

Put another way - if I'm a complete novice and I go lose $500 at the table, that's probably it for me. I don't know what's happening, I lost, I probably will continue to lose. I'll find something else to do with my time and money.

Along comes a coach who convinces me he can help me win and I invest $3K into learning, after which maybe I chase another $5K in losses with his flawed methodologies because "this is a winning way to play".

Is this a moral way of thinking? Obviously not. As the saying goes though..."we ain't samurai here".

If you're not an idiot you realise that someone is a bad coach and a bad player after one session.

The two physical sports I have long thought have the most similarity to poker, in terms of the mental concentration and mental steadiness needed, are snooker (pool), and golf.

Also, no coincidence that many good poker players are also good at cue sports and quite a lot are good at golf.