What if we had a centralized council of coaches that could give their approval to each coach or training site? Poker Coach Council, or maybe a catchier name.

That's the most simple, and effective solution. Just like how tennis coaches have UTSA certification, and bowling coaches have bronze, silver or (very rarely) gold.

There is too much to unpack with the stupidity of equating a game with scamming others. So, goddamn ridiculous.


Well, you are responding to an argument that no one made (no one is advocating for the banning of books, or citations and fines of bad advice or comments), but there should definitely be quality control to prevent people like Jamie Gold setting up shop in a casino and charging five figures for some poker lessons in an unsued conference room at the rio, or ben cb charing 5000 dollars for a "poker mindset" course. We don't live in the ****ing industrial revolution, and the only people who think we should are peabrained libertarians who don't know how the world works.

. Uh, yeah. Ever heard of the housing collapse?


So basically you expect said buyer to be the expert of all things that they purchase, and to be able to properly vet everything accurately, and if they don't were going to blame them when a scammer comes along and takes advantage of that? While we are in full-blown victim blaming mode here, do you also blame rape victims for leading their attackers on? Are you suggesting that beginner poker players are capable of knowing who is a good coach and not? I just wanted to make sure, because these can not possibly be the arguments you are making.

Lol @ you comparing rape victims to his statement - yes sexual assault is a fair comparison to someone overcharging for poker lessons.

No one can protect you better than you.

Lol, you can easily identify how willingly daft someone is when they respond with this dumb argument

No one is saying it's the exact same thing, a comparison is made to demonstrate how ridiculous victim blaming is.

But I am not surprised that people who try to deflect blame from scammers are also concrete, literal dunces.

Years ago, we actually recommended to book stores some non-2+2 books. We wanted them on the shelves next to our books instead of the terrible books.

Our reasoning was that if a new player bought a poker book and found it helpful, he would often come back and buy several more. But it he bought a terrible book, he would usually realize he had wasted his money and then wouldn't make additional book purchases.

Mason

it was a bad comment and you should feel bad.

If you hire a poker coach and do not do any research in terms of their win rates/success, that blame ultimately falls on you. There's no comparison to those who are victims of rape - I'm sure you're typing this alone in your basement somewhere given how crass of a comment that was. You're really out of touch with reality.

You do not seem to understand that poker is a game to separate the less skilled players from their money, albeit "fairly", meaning within the rules of the game. Deception is a key element of playing poker, why do you call acting withing the rules of the game "scamming"?

I don't give a damn about some regulatory body being anointed to certify credentials of "poker coaches", sorry. I do think a free market is services, subject to seller liability for fraud, might be better than government or trade association intervention.

Into what category did Cardozo's book fit ?

Those who do not understand history re condemned to repeat it. I liked your Luddite-like railing against the Industrial Revolution from the 1800s That was "living in the Industrial Revolution".

Curious, how you felt about the radical step 25 years or so ago of putting poker online, away from the live poker scene ? (I liked Planet Poker was around, even Doyle's Highland Poker had a niche.) Was that a Poker version of the Industrial Revolution ?

As a "peabrained" believer in progress, I thought everyone launching a poker business online in 2001 showed progress for people who wanted to play poker.Today one former start-up is the poker site that has longest continually afforded players online poker access, as opposed to travel to brick and mortar games, in many jurisdictions.

What do you think?

Mason

Poker coaches are a scam (negative or neutral EV purchase presented as positive EV) but so are tons of purchases people make every day.

Insurance offered by travel companies for short trips is an example of a ridiculously -EV bet that most non aware people take several times a year.

Insurance is completely -ev in every sense of the word yet in the US we are required to have it on cars and other items. There's nothing scammy about poker coaches unless they lie about their results or promise services that they never produce. It's amazing people can't just look up these players' results prior to paying for coaching, and if it's not publicly available just have them send you proof.

While insurance is a negative EV play, it does reduce variance. And sometimes that is well worth doing.

Mason

We can only hope insurance is -ev, I mean do you really want your house burning to the ground so you can become +ev on insurance lol. Insurance protects against tail risk, sometimes financially catastrophic tail risk, and you gladly accept -ev to have it.

Yes I think we all understand that

+1

Yeah, I've still been trying to work that out myself since Dennis Phillips made the November Nine: is there someone who is a merely "good" player but could train someone else to be better than himself? Phillips' (and coach Roy Winston's) argument was yes, and they tended to use sports as their analogy. Jack Nicklaus, they said, had a coach who was not a better player than his student. Some of the best MLB managers and best NBA/NFL coaches were not necessarily the best players.

As your 60-year-old tennis coach example illustrates, the sports analogy does not apply because of the physical component of sports. A coach in any sport can still impart valuable wisdom despite no longer being physically able to execute it.

But poker doesn't have a comparable disparity in theory vs. execution. It ultimately comes down to knowing the best possible decisions, given incomplete information.

Yeeter's post above is a perfect explanation as to why a great player might not necessarily make a great coach. But it does little to convince me that someone could be a good coach despite being a losing or break-even player. Is there really a coach who knows the correct decision but lacks the focus, observation, courage and control of emotions to do it himself/herself? In theory, sure. In practice, what does that training even look like?

"I'm normally watching the football game after I fold my cards, so I don't pick up the other players' tendencies or likely hand ranges. But with your focus, perhaps you'll notice stuff that I don't catch because I'm not as observant as you are, then you can make your decisions accordingly. And not only that, you can make decisions that I don't make because I lack of the courage to make them. But believe me when I tell you that you should make them. Finally, if I lose this hand, I'll go into full blown monkey tilt for the next one, which means I have a 'steam-powered punt range' that you should avoid. The thing is, I lack the emotional control to even recognize that range, and thus, I have no idea how you should play the next hand, let alone the current one.

"But please, I insist that you keep me on as your coach."

Yeah, Artie Bucco certainly did not want his restaurant burned down, but his having insurance made it an easy decision for some other folks, in order to "protect" him from a threatened loss of business with no off-setting recovery.

Truly inspired episode

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBDlb7355Hw

I agree 100% and there is no bigger offender of this than Solve For Why.

Well there 141 million homes in the US, 350,000 house fires per year. So .002% that you'll have a house fire - insurance companies are really cleaning up collecting all that money.

Hahaha, how am I mentioned in a thread like this? Just found out today. I am not aware of anyone with more solid list of testimonials than what I have. You have pretty weird criteria for a coach. Why would I even write strategic guides? Or make videos or write books? I don't need to create free content that will be seen by tens of thousands mostly recreational players, just to hope 1 in 5000 buys my shitty product. I don't target clueless masses like Jonathan Little and similar clowns. 90 % + of my clients are winning regs, many of them playing highstakes, dozens of them are coaches themselves...
Show me one MTT coach that does 1on1 and has more solid reputation than me. I don't think there is any. Yes, I am saying I am the actual #1 on the market.
And don't focus on tournament wins so much. I don't even bother sharing my nicknames (unless someone is paying for coaching by ACR transfer, then they learn that nick) because it just isn't as relevant. Sure, the worst types on "con-arist coaches" don't even win in anything, but after them there is lot of mediocre players who just happened to win some big stuff and they are immediatelly charging hundreds of usd per hour. And people are buying because "wow, 5m on Hendon, must be top notch coach".
The best coach is not someone who wins the most money (which is extra **** criteria for me considering absolutely idiotic poker regulations in my country ), but someone that can coach many different highstakes regs with $500k+ or $1m+ lifetime profits, offer them to pay after the coaching, only if they think it was actually worth it, and have a 100 % success rate with it. And thats me.

Btw the rate isn't $250 anymore but $300 per hour (of recorded video review)

Why would I have to pay off reddit mods? Yes, I went there to make a promo (and got like 10 clients from there), but I also provided much better strategic content than 99 % of that sub with my answers. Should soon make a new thread.


edit: here is 3 days old testimonial of WPT Main Event 2022 winner ($4,136,000) and online crusher:

If you want to see more - https://www.mttdatabasereview.com/ It is in no way full list, because I am way too lazy to update the website, but still much more than any other coach I have seen.

Not mad, more amused. But kindly don't mention me in a thread about con-artist coaches (the thread is definitely needed though, poker coaching market is a huge joke).

Exactly the same thing that can protect people from being cheated by their own government. It's only easy to fool people who don't have knowledge, don't want to learn, and don't invest some time in doing something as rare as thinking.
Any player who hasn't done this previous work is highly likely to be cheated

How can I evaluate someone in an area I haven't mastered? Answer - By reading a lot, analyzing all the other learning options, and investing some time and money in the process. There is no other way.


A simple idea - have him play live at the same limit as the student and explain his analytical process.

That wouldn't be very helpful. As long as the coach sounds confident in whatever he is saying, beginner player has no chance to know if it is good or not. This is exactly what those mentioned con-artist coaches thrive in.

If you are not very knowledgeable yourself, then look if that coach is capable of coaching players above your level or if he is simply going for clueless recreationals who won't be able to judge if they are getting good service or not.