I tend to agree with OP. I think there are very few people who have any revolutionary knowledge about the game of poker, and those few (durrrr, PA, Shaun Deeb, and some others) aren't coaching. I think you can learn all you need to know right here on Two Plus Two for free, so it's silly to pay for it.

Now, getting coaching right now for a relatively "unsolved" (and I use the term very loosely) game like Omaha, Razz, or other non-HE game might not be a bad idea because it can give you a profitable edge faster. But I still won't be paying for such a thing, as I find that experience is the best teacher.

Let's talk variance.... this can happen, and definitely does waaaaayyy too often... because we don't have good mechanism for appraising a coach beforehand...

but I'm sure you can imagine the opposite of your post being true for someone or a group of someones as well.

Conclusion... there is too much variance in coaching, course that says nothing about whether its valuable or not, until there's a more concrete way to measure it... why not just let everyone make there own decision.

(PS. in no way saying you are right or wrong, just using your post as a jumping off point)

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Also for the variance graphs early ITT --- its not news that you have to play an enormous amount of hands to converge within a small margin of your true winrate... whoaa!!!!

But to say that is a reason not to have faith in someone's ability is kind of asinine.

We deal in probabilities, plug the 135k hand sample with that winrrate and std dev into a spreadsheet and you can easily figure out the true winrate range and probability you've got a winner. I wish I had the sheet on my comp because at 5ptbb/100 over 135k specially with NLHE std dev the probability is very high.

You should also be able to deduce this from a sample session (which all coaches should do imo).. if what you are being taught doesn't make sense to you, then A) coach is not worth it, B) you don't have the mental capacity to the learn the game anyway... in either case that coaching is clearly not for you.

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Cliffs: Too much variance involved in the coaching process itself to make any aggregated claims on it, to each his own.

Rollover2k/Lefty2506

I was talking about the entire training industry, including the immense number of videos, forums, ebooks, study groups, coaching, blog posts, software, huds, database tools, hand history tools, and everything else you can access for $30 a month or in some cases free. Of course no one has data to make a causal link between the training industry and how hard the games are, but I don't think it naive to assume a causal relationship.

Lots of poker strategy is counter-intuitive. People can auto-pilot for years without getting any better at all, or figuring out advanced strategy.



You made this up. For a "donk" to play several hundred thousand hands he would have to four table for 750 hours. Very few losing players will ever play that much, nor can they afford to. And if someone played that much and he was still a donk, it would fly in the face of your argument that the amount of hands people play has made the games tougher.

I think the games getting tougher are more the result of training materials +the accessibility of games + the ability of good players to populate 6-24 tables.

yeah i don't think the problem with coaching is that really bad players are scamming people and pretending to be good etc

i think the problem is that the concepts that 95% of coaches teach most people know already at least somewhat, and that the reason those coaches are successful depends more on the accuracy of their execution of those concepts, rather than the concepts themselves (the coaches will make less mistakes and be more aware of opportunities etc)

i think that those differences between the coach and student are incredibly difficult to teach, and because hardly anyone coaching has significant experience coaching or has thought about their coaching strategy enough, they provide scant value for money


there is basically one coach (with many branches sprouting from him/her) that is worth getting afaik

i'm encouraged by the general response in this thread

also i used to coach, and maybe i was worth it or maybe not (i was pretty cheap) but i know for a fact i was godawful at poker back then, and now i have stopped coaching as i don't want to give info away, so read into that what you will

edit: i did actually have alot of experience in general teaching that most didn't have, because of my former profession as a professional musician, so that might swing it into being worthwhile, but i would say it was marginal

On a side note i find Phil Galfond's videos very interesting and his stream of consciousness thought babble rather amusing. Most other videos i end up watching just to remind myself how to play.

I'd definitely get a coach if/when i have a shot at the limit games.

I disagree to some extent to OP.

I did some small stakes sng coaching last year. After grinding out 30,000 tournaments in a 7 month span, I was really burnt out and did not really enjoy playing that much. I also did not feel that I would be playing sng poker much longer, so I figured it would be worth it for me to make some variance-free $$ before I left. As a result, I took on 6 students and helped their games out.

I may not be the best player in the world, but I have experienced very good and very bad forms of variance, and within any reasonable standard deviation, I am not only a winning player at the stakes I play, but one of the bigger ones.

I'm sure there are many reasons for a winning player to coach. For me, it was that it is far less mentally stressful to coach than it is to play.

A coaching poker player might be able to make $500/hr playing poker, but might not be competent enough to give out $500 worth of intellectual information/hr to potential clients as a coach. Hence the discrepancy.

Its like, I might be a hooker and make $1000/hr hooking. But can I really charge $1000/hr to other poorer hookers as a hooker coach?

This. There's a chance to win half as much as some lucksack over 2mil hands.

OP terribly delivery but you're right.

genius christ

poker is a relatively open market with low barriers of entry

there is significant money to be made

the lifestyle is very good - my other option is working 11-13 hour days as a lawyer so I can maybe make a million/year in 15+ years time but that is.... unbelievably awful

why the hell would the player pool as a natural progression get more competitive and better (more efficient) as time goes on, independent of all factors? You think the player pool of players who treats poker scientifically and wants to get better can't figure out via things that is not coaching sites that position is important, that people have a range not a hand, you should be aggro etc etc? There's nothing on those sites that could possibly teach you how to beat 5/10+ without you also having put in a ton of hours and a ton of hard work (or being struck by a golden rainbow and running in the top 0.1%)

the lifestyle you have as a live pro and an online pro are worlds apart, live pro is just too taxing unless you LOVE poker and gambling and degening and randoms coming up to you and very rarely, owning souls

I played 4 hours of PLO yesterday, to play the same number live I'd have to play for a 8+ hours for a whole week.

^^ WAT

The point of the initial graph is that there can easily be coaches because they ran sick hot for 134k hands, and it seems like they are god's gift to poker, who are coaching a player every bit as skilled in every way that just happened to run god-awful. I think most smart people realize it evens out pretty well over time. I also guarantee this has happened in the past, the present, and will continue to happen in the future.

That said, coaching, in general, is not a scam, but most charge FAR too much for their individual services, which is often due to a combination of making it worth their while, prohibitive pricing, cachet pricing, and replacement of income lost from not playing while coaching. Few coaches are worth $500+ an hour, less because they don't have knowledge to impart, and more because they are attempting to distill that knowledge on a per-hour basis to someone who almost certainly would be better served reading a few books and watching a few basic videos, (which covers about 98% of all players.) Coaching sites in that sense, are a far better value. Many people are fooled by paying big $$$ for individual coaching, then saying, "Look, right after I got that coaching, I made 2x as much as I did before", when in reality, they often could have done the same thing with a $20 book.

The OP sounds more like an indictment of education than anything. Sorry Clark you might be a good player & poster, but I think you're wrong on this.

coaching and coaching sites is not responsible for poker getting harder

poker being easy and lucratve is

the above is also why there is such a thing as coaching sites and whatnot

there will also never come a time when poker is not superior for the average student who wants to make as much money as possible when they're young, unless you're a freak athlete or a crazy boom (Internet startups) because there is a limit to knowledge capable of learnt by recreational players, and players who by their past success is hung up on their own hubris

I sort of agree with both these points... but...

just because one _could_ learn the core skills for free doesn't mean that many people will do so, have the patience to do so, or even will be know how to use their time most efficiently in trying to. Getting a coach is something of a short cut, I think, for many to doing the real hard yards themselves, as well as hopefully directing their time towards what is important. Plus there is the psychological impact that paying cash for something has on making many people put more effort in, in order to justify the expenditure.

Secondly, the traditional approach to moving up was 'paying to learn' by taking shots and losing to higher stakes players - learning by experience. Again, getting a coach is a shortcut - pay the money up the tree and get direct lessons rather than try to glean insights at the table. It doesn't solve the problem of course, since you're still paying out and there's zero variance in coaching fees, whereas if you take the old school approach, you might even win.

All of this is before considering the possibility that your coach might suck. These days it does seem like everyone and his uncle are coaches, which pretty much means some of them must be pretty average, but when there are lots of people looking to solve a problem by throwing money at it, I think it's inevitable that the number of people looking to 'help out' grows, and that the baseline standard necessarily drops. Caveat Emptor.

EDIT: oh, and very much this:

im just joshing with nvg tbh.

i only believe half of what i wrote. Theres obviously some really good coaches out there,(mdma &company springs to mind) but the bottom line is they are few are far between imho

I used to play a decent game of golf, often i would meet an opponant in a knock out,who had seen me having a lesson and ask how i found it, i would explain i have a lesson 10 out of 12 months a year,they would then proudly tell me they had never had a lesson in their life,would you like a bet on the game would be my next line.Obviously i didnt win every game i played but won alot more than i lost,i knew my swing and could start badly but as i new the break down of my swing i could adjust while playing were self taught players didnt know where to start when it all went wrong.
I beleive in learning from the pros,yes you could get a bad poker coach, but thats up to you to check them out and their pedigree,if you think someone can give you a quick fix and your be grt then dream on,alot of work is needed to be a good player away from the tables, studing ranges and what sort of hands to play against said ranges,if you have a good coach and a good work ethic it can only help your game, the learn from your own mistakes attitude holds no water for me,unless your a maths whiz and extreamly smart, but even these people would get to their goals quicker with good advise.
Having said that a bad coach can do you alot of harm so make sure your coach comes with recomendations from people you know has helped.

I don't think OP is agruing that all coaches are worthless, just that there is a shot load of people coaching, that shouldn't be.

Can't disagree with that

who needs coaching or skill? its all about luck and thats it

I have never had a coach, but for a long time I was micro NL forum lurker (for some time - poster). My winrate in NL20 6max was 3-6 bb/100 for about 8 months. 2 months ago I managed to read most of best ebooks (cts + workbook, Improva, Baluga I&II, partly AEjones) and now I am beating NL20 for 18-22 bb/100 (or 9-11 BB/100, 30 000 hands sample) and think about moving up.

Not that I use most of stuff I have read in these books (except occasionaly 3betting loose UTG opener who never thinks I do this loose, etc.), but I now have much clearer understanding of all my options and reasons for taking actions, as well as ways how to punish exploitable lines of my opponents. Here in Micro NL forums, after the hand is posted, even if correct (but often not the best) solution is provided, it is rarely explained, and much much less bigger picture is explained. Those eBooks have really helped me to learn how to play not exact hands or situations, but what lines to taken in common spots on common flops/turns against common types of opponents. Thus, I really beleive, that 2+2 is good, but not enough - ebooks are essential resource, or very good shortcut at least.

As for coaching, there is only one type of coaching which I think I might get in the future. There is one coach in Russia (NL 1000 grinder), who looks trough 10 000 hand histories sample, and later discusses common leaks. After reading many reviews and comments, I really believe this is best way of coaching and this can really help players - because there are not that many new strategy things that coach can give to his student - but plugging few essential leaks should add few bb/100 at most levels under NL600.

Just my 2 cents,
Latvian guy

welcome to real life. There are good restaurants and bad restaurants, some bad ones are expensive and some good ones are cheap. does that make the restaurant industry a scam?

grunch:
butch couldn't win a golf tourney to save his life yet tiger pays him for coaching

iv just realised. took me too long. sick level, wpwpwp

If the experts are that good, why don't they 24-table NL100 all day and make an easy living?

I've never seen a satisfactory answer to that question.