I was skimming through the Leggo forums yesterday and came across this comment by Aejones:

"Meh, he did a guest video for me at higher stakes than we've had done on the site, I very frequently don't give away things in my videos, I just don't tell people that I'm not giving them away and reserve things for my students and myself."

I just want to ask the other training sites and other Leggo coaches (specifically Apathy) whether they glaze over certain thoughts or concepts during their videos. I'm pretty sure Bobbo does aswell for Leggo, but he does it in a way which doesn't particularly worry me. I would have thought that the main reason for being a member of one of these sites is to get insight into playing some of the more interesting positions that come up and the reasons as to why the are played that way. I am not trying to bag on Aejones I am just interested in how many sites/coaches do hold back. I know Taylor used to do this by not showing heads up videos, but I don't think recently I have seen a video by a CR member where they played an interesting spot and have not discussed their reasons for their play.

Interesting, I used to never show heads up videos, but that was only because there was so much 6max stuff that people were clueless about (2 years ago, mind you), that teaching HU to someone who doesn't understand basic poker principals woudlnt make sense.

When you see me playing in a video, I'm giving it my all. I have too much personal pride to put forth something less than my best effort when someone is paying me for something.

tc

Hi inverted,

Clearly, my videos are among the best online, and if you've got a Leggo subscription you surely agree (no one has ever been critical of my humility).

As I said in the thread:

So, to recap, I never leave a dry moment in my videos. I never say anything false or theoretically wrong (I'm sure there are other people making videos that do, certainly not on purpose though), and I'm likely the most entertaining video producer online. Certainly you weren't being critical, but I might as well defend myself before anything else transpires.

You will not get anyone on here that "admits" that they hold anything back. If you think there is any chance you'll get that, you're mistaken and barking up the wrong tree.

The fact is that there might be a handful of plays that I would make some % of time in a certain spot that only a handful of players in the entire world are making, and for the same reasons. In that case, I simply don't go out of my way to make the unorthodox play, and I save it for my students.

Additionally many of these plays aren't too applicable at the 2-4 or 5-10 stakes I'm usually playing in my videos, where it's more important to get the fundamentals down.

Aejones I did not mean to imply that your videos weren't already of a really good standard. I'm unsure if anyone else would admit to holding back, although in a way Taylor has and had done so previously. I would think that generally people might say, "I sometimes don't have time to discuss certain reasons/concepts in full detail" or something along those lines.

I just think that the point of the video training sites is to see the unorthodox plays that maximize value. For me I feel like there are a large number of good ways to learn fundamentals, but finding plays and thought processes to move up in levels is the main reason for joining training sites. So far the only people that I have thought that have skipped over plays have been yourself and Bobbo, your vids are among the best I have seen but I wonder if they would be even better/start to dry out because of this.

come on taylor you're twisting things. that's not really a fair explanation of what some people mean by holding back.

inverted - please give me some feedback here. what am I holding out on? most people complain that I linger over hands discussing them too in depth. I don't know anyone else who spends the time (if this is a good or bad thing, you be the judge) to discuss the situation and factors concerning the decision. the one thing I don't do is explicitly explain some of my terms, but that's because they tend to get wordy and are not particularly useful in layman's terms.

Perhaps I should have been more careful with my words. I don't have any specific examples in front of me. I guess part of it comes from the fact that you have said things like "I call this a type X flop" or "I call this a teir 3 hand". When you use terms like this sometimes you skip over or it seems like you skip over the exact flop/hand and reasons for the play as if the person has read your book. I am not saying it happens all the time, or that you do it on purpose I just think you are often so busy discussing other things that you just jet passed it and onto other topics, which is why it doesn't bother me. But having read Aejones comment I started wondering. Again I want to state that your videos and Aejones are still among the best I have seen.

inverted,

just my opinion, but i think asking for things like how GPs personal history with player x at 25/50 might influence a certain decision or the special plays aejones might make 5% of the time on the turn that he feels give him his edge at the nosebleed stakes is a bit much for a $25/month subscription. i'm totally fine with these guys holding stuff like that back. for one thing, as aejones already said, unless you're playing really high stakes yourself, making those super fancy plays just isn't as important as realizing the thought processes by the standard plays. in addition, most of the guys who do videos at higher stakes will say stuff like "sometimes it's ok to c/r here because of blah, but this time i'm going to bet because of blah" - so i think you get plenty of explanations for alternative lines in the better videos.

Ah ok, cool, thanks for the compliment -
basically, the terminology is how I classify things, which helps me bring order to a hand. some people have openly complained to me i overclassify, but i find it mandatory.

I echo this; I haven't been making videos for long but I've been coaching for longer than nearly anybody on these forums. I don't hold anything back and that's something I make very clear to our video producers NOT to do - give it your all and if you can't, do something else where you can give it your all or take the season off.

The two Bobbo vids ive seen are the best I have seen besides maybe cts. I saw a couple of taylors and some other pros. Half the card runners pros arent holding anything back, they just kinda suck(ususally a guest pro). Most importantly;players cant break down everysingle reason they made a play cause it would run into explanation of the next hand etc..... If youve ever read one of BobboFitoses posts youll see that hands arent always so simple =). IMO What a vid does gives you some good advice and also lets you see what a solid game flow and sesh looks like for a winning player.

I don't think leggo is holding back. Some concepts are just harder to explain during play. If you read the leggo video threads you'll see that all the coaches are very open and expository when it comes to answering questions about the videos. Also, I believe we were the first site to make the pause and explain format, this is clearly indicative of trying to explain things further.

I'm a huge Bobbo fan, but you do say in your first or second video that you will not be revealing what you mean by tier x hand or zone whatever flop which I found annoying. I guess it was more of a case of wishing you'd never brought it up. That being said, I'm not (I don't think) hindered in learning from not knowing the specific definition and can generally figure out the gist of what you mean when you bring that stuff up.

I think PokerXFactor and pretty much every other MTT guy beat you to the punch by about a year In any case, I think holding back strategic information in a video would be pretty silly. The only time holding back anything strikes me as being worthwhile is if you happened to be making a video with a number of players who you play on a very regular basis (and in that case I just wouldn't make that video).

Thats the way I thought, well if you aren't going to tell us what they mean why tell us at all. Similarly @ Isura and Bryce, I wouldn't have thought that any site was holding back information. But then I read the comment by Aejones and remembered the part mentioned in the quote above about Bobbos vids and started to wonder. I is a tough question to ask because I realise I am probably never going to get "Yes we hold back information" from any of the video training sites. I thought I might get other comments around the subject though that would lead me to a conclusion.

Spark curiosity which could potentially lead to more sales of his $750 book or in AE's case, more bookings for private coaching?

It's kind of off putting to hear this going on when up until this point I was positive I'd be paying up a years membership in the next week or so. It's certainly something I haven't ever noticed on CR, sure enough Tay/Cole/etc could be purposely avoiding mentioning or talking about something, but at least they're not telling you that they're not going to discuss it (which seems to be the case here), or using private terms that are only explained to people willing to cough up $750.

I don't think this really effects the low or mid stake players in any way shape or form. High stakes players, who are their opponents and already pretty good at the game could definitely learn a bit from advanced maneuvers like that, but not the low or mid stake players. It would probably just get the low/mid stake players into a bunch of trouble. I can see how a high stakes player would be upset over this, however, low stake/mid stake players should only be happy that they're not given moves that require a perfect situation to employ, because odds are you're going to use it when it shouldn't be used, and end up losing money with it.

Well, this could definitely hold some truth alright.

However, I read the review thread on Leggo about Bobbos book, and SirNeb (iirc) said that the stuff in his book would definitely help 100nl/200nl players hugely (or something to that effect), and that even as a 400nl player he still picked up bits from it.
Now, it's already been shown that he uses terms in videos that are only explained in the book, so who's to say he's not leaving out stuff that would help 100/200nl players in the videos themselves, that again is only available in the book?

Now, I'm not subbed to leggo as of yet, as I said above I was certain I was gonna be paying up within the next week or so, so it's merely speculation from what I've read. I can completely understand why the guys themselves would do it, it's certainly a good thing for themselves, but since I haven't seen anything that resembles it in the last year I've been with CR I just think it's a little...off putting...to have an instructor using phrases and private descriptions for parts of videos that can only be found described in a $750 book.

In fairness, this is the only negative thing I've heard about leggo so far, everything else has been massively positive and I've no doubt that Bobbo's videos are as good as people are saying but again, it just sounds a little dodgy from a prospective customers p.o.v.

I find it rather easy to spot if someone is not giving away much at NL. It always happens if you see the guy open with a raise, get called, bet the flop and fold to a reraise in 100% of the cases. The reason is simple, if he never played back in such situations he wouldn't have archieved anything in Poker.

where can i find these videos ??