but but

the couple last of your coaches have terrible or losing winrates

Especialy hellopuppy.. i mean that guy just luckboxed for 2months and has been slowing giving it away by being -0.5ptbb for the past 1.5year

Anyone who's played with him knows hes terrible and his PTR says hes terrible

Not really...

Quoting post #102 bc I'm too lazy to write it myself:

very good post

I feel sorry for those here who don't see a difference between exploiting opponents in a poker game and how they interact with others in everyday life. I'm sorry if you can't find a way to be successful without throwing your integrity out the window, but could you at least just be a scumbag without rationalizing constantly?

this is such a good posts.

within 1 yr everyone became a coach. i always didn't feel comfortable when people asked me for coaching because I am not the best teacher and dont always feel like I am right. I'd much rather talk with the better regulars at my limit and exchange information/bounce hands off each other for free.

When I read all these threads about people leaving unsatisfied with their poker coaches I cant help but cringe. So many people are so fos with their poker results and coaching that I would be super careful about who I trusted. Honestly it might be best to just assume everyone is terrible and not believe anyone is good until you are 100% sure. If you just go off by reading coaching profiles and reviews from no names you are so screwed!

The problem with your personal opinion is that no matter how good a coach, some people will never be good at poker no matter what. This can be do to effort, discipline, genetics, etc.

Just like in sports not everyone is athletic no matter how much training, practice they get.

And imo if you can't figure out how to at least somewhat beat the micros by yourself with all available resources out there a coach probably isn't going to help.

Yes, and no one is more skeptical than me, but I am sure many players have used coaching with great levels of long run success who are now doing very well. It certainly can be an incredibly profitable investment, no matter how you structure, but I think the two biggest problems people have are not picking an appropriate coach, and then not taking a lot of the personal responsibility to maximize the utility of the coach.

Even if you find the best player on earth for whatever it is you are doing, if you don't personally work hard to get use out of what the coach says, or to work on the changes, or to bring issues to him to discuss than you are doing yourself a big disservice. Too many people think, hey, i'll just talk to x and it will be that easy.

Really good post.

i was able to find a fellow reg here on 2p2 who played my limits, and we got in contact with one another for some sweats, strat talk, and even shared some action. this is more desirable than a coach if you ask me. not only is this much cheaper, but i think it's more beneficial than coaching. sometimes you learn the most when you are teaching someone else.

Someone linked me to this post. Before you bring in my name into any of this, please make sure your facts are straight and provide some evidence for your claims. There is no truth to what you said.

I have not worked with VitalMyth personally nor have examined his results, and I would assume his price is outside of a uNL player's budget, and thus wouldn't feel right recommending him to the uNL population. I personally like his videos, but that's beside the point.

On a personal note, I have not charged for coaching for over a year and rarely offer individual coaching these days. When I do, it's free and usually short term.

Also, for those of you looking to shell out 700+/hour for coaching, I strongly urge you not to because 90%+ of the time, you will be disappointed if you remove the rosy petals you view player X through. If you take out the reputation and only hear the substance, you will almost always be find the same information for cheaper.

Also, if you're hiring a coach that self-promotes with every post or tries to sound overly intelligent and bombastic with each passing statement, he probably doesn't even win and just wants to pump his own ego/allure. For example, how often do you see CTS/Stinger pumping themselves up? Almost never. Why? Because they actually win and are secure in how good they are, while some other players may repeatedly talk about how much he owns poker despite never having the results to back it up.

Constant self-flattery is a sign of insecurity, and nothing breeds insecurity in the poker world more than losing does.

What you pay for when you hire these coaches is a placebo sugar pill, and if you somehow go on a heater afterward, you just attribute it to the coaching and might post it on 2+2 and credit the coach. However, if you don't go on a heater afterward, you just say nothing, so only the good publicity gets publicized. Just through sheer volume, some student is going to crush, esp. since they are already winners by the time they approach these coaches.

When you're one of the greatest (back to the CTS example), you don't need to keep telling yourself and others how good you are.

When you're not, you feel the need to constantly pump yourself up, not just for your ego, but for your main form of income in today's game.

Thread has degenerated again.

Started off as a a great discussion on how we might weed out predatory coaching leaving room for the legitmate product that is good poker coaching...

now its gone where all the other threads of this nature have.... sweeping generalizations about why people coach/whether coaching is valuable/etc. hitting on extreme views one way or another.

Its pretty clear if you've been around enough coaching situations that it is sometimes valuable, sometimes not, sometimes overpriced, sometimes not ...and coaches are sometimes winners, sometimes not...

can we get back to something constructive, namely reconciling the root of the problem.. the information asymmetry issue CFTW had originally brought up.

So we are in agreement that if you got coached by him now you are dumb, but if you got coached by the exact same guy 15-18 months ago you were clever.

Surely you see how results alone mean little. Esp in the swinginess of high stakes games.

I mean a week ago isldur1 was a 1.5 million loser. Im sure lots around here would love to be coached by him and frankly i dont know if that would be a bad idea.

I don't know if it is possible. I mean someone could start a site that ranks coaches ala rotten tomatoes or something.

What CTFW said is true, but I believe it is buyer beware. If someone is going to pay a lot of money for something, they should be able to vet for themselves. The best way to do that is to listen and to think about what that person is saying(via a free session or 2+2 posts). Not only do I not have a duty to ensure that people are getting the most for their money, but I have no desire to make sure that people become as good as they can possibly be. What would be my motivation for upending the coaching market to take those who are "undeserving" and to install those who are? That isn't the way life or poker needs to work.

In reference to hourly rates, I charge what people would consider to be a relatively high rate to coach which is based on my hourly rate and opportunity cost. If people want to pay it, great, if not then we don't work together. If I wanted more students, I would lower my hourly rate, or fewer, I would raise it. That is capitalism. It may seem unfair that someone who I perceive as having lesser skill charges more double the amount per hour and gets it, but that doesn't mean that I need to find a way to poach his students or inform them of their wrong decisions. I don't stand in the front of the suit rack at Macy's and tell people that they may be able to get better quality and cheaper prices elsewhere, that is their decision.

There is something that attracts students to him at twice my rate, and if I care to earn his rate per hour, I should do what is necessary to make people want to pay that, be it playing higher games, advertising etc. The answer is not to redirect the market because you believe it is unfair.

The problem with poker is it's so easy to become desensitized to money. That's how I think some of these outrageous hourlys can come about and people don't think twice about paying them. $500 may not seem like a lot to poker players, but in reality it is.

Its the players responsibility to figure out if their coach is any good.

If you are looking for a coach and the potential coach either doesn't have the playing history you are looking for or won't provide full information...then find someone who does and will.

If people are stupid enough to pay a ****load of money on coaching from awful instructors, then why would you ever want to steer them in the right direction?

First off, not a single one of our coaches has a losing winrate.

Second, James is one of the first people we hired because he's very good at teaching poker, has a lot of experience at it, and his videos get great feedback. If you don't want to watch his videos because of his PTR, then I and would encourage you not to watch his videos. But read james's blog, he takes responsibility for it and is working hard on his game. If winrates are what matter most to you, we have plenty of those to highlight as well.

My point is that we're making every effort at DragTheBar to put the results in front of our customers. Would you rather we show you James' results or just tout him as a top coach? "Top Coach" is a very subjective word and one guys top coach will be completely different than someone else's. We're simply trying to put all the information in front of students and customers so they can decide for themselves, instead of just telling them that they should "trust us" because we're a training site.

yeah even then the people behind the site have to be reputable and have a reputable process. might be better to let the market do it what it do, but try and impart some education on the students. maybe the way to hash it out is to figure out the set of questions/information a student can ask from a prospective coach to sift through them efficiently?

Hey Vern, Could we do something short term and free? I'ma uNL guy and couldn't afford you probably.

I'm still trying to get past this.

How is a coach spotting a market trend and exploiting a new player's naivete to profit fundamentally different from a "blue-collar," "hard-working" poker player taking advantage of information asymmetry to exploit weaker players by table-selecting, bumhunting, using software that enables them to track other players' tendencies, etc.?

I understand that in one case, the asymmetry is a result of withholding information, while in the other, the asymmetry is a result of using all the tools at one's disposal. But all poker players are predators. Poker is not a utilitarian game. Some of the most common themes on this board are: (1) How can I deprive others of as much money as humanly possible?; (2) Once I've exhausted that resource, how can I find more?; and (3) How can I most effectively hide that money from the government? (This is not everyone, but it is a sizeable contingent).

At first, it seemed like you were painting a picture of ordinary fraud. I can certainly relate to the idea of snakeoil salesmen peddling crappy products and predatory lenders telling you to sign on the dotted line and to let them worry about the rest. But when you remind me who the "victims" here are -- people who don't contribute anything meaningful to society and who are simply hoping to make a living by preying on the even weaker folks within their own small community -- it makes it much more difficult to sympathize with their plight.

I suppose there might be a common interest in curbing this trend among the subset of poker players who have already decided that they aren't cut out for real jobs, but who were also too stupid to properly vet their mentors. But other than this hapless contingent, why should any of the other self-interested poker players care about the scavengers scavenging the scavengers?

In other words, what's your own motivation for ridding the poker world of this evil, if not to eliminate some of your sketchier competition?

I really think this should be done, not only to help people sift good from bad, but to help people understand different coaches' strengths and weakness, what types of players/learning styles they are best suited to. It's tough to imagine a truly independent site developing though, because so much of the potential income a site like that would have is connected to the coaching/content business. It would be like a charity-site, in the sense that even if it makes money it could only be unbiased by forgoing a lot of income streams - written content/blogging/advertising from people who coach, affiliation with any training sites, etc all would introduce forms of bias or perceived bias.

Certainly better policing and transparency about the coach-selecting process from training sites would be a big step regardless of whether such a site shows up.

A lot of so called rating sites are in themselves crooked. Take the sports betting industry as an example. Why do you guys think book x will be rated an A+ on one site and get a F at another site? lots of these sites just give the highest rating to the book the pays them the most money.

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Therefore, all men are Socrates.