If someone wants to pay 500$/hour for poker coaching from guys who aren't good at coaching nor are good at poker or pay 800$+ for ebook about PLO which contains beginner infor then I don't think we should stop them.
That being said I believe customers deserve information and our duty as community is to educate new people about all the scams taking place and about all coaches/authors who try to deceive people and sell their services without giving all the information customers may need.
We need a place when people can get to know that there is no outstanding info in 1000$ ebooks and there are no magic ways to make you a winner if you pay 500$/hour to some wannabe. We also need a place when all the guys who try to deceive others will be outed.
If someone wants to coach without giving away his online SN or results that's fine (MDMA is one example) but if somone gives only some sn's and only some results claiming it's their "lifetime winnings" then they deserve to be outed.

Haha I post opportunities in the micro stakes forum from time to time. Like with everything else, there is some luck involved.

Then why have you said you won't be posting again in the thread that claims your results come from being a massive bumhunter? you don't seem to confident to me

Because people have made their minds up one way or another, and most importantly, I believe my results speak for themselves. Anyone who is a 6-max regular, plays 5/10 + today, and plays more than 50 000 hands a month, knows that it´s not just about sitting in front of a computer all day, playing people that are clueless, and making a dollar per hand. I assure you, if it was that easy then everybody would be doing it, and I think we all know this.
By the way, that is why so many regs left 6-max in the first place: they realized they could have fish for themselves, obviously weren´t making as much with 4 other regs contesting the bad player, and they weren´t making as much money anymore playing 6-max. 6 max players, at the very least, always have to play 4 decent regs, and one weak reg or a fish. 6-max is not the easiest way to make a living in poker; the regs are generally tougher than FR, and you cannot get by just playing fish, as much as people would like to think this.

Bumhunting is not exclusive to HU play, if you never join a table without a fish and will sit out once a fish sits out/leaves (both of which you've been accused of by players who play regularly with you) then you're a bumhunter.

Also this thread is on how players can take advantage of students/potential students by sounding smart and alot better than they actually are, I think being a 5/10 bumhunting reg who charges $475hr falls into this category.

First of all, you shouldn't pay for coaching in advance.

Second of all, you don't need a coach at more than $200/hour unless you are at the level that a $200/hour coach can't help you. In that case, you should be able to tell why the more expensive coach is valuable.

I had an MTT coach at $300/hour until he won a $5K WSOP event and didn't have time for me anymore.

There probably are people who make money at coaching because they can't make much by playing. There are also people who write books or become site pros because they won some event on TV or something, but can't really beat the games that well.

me and a friend were talking the other day and couldnt really decide who a struggling 5/10 reg should go to for coaching. We decided Phil Galfond was a safe bet but we werent even sure if he was coaching and even if was the $2k+ hourly rate would quickly bankrupt the 5/10 reg. So yeh this is a huge problem.

Im not struggling currently, but if i did struggle I wouldnt be sure where to turn, thats for sure..

I have watched 3 of his videos.

I guess, anyone who actualy wins above 100nl will not like his videos but most subscribers on stox/cardrunners are people who play nl25 and under 2-3 times a week so of course you get high notes.

i mean on cardrunners *[vital]myth who is terrible and has horrible videos get 9/10 on his videos because all the nl10 grinders want free coaching by him by sucking up as much as they can.

Same goes for smizmach he makes 3 videos at 5/10 everyone notices how his thought processs makes no sense, yet all the nl10 grinder make him a god

There's probably 30 more guys who are terrible and get good feedback (ie: jason ho)

so video rating means ****. hellopuppy is TERRIBLE at poker and his teaching isnt better than any winner at nl25 could do

No it's when you refuse to play a table with weak player that arent total fish(leatherass style) that you are a bumhunter

If you review a couple tables of boywonder you will see, sometimes the fish is just a barely breakeven player(probably live player)

Also lets be clear -- dont overstate how much harder the games have gotten. Yes theyve gotten harder, but 2006 25/50 is still much harder than 2/4 today. Good players burn out and stop playing poker and that makes the high stakes games easier (even if overall everyone is slowly getting better). A great example is FoxwoodsFiend (went to law school) or thaaj2004 (sick of poker in general) or jmc2536 (who mostly plays live now) If all the good players were really hard workers we'd be in trouble, but 99% of them are lazy and will only play as much they have to (which is very little). Obviously there are exceptions such as leatherass or irockhoes.

This is coming from someone who has played 5/10 since 2005 every year off and on.

Nice job of the pot calling the kettle black. You just are on the cliff notes soapbox. The OP has posted something of value you have not.

Why do you care what some anonymous guy on a poker site thinks?

i know I'm late to the party on this one but let me put it this way:

Explaining to you why this is totally uncool would be like explaining to a ****** why 2+2=4 - if you have to ask....

If a highly motivated student does their homework and makes an active effort to soak in advice from a proven coach who is currently crushing the game over a significant sample, coaching can be an awesome value. My experience from private lessons with soccermom5 and group lessons with Shootaa have have helped to transform my game from a struggling 100NL player into a 200NL-400NL crusher.

Ugh, for every decent coach every hour he spends coaching comes with at least an extra hour of e-mailing, preparing, having sessions run 10 minutes longer, answering questions about hands sometimes, ... That seemingly high 475$ hourly is actually at most like 250$/hour put in, and probably even less for this coach specificly.

And coaches should learn you how you can get better at poker, not spoon-feed you stuff that will no longer work 6 months from now. People crushing the games nowadays might not be good at explaining their thought proces, and people that have been losing for years might still be very good at explaining their thought process. Someone like Dogishead has been having pretty bad results lately (right?) but would still be a very good coach imo.

I think the coaches listed in the coaching forum should be required to produce at least one active screen name.

Just out of curiosity, how many sessions with Dogishead have you had?

Is this an implication that doggie is not a good coach?

No previous knowledge but I find that very hard to believe given how well he articulates himself.

Great post, but kindof funny to see this from the kid who tried to angle a micro-grinder out of his roll.

2 years ago, did it for the lulz, and it was he who challenged me lol.

i've grown up *slightly* since then





to slowhabit:
no i'm passing no judgment on that. i was just interested in seeing if Kaby's posts were based on hearsay or his own opinion on the matter.

fwiw i had 4 sessions with him and was very happy with them even though i could have prepared myself better (more specific questions/situations). i didn't get any more because of unrelated reasons (not playing as much, basicly)

FWIW, I think cftw is an awesome poster and I enjoy his posts on subjects like this a lot.

I dont think he's ever said once that it was his account, last thing i heard he played almost all of his online hands at stars.
You should go back to burning witches or find out what his stars sn is and then out him.
But youre probably to lazy to put any research into it.Youre the type of idiot that hires these scammer coaches like J HO and then cries about it.

Pretty easy to find a good coach for youre price range you just have to put some effort into it and then cross check with some honest and trustworthy people like their peers or people that they play against.In all my time at 2p2 ive sent out heaps of pm's to people and only once havent i got a reply and that was from someone who played at my stakes.

I don't think a player's recent win rate has much bearing at all on his ability to coach. The one and only measure of the effectiveness of a coach is how well their students do at improving. Don't show me the coach's graph, show me their student's graphs with arrows that say "coaching started here". If they turn upwards and climb, then it was a good coach for that student. I don't care if my coach is winning or losing at whatever level they're playing (as long as it's well above mine). I care about the quality of their ability to find my leaks and communicate them to me and to formulate a plan to get rid of them.

Poker coaches should be thought of like teachers/tutors in college subjects. I shouldn't have to remind people that there are many college professors who are leaders in their field, but are terrible teachers. There are also many excellent teachers who are not the leaders in their academic departments, let alone their field, but are beloved by their students. Often though, you can learn just as much outside of class from a grad student TA or an undergraduate tutor who got an A in the class a couple years ago. With either of the last two, it really doesn't matter if they are still excelling in their most recent studies because this just is not relevant to their ability to transmit knowledge to you at your level. What matters is that they will customize their instruction to YOU to find and fix your problems.

For poker, I view coaches in the $50-$100/hr range to be the upperclassmen tutors and those in the $100-$150 ranges to be the grad student TA's. Above that, it's like hiring a college professor, and for most, it's total overkill. People who say "just learn it on your own" are about as credible as people who say "nah, don't bother going to college". There are many notable examples of people who succeed this way, and it's still bad advice, IMO. Yes, you can get there that way, but it's the hard route.