What can a coach do that videos/books cant except for answering questions and giving tips...

To answer the subject of your post: Are they?



To answer the actual post: You can't ask a video or a book to help you through a concept at your own pace. A book or video can't tailor its information for you, the student. Everyone learns in a different way. A good coach in any field will know how to present the information to the student in the most efficient and/or necessary way.

They aren't necessary at all imo if you ask yourself questions go over your hand histories/review them by yourself then your all good.
If your feeling lonely hit up a "smart" poker buddy whos better then you if not then i guess hit up some people on the forums.

Go to your local casino and try to find someone who you think is pretty damn good/you envy their playstyle and you think is better then you. Then just ask if you could review a few seshes together (no ****).

This is the sort of question that can be answered by thinking about it.

Do trainee doctors and lawyers learn their trades entirely in the library or lecture hall, and then immediately start doing brain surgery or prosecuting murder trials, or do they get professional guidance and work experience from people who have already "been there"?
Lebron James is pretty good at basketball. He still has a coach.
Magnus Carlsen is the strongest chess player in the world. He still has a coach. (In fact, he has a team of advisors).

A coach isn't really necessary for most poker players (especially in the micros), but speaking to someone with more experience, or that is a good teacher, is obviously helpful.

I think that coaches would likely help in the form of connecting the dots. You can read books and study videos but unless you really do thought experiments with several scenarios that the book doesn't cover, you will likely have gaps.

video packs and books date very quickly.

theory and self-learning can be a tricky course to navigate on your own.

they arent necessary but they can be very good investments

It depends on a number of factors.

The biggest depends on what type of learner you are. Using the Myers & Briggs terminology, people who are intuitive and thinking tend to have a much easier time with poker than those who are Sensing or Feeling. The better you are at learning a concept and applying it in many situations, the easier poker will be. If you aren't able to focus on a subject for a long period of time, poker will be more difficult. A coach can help overcome this.

A potential problem is that coaching quality varies wildly. Some coaches basically just show you how they play and expect you to follow it without much questioning. Others haven't played significantly at the level in a long time. They can cost you both time and money

^Another way of looking at learning styles is, whether you are a conceptual or a procedural learner. If you're a procedural sorta guy, poker books have the potential to ruin your life. It's hard, because if you want to play while you're nailing down the concepts, you have to do something. Problem is, if you read a poker book cover to cover you will gather up a collection of procedures that can't possibly be put into action intelligently without understanding the underlying concept.

Part of the genius of Miller's "The Course" is, I don't think he expects or even wants you to read the thing cover to cover. You read the first three chapters and then go play poker for six months and then come back and read some more.

Only thing that book can't do is analyse your play and tell you where you're missing the concept. Point out the fuzziness and contradictions in your thought process. Concepts vary in terms of their validity, and you are expected to discard old ones and replace them with better ones. It's a constant process.

One thing I've discovered in these forums is that everyone learns differently. Some people do most of their learning from coaching sites and rarely read books. I'm just the opposite. I read and studied books from day one and I still do. It was eight years before I tried out a coaching site. I like my coaching site, but I still use books more.

When I watched poker on TV I was shocked to find out that people who "won" a million dollars sometimes owed half of that money, or more, to backers. I decided then that I would never have a backer or a coach, and that every penny I won would be mine. The coaching site that I am on only costs $10 a month, and I get to watch and listen to a WPT player of the year explain why he plays hands the way he does. I have read four of that player's books as well.

If I had a coach, it was this forum. I posted in beginners a lot, and was told that I was doing it wrong a lot. It hurt, but it straightened me out.

I'm an out-of-the-box thinker and I try things that I think will work for me, even if no one else is doing it.

I have a 99th percentile IQ and math aptitude, so I hit the math hard. I have a poor memory so I hit flash cards hard to learn and memorize what to do in different situations. Because of the hours of flash card work, I know that if I have two overcards my odds of hitting on the turn are 6.83:1, and I know that if I hold A3o against four opponents I probably have the only ace. I even memorize what kinds of tells to look for in different situations.

http://www.pokersyte.com/texas_holdem_poker_odds_6.htm

http://www.pokersyte.com/texas_holdem_poker_odds_2.htm

I have ADD and I'm easily distracted, so when I'm studying or playing online I have the office door closed and I wear earplugs--complete silence, no distractions. No music during poker time, ever. I was an army musician and I would get way too involved in the music to concentrate on anything else.

I'll stop there, but if you show this to 50 other poker players, at least 45 will probably think that my way is weird, which makes my point. There is no one way to learn. Everyone does it differently and empasizes different things. You might have to try a few things to figure out what works best for you.

------------

I would like to mention one more thing for anyone reading this who doesn't have a lot of money to start. That was me. I started watching poker on TV and thought it was something that I could be good at. I knew almost nothing and had almost no money to invest.

I got some poker books from the library and started with play money on Party Poker. Pretty soon I realized that all of the books were really old, so I started getting books on interlibrary loan. One of the interlibrary books was a 2+2 book, so I found out about these forums. For both my birthday and Christmas the present from my wife was a poker book,

My wife and I talked about it and we agreed that I would put $50 on PokerStars (Party Poker wasn't around any more.) It took me three months to lose it. I knew that I had learned a lot, and we gave it one more shot with another $50. I built a bankroll and went from $1 tournaments to $5 to $10 and never looked back. I am a full-time player now, I love being in charge of my life and I can't imagine doing anything else.

Who told you they were? Was that person selling something?
As others have said, it depends on the coach and it depends on how you learn.

A thing about coaching is this: You're never going to pay someone that is good as much as they're worth to you as a student. A good coach is totally getting ripped off in most cases. A bad coach is always getting overpaid. You as a student have little ability to tell the difference. The testimonials will have little value, due to survivor bias. It is a crapshoot.

Here's a testimonial. I hired a coach at exactly the right time, when I needed help. I was trying to move from small stakes to mid-stakes and got crushed. He was a great player and was trying to get into coaching, and of course, the value I got was way more than I paid. Genius? No. Epic rungood.

Fixed your post. Everyone I know who has played for significant stakes has a good group of poker friends. Maybe you're a genius or have broken the mold. Everyone else has a group of people to talk strategy, get encouragement through bad times, and sometimes get hard to hear truths ("dude, you're tilting a lot lately").

Coach? Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

That's probably true, but when I went to work on Wall Street many years ago I had a coach/mentor who was free. Five years out of the University my salary was up by 10x. Was my mentor ripped off?

I was crushing 1/2 until I started reading some Ed Miller books. So in a case like this, either im misapplying the info, or running bad. But in a situation like that a coach can help define things.

I don't think you can assess coaches in terms of testimonials at all. Some popular coaches rely on churning out a testimonial once every month or so from someone who worked 60 hours a week on poker and thus probably would've succeeded anyway, without offering data as to applications/people on the course. The way to assess a coach is by asking questions and seeing whether what they say makes theoretical sense - you should be extremely suspicious of someone who says 'shut up and just do xyz'.

Regarding the necessity of coaching, I don't think it is at all necessary to get to small stakes but it will definitely expedite the process. This is increasingly the case as books and videos are falling behind in quality. The problem with books and videos is that active, winning players will almost never be adequately remunerated in terms of sales for the extent to which they are giving away strategy, so 95% of people who make books/videos above SSNL are probably losing players (this can be confirmed by looking at the RIO/Ivey League roster's results). With coaching, the coach gets directly paid, usually at a rate slightly above their poker hourly (but don't pay much more than that - I would never pay more than $40/hour for a coach playing microstakes, never more than $70/hour for a coach playing 100NL, and never more than $100/hour for a coach playing 200NL - after that point things get weird because you are paying for a premium product).

As a current micros player, I don't think coaching is "necessary" (at least at the micros)to move up as there are even a lot here who can help you with stuff like hand reviews, basic concepts.

For the record, I do have a coach per se, but his services are free as part of a staking deal and helps me with stuff that is not necessarily found in the books. More of like infusing me with common sense that I (unfortunately) overlook over time. As most people here would agree, coaching would definitely be a value beyond micros. Good luck

You don't need a coach because you haven't played a single hand of poker ever in your life probably.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/se...rchid=50811461

I mean what the ****, you made 46 threads that are all about some random theoretical concept and the one thread that did contain a hand history was this one: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/32...-idea-1551820/, which turns out to be a hand you didn't play.

So a coach would be wasted because you don't actually play poker.

The coach or friends you review session with are there to give you hand perspective in different ways. Several brains work better then one, they can spot things you dont, or think outside the box ways you cant/dont and this all leads to better play over time.

You sought out a contract mentor who only had the job of mentoring? If so, yes.

Was this a person at your firm who had, among many job responsibilities, taking the new guys in under his/her wing and bringing you along? In a company, making the junior workers more productive is just huge business sense. Even situations where you have some after work mentoring club, there's a lot of networking sense for getting to know motivated people (even at other firms). You get a new job as a manager, having a list of people to call is worth a lot -- not having that can make you a failure. One of the things I sell my clients is "I have a great network of people, and I can get you instant access to skills you don't have".

All this to say that paid poker coaching isn't the second case. As a winning player in a limited pool, making someone good enough to move up into your games directly hurts you. You'd like to get paid for this, but the market pays relatively little for people who are good at it. It is almost one of those things where anyone willing to sell poker coaching is already proving to be bad at business (or willing to get ripped off because they enjoy it). A staking deal where the stable includes coaching is closer, because the coach is participating in the up side.
If true, this is harsh but fair.

i though i was the only one who noticed him, you should first try play poker and move up by yourself before making this thread, you made thread about which site has lowest rake few weeks ago, so how is it going OP?

This is such disgustingly bad advice. I was someone who watchef every video on every training site, read a couple of relevant books, and had moderate success moving up on my own. But in today's online environment, you're going to leak like crazy unless you have someone to look at your game for you. Coaching, for me, was a hugely +EV move.

or what was more pithily put,

in another thread.

I know the OP posted in that thread you (OP) knew what to do after the hand was over. My belief is that you most likely used results orientated thinking or didn't realize the big mistake you made earlier in the hand.

My coaching for you is that you post nothing about theory for the next three months. Strictly comment or make threads containing actual hand histories with real villains.

Coaches aren't necessary, especially if you're real good at self reflection and picking apart your own errors. If you're not, which seems obvious, you still don't necessarily need coaching, more just other people to look at hands and give insight, but as stated this seems like something you don't want to do either despite having found a large poker forum with many posters that would help

It was not my hand. And the hand is pretty obviously x/c flop if V bets less than pot and re-evaluate OTT. People made comments on his squeeze which is funny because it just shows a lack of knowledge. A squeeze is a play you make only in situations where a loose player raises and a passive player calls. These are the only two variables. So the fact that people said it was a bad squeeze without knowing information on the players says a lot. However it could have been a better squeeze if Hero was in position.

A fold OTF can be justified even if villain bets half pot sometimes depending on the villain and based on that the board is so wet and villain will be checking a wider range of hands that he called pre with.

A point I'd like to note is that based on your image and the villains are good regs who are at least somewhat positionally aware (You can find this out by looking at their stats for each position) then they will know you are very strong here a lot of the time being the PFR from BB in a multiway pot, so a bet OOP OTF will fold out all of villains pairs from 44-99 and get some aces like A9,A5 to fold. However they never have these hands when they bet after a check from hero on this flop. It will also act as a blocker bet to hands like JJ,TT and the odd KQ villain has which decided to call pre with, this will alow you to peel an ace OTT. We're much more likely to see a raise from these hands however.

Why did you unblock me.....

I am a pro who has played a ton of hours and won a lot of money and HAD a top shelf win rate

I got coaching from a highly skilled player who is an excellent coach

my win rate increased significantly and I went on a massive tear. Coincidence? Doubt it.

I have a deep bag of tricks. Getting coaching increased that bag

you play MTT's or cash? friend of mine need coaching..he's struggling playing MTT's and look for coaching..thanks

I play cash my man