Coaches / BalugaWhale

Andrew Seidman, a 21 year old senior at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, hit the poker scene fast. He went from an unsuccessful small stakes limit player to a big mid-stakes NL winner on Full Tilt in a matter of weeks. On May 29th, 2006 (after having been busto 3-4 times), he deposited 100 dollars on Party, and by mid-July he was a 400 NL regular. He went on a big rush early in 2007, pushing him up to play as a 5/10 regular. Now, he is a regular at 10/20 with occasional forays into 25/50. He tries to maintain about 40k hands/month 8-tabling while attending school and having fun in college. He used his winnings to take an extensive traveling vacation across the U.S., Central America, and Europe in the Fall of 2007.

"Baluga [Andrew] has an effective, well-constructed method of coaching. Aside from sweating and discussing HHs, Baluga likes to spend 30 minutes discussing key hands of the session. This promotes fully-focused discussion and analysis and I found it very beneficial. Baluga re-installed some of the fundamentals in my game as well as some advanced play that allowed me to get involved and take advantages of the right situations. I would recommend Baluga to anyone interested in taking the next step to beating mid-stakes." Stu Healey

"I also was coached by Baluga for 100/hr at NL200, sometime around March. I definitely recommend him, and I'm in the process of modeling my coaching program around his. He's a great teacher and is very patient and understanding." tubasteve (DeucesCracked Coach and video contributor)

"Andrew helped me quite a bit and was very knowledgeable in all areas of the 6max no limit game. It was due to him that my game rose up quite a bit and I certainly think that anyone looking for a coach should check out BalugaWhale to help them with any area of their game that they need work on." Bill Hubbard

"When I first approached Jay for coaching, I was a losing $25 NL player. Over 10k hands, I was -7.3BB/100 and, due to all the "bad beats," felt that Lord Full Tilt had simply forsaken me. I had $300 left in my account and refused to redeposit without figuring out why I was losing. Jay and I settled on Andrew for a coach and I had faith in Jay's recommendation.

I was first impressed with Andrew's professionalism; he was on time, polite, well spoken and friendly. He got to work on my game and the results were immediate. I started looking at various aspect of the game in a different light: pre-flop raising ranges, c-betting frequencies, 2-barrel situations, unnecessary fancy plays and more.

I climbed back up $25 NL and over the next 10k hands, I won over 10 BIs for a winrate of about 5.5BB/100. The next "epiphany" was regarding hand ranges--both real and perceived--and tendencies (perceived and real) of me and my opponent. Through hand review and theory talks, it started to really make sense and I found myself maximizing value in situations where the old me would've gotten less, making better bluffs that actually succeeded fairly often and making good folds that were uncharacteristic of my old game. I then took a shot at $50 NL, continuing with Andrew, and it stuck. The result is a winrate of 6BB/100 over 10k hands of $50NL, and I'm now going to be moving up to $100 NL.

These results were a direct result of Andrew's coaching. His insightful yet simple and clear explanations of the many situations we covered made it fairly easy to fix my major leaks. I highly recommend Andrew to anyone at any level and I plan on sticking with him for all future coaching." Sean Clouden