Coaching Poker Forums

If your friend says "hey I have a book, do you want it?", and you say yeah, is it stealing? If I've already had 3 sessions with grindcore and I didnt get a video copy of the session, yet my friend does a similar session and goes over the same stats, gives the same (sound) reasonings for what plays are good/bad at small stakes, and i then do a review of that video instead of my own which i did not have access to, is that stealing? Am I out of order for posting notes on my blog, then when the authors request i pull them down, i do so immediately? I dont think so. I think people bringing this up from literally months ago is abit questionable, since it has nothing to do with this thread. I dont know why the DC coaches were not keen on having some reviews, since it seems coaches are always putting out new threads for group coaching and alike to attract students, yet this idea comes along and they are not so keen. Seems kind of dumb to me.

"other people steal so I can steal too."

Are you fucking serious? Edit: Never mind.....

If your friend says "hey I have a book, do you want it?", and you say yeah, is it stealing?

Assuming you're talking about the ebook sharing brought up in the previous thread, yes.

If I've already had 3 sessions with grindcore and I didnt get a video copy of the session, yet my friend does a similar session and goes over the same stats, gives the same (sound) reasonings for what plays are good/bad at small stakes, and i then do a review of that video instead of my own which i did not have access to, is that stealing?

Yes

Am I out of order for posting notes on my blog

Yes

I think its more the arrogance of after you have done something like watch some coaching sessions your friend paid for that you told the whole DC community what you had done and then gave out a bunch of information on the subject.

Its like downloading the new radiohead album from a torrent site and the writing an article in NME about the album while telling them where you got your copy from. I'm sure Radiohead would be very happy.

yeah from the perspective you've described above rich it is very bad. I had already done 3 sessions with grindcore before, which were unfortunately not recorded, but did cover basically the same materials. im clearly in the wrong here tho, and so all content has been removed of course. im just gonna stop blogging and posting all together as it seems to bring more - than +, i can just keep the files as .doc on my PC privately and avoid anything like this in the future

@AGTG

I think of coaching as building a personalized program based off of what is available via videos etc on here. Like I had a coach teach me a decent amount about the math of combinatorics and probabilities during our sessions because that is something I showed an interest in. He created work for me between sessions to do and then we would discuss them at the beginning of our next session. This is something that could easily seem pointless to someone else, but I use it now fairly often away from the table when assessing situtations. It is not something he would hold back in a vid, but something that he found I was searching out. I can see how he wouldn't want me sharing a video of him teaching me this stuff with everyone out there though.

If you think about it, posting a vid almost doesn't allow the coach to be themselves either. Like I'm sure you have some friends you would make some of the rudest comments in the world too, but they are your friends and it a joke and its funny. Now do you think you would make comments like that if you knew your conversation was being taped and would be posted on youtube? This is obviously an overexaggeration, but I think it makes the point of where my head is at. The coach is going to have to act more stiff and professional at all moments instead of allowing themselves to become completely comfortable with you. They may also have a fear of pointing out something in your game that will either embarass you somehow or allow someone to take advantage of you at the tables.

I don't know you, but I don't download intellectual property, so you can amend that to every one but at least one person. If I want to play a PC game, I pay for it. I skip sports on channels I don't have.

200 brownie points, internet poker buddy!

Since this thread got wildly off topic, can I pose a question re: using the term "Intellectual Property" wrt coaching sessions? I haven't come to a conclusion really, perhaps the specific ways that a coach teaches their student about different topics could be considered "unique" in some way. But in general, coaches are redistributing information that they have gathered from a whole array of sources, none of it is technically original, and it is commonly known to most poker coaches.

Where it might apply is how the info is put together and then conveyed to the students (graphs, Powerpoint slides etc), but I'm not sure how much of that would still be classified as IP. As we should all know, there are no secrets that hold the answer to poker success (and secret info can certainly be considered IP!). A coach is simply* talking about what they have learned, in a way that their student can best understand.

and when I say "simply", what I mean is finding a way to present often very complicated ideas in such a way that the student thinks "wow, that was simple!!!" - and good poker coaches perform these amazing feats with their students...does that get me off the hook?

oh, and it doesn't matter one way or the other...it's just something I have thought about a couple of times

yeah from the perspective you've described above rich it is very bad. I had already done 3 sessions with grindcore before, which were unfortunately not recorded, but did cover basically the same materials. im clearly in the wrong here tho, and so all content has been removed of course. im just gonna stop blogging and posting all together as it seems to bring more - than +, i can just keep the files as .doc on my PC privately and avoid anything like this in the future

right I know you aren't just trying to scam DC coaching or something. You have paid for many sessions and done many things for DC yourself.

@BeaucoupFish You're right, in most cases you can't protect ideas - whether they're yours or ones you've learnt from others. I can read X coaches book, understand his ideas then write them in my own words, then sell my book even though they contain similar ideas as X coach. Likewise I can take some coaching sessions from X coach then become a coach myself and teach the things I learnt from X coach.

I can't though illegally distribute their e-book or recorded coaching session, it has nothing to do with intellectual property, it has to do with stealing their product.

its not like posting a video of a coaching session will be giving away information that ppl would have had to pay for.

i was under the impression that most of the benefit of coaching comes from the coach spotting, analyzing, and working to correct leaks/flaws in thought processes that are individual to the student. the leaks that the coaches spot wont apply to everyone, so its not at all like everyone who watches the video of the coaching session is getting a free coaching session. the information in a video of a coaching session for one student may not be useful at all to someone who watches it, but what is useful is that they get to see the coaches approach to teaching.

i find it sort of difficult to believe that posting a video of a coaching session would do a coach's business harm by revealing tricks to the trade that any student who watches can apply. Either most tricks to the trade have been presented in videos before and what they are revealing is nothing secret or individual to them, or coaches are holding back information when they make videos (which is not what ppl are paying a subscription for).

Have you had the experience of being coached? Coaches aren't "holding back" when they make videos. It's just a totally different customer/service provider relationship when they're focused to make you and only you better at poker at an hourly rate. It is definitely different and just as an example, they share things about their personal style/game with you that they might not want other people to be able to google and start silently adjusting against them.

Also I think some of them have lesson plans or various different and original ways that they teach. Stuff that they've put in sweat equity to learn and may even want to put into a book or something 1 day. It shouldn't reflect badly on them if they decline to have such information be seen by the public.

200 brownie points, internet poker buddy!

Since this thread got wildly off topic, can I pose a question re: using the term "Intellectual Property" wrt coaching sessions? I haven't come to a conclusion really, perhaps the specific ways that a coach teaches their student about different topics could be considered "unique" in some way. But in general, coaches are redistributing information that they have gathered from a whole array of sources, none of it is technically original, and it is commonly known to most poker coaches.

Where it might apply is how the info is put together and then conveyed to the students (graphs, Powerpoint slides etc), but I'm not sure how much of that would still be classified as IP.

Intellectual property is often messy. IMO there are some things that are covered that shouldn't be (for ex. you can't draw a picture of the 3 Stooges, even though you create it out of nothing), and things that aren't protected that should be (like when movies like Ants and Bug's Life come out at the same time).

Coaching-wise, it doesn't matter that what they might be telling you is collected information from elsewhere. A book on any subject has references. I recently read a book on the financial crisis that was based on interviews and research. The information wasn't spontaneously generated by the authors (the interviews were, but they presented info gathered from other documents). If you make a computer program to do something and someone else makes a program that does the same thing, that doesn't mean you both lose your ownership because others know how to do it. The coach generates the content of a session, so what he/she says belongs to them - and yes, what you say in the session belongs to you. So if you wanted to you could release your part of the conversation regardless of what the coach wants. But not his part.

I don't doubt his intentions. Honestly, Acomb seems like a fine dude and I don't think he ever meant to cause any problems.

Yeah this is why I never made an issue out of that blog post.

I personally think that Acomb original plan doesnt sounds really good to me. It would be more interesting to invest into 1 program tailored between you and 1 specific coach over a time frame. Btw when you invest into a coach, its not only about the money. I also do not understand people ITT who expect coaches review from OP because you cannot really judge a coach after only 1 single session. Its amazing to read how this thread has derailed.

I can't though illegally distribute their e-book or recorded coaching session, it has nothing to do with intellectual property, it has to do with stealing their product.

But in that case, product = IP, wouldn't you say? Else it isn't stealing.

Coaching-wise, it doesn't matter that what they might be telling you is collected information from elsewhere. A book on any subject has references. I recently read a book on the financial crisis that was based on interviews and research. The information wasn't spontaneously generated by the authors (the interviews were, but they presented info gathered from other documents). If you make a computer program to do something and someone else makes a program that does the same thing, that doesn't mean you both lose your ownership because others know how to do it. The coach generates the content of a session, so what he/she says belongs to them - and yes, what you say in the session belongs to you. So if you wanted to you could release your part of the conversation regardless of what the coach wants. But not his part.

From wikipedia: "In most jurisdictions copyright arises upon fixation and does not need to be registered." - doesn't the term 'fixation' imply that IP needs to exist in some form of media? A verbal discussion clearly does not exist in such a way. But does the act of recording a coaching session create IP? And does it matter which party makes the recording?

Also, what is the actual "idea" (or collection of ideas) that qualifies for being considered IP? Take your example of a piece of software, the software is the IP. What if the author verbally discussed the software and how it worked, does that discussion fall under protection of IP?

I'm not sure if it's quite the same, but I am comparing this to a coach a) describing his approach to poker to a student, vs. b) his actual approach to playing poker, and whether it is actually the latter (his actual approach) that could be considered the protected idea, not his description of how to play.

But perhaps it is the way the coach describes his approach to poker is what makes them a good coach, and some might consider being the "idea". But that would then mean that no other coach can adopt the same description that they heard from other coaches, right?

*head starting to spin*