Coaching Poker Forums

The only time I'd ever consider fronting someone 10K is if I were hiring a hitman.

Sounds like you've never bought a house.

From the post: "Jason had me pay $10,000 upfront..." "Jason didn’t fulfill the agreement and asks for additional payments..." "Jason convinces me to open and add funds to a Full-Tilt.com account...".

I don't even need to know anything about the substance of what was taught. If you front a guy $10K on nothing, and he doesn't fulfill the agreement, and you front him some more money, it's not because you can't evaluate his coaching

No - you skipped over the part where OP paid Jason Ho $4500 in coaching fees. Things seemed to be going well for two months, then they got into the 10k deal. So, this winning 400NL reg thought he was getting $4500 of quality coaching well before the 10k was fronted. I still don't understand how a microstakes player is going to accurately evaluate a coach when a winning 400NL reg couldn't spot a total fraud in $4500 worth of coaching over two months.

No - you skipped over the part where OP paid Jason Ho $4500 in coaching fees. Things seemed to be going well for two months, then they got into the 10k deal. So, this winning 400NL reg thought he was getting $4500 of quality coaching well before the 10k was fronted. I still don't understand how a microstakes player is going to accurately evaluate a coach when a winning 400NL reg couldn't spot a total fraud in $4500 worth of coaching over two months.

I don't want to re-hash it all. He says he immediately doubted the advice but was winning so he kept going. He also says he agreed to let Ho play on the student's account, which is against the poker site rules and certainly ethically shaky.

He got scammed because of greed, and I don't believe his post is an unbiased, 100% accurate recount of what happened. There are a few things in his post that don't make sense.

And there are a few people in the thread who say they didn't believe he was any good based on his videos.



Ponzi schemes work the same way as what Ho did. Dangle the too-good-to-be-true and you get bites.

There are a few things in his post that don't make sense.

I don't want to rehash it either, but we can certainly agree with what I quoted.

I guess it's just the empiricist in me that tends to believe he was ok with the coaching since he continued with two months and $4500 worth of it more than the word of someone who probably wants to save face on 2p2.

TBH I think your post is really out of line. I mean all that should matter is that you enjoy his videos and that you do get something out of what he has to say. That is the purpose of this site. To improve your poker thinking and overall knowledge of the game. Whether that comes from videos, study sessions, or forums if you learn anything then the site served its purpose.
There was a time when CitizenWind from cardrunners was busto, but if you watch any of his vids u know he has a profound understanding of the game. Yes the games have gotten tougher and I wouldnt be surprised to see that some DC coaches work. Now for coaching by the hour, all you should be concerned with is that your coach is improving your game by what he or she is saying. As long as they were able to crush the game enough to know more than you then we should not be concerned if they dont play as much or work a job.
Let it be said that what I am saying does not go to the extreme such that busto degens who talk a good game are coaches. Isildur1 is a great example. Yes he is busto yes some may call him a degen, but damn if I couldnt learn a ton from him coaching me. This is very different from having someone like Bandichime from 2+2 coaching DC. LOL.

As a person who soon will be looking for a coach, this thread has been a real eye-opener for me. The best threads always have people who agree or disagree, and I was not surprised to see a couple of the defensive arguments (as these can be seen in every clubhouse). I really appreciate those who underlined the things I should be aware of in my next steps of getting better at poker -- and getting a coach.

This morning, I came across a couple of excellent posts about "getting better at poker" by "mitch" in the DC topic, "Wasted time and Effort...". As the web goes, I started reading/studying his link regarding "Deliberate Practice" (a theme that Otis was also jabbing us with). I also took a look at a book (recommended by DrGrip), called "Talent is Overrated".

This led me to a Harvard Business Review paper, "The Making of an Expert". In this paper, I ended up at an example demonstrating the perceived-vs-actual "expertise" of coaches/mentors/judges.

Judgment of Paris (Wine Competition 1976)
This example demonstrated the bias (or prejudgment) of even the French judges. The French (and the world) were shocked that California Wines won in a Blindfold test.

"Horrified and enraged leaders of the French wine industry then banned Spurrier from the nation's prestige wine-tasting tour for a year, apparently as punishment for the damage his tasting had done to its former image of superiority."

AND THEN....the California Wine industry boom began.

Interesting reads.

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Apologies if this post is not clear and organized (with all of the URL's).
I cannot....post....correct....post....correct......post....correct......arrghhh (have to run an errand)
DC needs "preview" for the posts. Pretty please!

If you really want to know if a coach is qualified to teach, you should be looking at the results of their students.

this is at most partially true imho. We all have to admit that poker is not for everyone, majority of players lose. What we DC coaches do is to teach and cater how we approach the game and try hard to motivate, communicate with students. Students will need to do their homework outside of coaching for them to actually go from noob, okay, break even players to winning players that crush souls.I am one of the exmaples that went from okay players to beat the games and now a DC coach ready to give back to the community. Had I not put in hours grinding, thinking deeply about the game, getting coaching from various resources, I wouldn't be where I am now. DC coaches and videos helped me a lot. But the bottom line is, I also spent a lot of time doing my homework.

I've coached quite a few students (on DC or in Taiwan), some students are just lazy Joes, they expect you to do all the work and expect to be a soul crusher after 5 hours of coaching. You be the judge, can you rely on this type of student's result to determine whether or not the coach is qualified to coach?

back from vegas. enjoyed a lot
i talked with some dc guys above this thread. i also met otis_nixon at dc bowling and we had a kinda okayish conversation. guess if he reads this he can confirm
though i really understand any idea of being carefull because of results, i personally dont feel i have to justify myself - everything is fine for myself, for dc and for any of my (actual/future) students, exept the one thing that i lost money for 1 or 2 months on ft 1/2 in early 2009 i guess. just to make sure, here are my recent results (confirmed by anyone who wants and though results, no matter if winning or losing, as mentioned by a lot of people arent THAT important for being a good coach imho)

http://s7.directupload.net/images/100625/zl3n34u5.png

this is missing that my european network takes a lot of rake and i got lil avobe 10k, maybe 11k from rb and i run good in mtts (expect the wsop live events so far - dont wanna out my MTT winnings and esp SNs on smaller networks tbh) As written before i REALLY think this thread is highly important and its good to get a great discussion here. its very important to check if every single coach is worth being a coach just for responsibilty reasons towards the members(meaning ability to coach including everything needed meaning both as a good player and a guy who can share his knowledge in a good way) and this is what dc does.
everything else i think i allready said in my last post and was said in this thread by others
holla

Can't believe I missed this epic thread. Otis point about how easy it is to fool unexperienced player (and even experienced ones) is really, really important.

In poker the math is often too complex to break down. And even when it's possible no-one would spend a $200/1h session to do it. So what is left is to discuss factors to consider. By factors I mean things like stack sizes, position, implied odds, reads, meta-game etc. Almost always these factors point in different directions. We may be out of position, but villain is unusually loose. On the other hand we are not drawing to the nuts etc etc.

A good player is able to weigh the factors correctly. But by emphasizing the wrong ones you can easily argue for the wrong play. This is VERY deceptive for a new player. Not only does the coach give him wrong advice, but he also explains it in a way the student feels he understands. The student will therefore remember the wrong play longer, because not only does he think it is correct, he "knows" why!

Poker players are in general very, very confident and the coach most likely have no bad intention at all. He believes what he says. he confidence in his voice obv makes it even harder to see through the arguements. A coach that has not played in a long time, and/or has poor results is most likely to make these types of misstake.

The sick thing is as Otis said the student will likely be grateful. He felt he understood what the coach said. And in one way he did. He perhaps learned some new concepts and thought the application of them made sense (which was probaby true). It's the things the coach didn't say and the overall focus of his thought process that was totally off.

I'm glad this thread exists.

(I didn't manage to read nearly every post ITT, so I apologize if anything I say seems out of context or repetitive or whatever.)

IMHO, there are two very different types of things a coach can teach a student. There are things that the coach says are true and there are things that the coach shows are true.

I think that this distinction is pretty important for both students and coaches and extremely important when discussing how to judge a coach. In particular, when a coach says something is true, that fact should be taken with a grain of salt no matter who your coach is and should only be relevant to the extent that your coach knows how to beat the games that you play in (which is often going to be hard to determine). When a coach shows that something is true, it's true as long as his logic is sound and his assumptions are valid.

For example, when I see a student open KTo UTG at a typical 5/10 table, I usually say something like "I might be wrong, but I feel like that's not a good open." Maybe I'll throw in some explanation but of course I'll never be able to sit down and calculate the equity of opening KTo UTG anywhere near accurately enough to show whether it's good or bad. If my student feels that his gut feelings are better than mine (as they often are, I'm sure), that's fine.

If, however, a reg who opens 40% of buttons and folds to 60% of 3-bets OTB opens the button to 3x and my student mucks KTo in the BB, I'll calculate the equity of a 3-bet and prove that it's the best play.


Some coaches are much better than me and some students are much worse than my students, so I think that many students should probably put a lot more stock in the things that their coaches say but can't show than I expect my students to with me. However, you should be very conscious of the difference and be looking to get as much show as possible and you should always be skeptical of anything that your coach just says.

In the context of this discussion, this gives a great way to judge coaches. A coach that has good results and tells you to do lots of different things is probably a good coach, but it's quite hard to tell. A coach that can show you why you should do a wide range of things is definitely a good coach.

I am still working my way through this thread and I am not sure if there is a point to having coaches post their recent graphs but I figured I just would. I haven't made a ton of videos and I don't make coaching my main objective. I have always been, and imagine I always will be, a grinder. I keep and open book policy with my students and anyone I am coaching can look at my recent results whenever they want. Here is my last 7 months or so.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v709/surfdoc/?action=view¤t=surfdocHEM.jpg

While I am posting pics, here is one for all you to marvel at. This was a few years ago but still the single worst string of luck I have ever seen posted on any forum. This was 80 buyins in EV which at the time was 16k at 200. I figure this made me mentally tough since if I didn't quit poker there I probably never will.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v709/surfdoc/ALLINEV.jpg?t=1277645205

While I am posting pics, here is one for all you to marvel at. This was a few years ago but still the single worst string of luck I have ever seen posted on any forum. This was 80 buyins in EV which at the time was 16k at 200. I figure this made me mentally tough since if I didn't quit poker there I probably never will.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v709/surfdoc/ALLINEV.jpg?t=1277645205

OMG that is so sick... You are a god among men... Were you close to quitting at all? I know you probably don't want to think about it, but what was it like to run THAT bad? I'm pretty sure no one else is allowed to bitch about running bad ever again now that you have posted that graph.

wow its scares me a bit, i hope those lines met at some point, did they ?

OMG that is so sick... You are a god among men... Were you close to quitting at all? I know you probably don't want to think about it, but what was it like to run THAT bad? I'm pretty sure no one else is allowed to bitch about running bad ever again now that you have posted that graph.

It was really pretty amazing. In order to get a graph like that you have to lose any time there is even a chance. I was pretty beat up and in fist pump spots where I had the guy dead to 5 outs or less I was like "oh well, no way to win this one" and then just shrug and keep playing after he spiked. It was hard not to go insane, but I felt pretty good about the fact that I ran that bad and still won money.

Aston, the lines never met as somewhere along the line I got a new computer and database.

This has been a pretty incredible thread. At first it did seem like trolling to me, but Otis has said little that I have found to be unreasonable. About the only contribution I can make to this thread is that there is perhaps a little too much emphasis on winrates. I don't say this from any position of authority, but merely as a guy who feels this way after he played around a bit with a variance simulator.

Oh, I guess I also wish a few more coaches had been called out so I could rubber-neck their graphs. (But seriously, kudos to you guys for addressing the issue in a reasonably transparent manner.)