FTR Shorthanded Coaches?

[mixchange]

Hey all,

I'm enjoying Rome, Italy right now but when I come back I'd like to find a coach for the start of 2010. I figured trusty FTR would be a great place to start.

Me: small winner at 100/200nl 6max for the last 2 years. I have a bad redline, I play too many tables, you know the type. I am going to start reducing the tables down to 9 or less (yeah i know i was silly, id 12-16 table 6max for 1bb/100+rb).

I'd be booking weekly sesh's with my coach on a committed basis after trying one or two sesh's out.



Background:

Former Descent 1, 2, 3 champion (Doom with a ship in the mid/late 90s, one of the first games played on internet) over 10K+ in earning in high school, got flown all over us as a top tourney player in that game, won the first Global Gaming League tournament ever. Too bad it doesn't pay like poker or id be a billionaire. Obviously FPS genius doesn't translate to strategy-game genius. D'oh. I realized the reason that I like playing so many tables is that it was the only thing that gave me the same insane lightning thinking feeling that Descent did. Time to let that go and get actually good at poker.

Economics Major, electronic music minor. Worked for the #1 selling audio plug-in (for music producers) software company for 4 years out of college (i'm now 27) designing features and getting to do international travel for sales/demonstrations. I now run my own instrument business and enjoy the extra money of poker, but I'm sick of how I have stagnated.


Advice, coaches, whatever apply. Obviously looking for someone with good results at 2/4+ or 1/2 if you've got a good winrate and a fair price.

[meeloche]

I'd like to get a sticky of a ftr coaching directory at some point in the future so as a sidebar to this if you'd like to be included in the directory pm me.

/hijack

[jyms]

I have tried on several occasions to get coaching for several sessions. FTR keeps losing their coaches to the high stakes. I know Renton, Zook, Alexos and Marshal have all coached in the very recent past. Not sure who has time or students ATM.

[kmind]

I'd like to get a sticky of a ftr coaching directory

Agreed. I've said it before but I really think this idea would be great.

[Ravageur]

I've been considering whether or not to throw my hat into the coaching world. I have a few reservations though. I'm always questionning my own plays so I often feel ackward saying that a certain play or theorum is 100% right. So I guess i'm just worried I wouldn't be good at it. I also would feel ridiculous charging a high rate (above 100$/hour or whatever which i guess is cheap), but then I realize that my hourly playing is so much more than that so I guess it'd be -ev for me to do this, but i also like the idea of helping people out. I've spent time coaching one smaller stakes FTR grinder, Alyell and it's been fun but he's had mixed results which is frustrating as a 'coach' though he's a friend so it was kind of different.
Anyway weird tangent I took this on, sorry.
This thread is just one big hijack, but I hope you find what you seek mixchange.

[Genitruc]

depending on your personality, the fact that you get a coach might be more significant than the quality of the coaching

[griffey24]

I've been considering whether or not to throw my hat into the coaching world. I have a few reservations though. I'm always questionning my own plays so I often feel ackward saying that a certain play or theorum is 100% right.

Haha I'm gonna quote this. I wouldn't say I question my plays, so much as I know some things I do aren't standard, and don't wanna "coach" someone into playing a style more like mine etc.

I haven't done too much coaching, I've coached jyms a bit, but would be open to coaching someone a session a week or so.

I also taught alexos all that he knows.. if that counts for anything.

[jyms]

One thing I can tell you from experience is coaching will improve your own thought process and game. I haven't coached poker but I have coached and taught other things and I can tell you that the process of watching and studying others and correcting mistakes will have you finding things within your own game that you either don't realize you do or think is alright for you. Having to explain things as opposed to just believing them gives you a reassurance that your own thought processes are right. We are also talking about coaching $50NL-$200NL and I am sure most of you guys thinking about coaching these limits would have no problem solving leaks and improper thoughts about a players game at this the level. Even though you may make much more than $100 an hour playing, this is something different that would assuredly help your own games as well. There is not much in poker that you can do to improve yourself and your game that actually makes you money. Coaching would be aside from your actual play time not in lieu of it.

There is also the possibility of coaching/staking, where you take a student and coach him to beat say $200NL and for $100 an hour plus a BR boost you could take a certain amount of someones profits in the short term. I know several that have done this and would amount to a small risk/reward for yourselves beyond the $100 an hour. This would be for someone to offer after a couple sessions where you feel it would be a good investment of coarse.

There are plenty of options to earn money, but making $500 in a month from talking/watching someone play poker for 4-5 hours can't be too rough can it?

[Micro2Macro]

Coaching seems like a good gig. It's basically variance free money, and I imagine that would make it less stressful than playing many hours.

[Ravageur]

yeah i agree that it can only be a good thing really, i just don't know if i feel good taking ppl's money basically. I like the staking idea, so i'll keep my options open and maybe give it a try sometime.

[Genitruc]

fwiw I know Rav's game really well and I think something that would be helpful would be paying him to sweat him and then picking his brain afterwards

[al yell]

fwiw I know Rav's game really well and I think something that would be helpful would be paying him to sweat him and then picking his brain afterwards

+1

[kmind]

It's completely different for each coach but I have heard a few who say they play differently than normal when having someone watch them. I'm not going to automatically assume that this is the case for you or that you'd even play worse if you were sweat (most admit to playing better actually), but this is always a potential issue when getting coached this way. Is there anyway we could find this out beforehand? A simple "WTF I play the same way it's poker man" is good enough.

I don't want to come off like I am dissing you as my best poker friends always say extremely good things about your game (Rav) and I'd of course be more than happy to be coached by you if I had the money.

[Alexos]

[quote="griffey24"]

I also taught alexos all that he knows.. if that counts for anything.

Haha, thats true!!

[mixchange]

Bah, this thread is not really Hijackable.

I wouldn't expect my coach to my god or infallible or whatever, Id think players who are consistently making 5-10K or more a month though would be able to find some leaks in my game pretty quick, and give me some new ways to think about certain situations.

Rav: Kinda funny that you are shy about taking other people's money I mean you play poker right? I know its diff in the community, but usually the first few sessions of coaching pay for themselves if the player that's coaching me is good.

For some reason I just haven't done it more than a few times, don't know why. Perhaps its the scheduling thing? That's why I was thinking of doing pre-recorded videos or hand history reviews mixed in with some sweat sesh's.

[Marshall28]

It's completely different for each coach but I have heard a few who say they play differently than normal when having someone watch them. I'm not going to automatically assume that this is the case for you or that you'd even play worse if you were sweat (most admit to playing better actually), but this is always a potential issue when getting coached this way. Is there anyway we could find this out beforehand? A simple "WTF I play the same way it's poker man" is good enough.

It's not that it's different for each coach, it's different for each player and for the circumstances that they are currently in. It's going to be pretty unclear at the start which method you are going to need because of the feeling out process.

For example, I have one guy right now who picks up on the things I tell him very quickly and seems to have a strong ability to analyze the game, so it's much more important that he and I spend most of our time doing reviews in order to dissect hands and talk lots of theory--without a doubt this guy will benefit most from that. Then I have another guy who feels really uncomfortable in certain situations and needs to push out of his comfort zone, however, if he has no idea how to react in these situations he needs to get himself into, I've got to be there to show him in-game how to navigate them and explain what I'm thinking at each step. If this guy doesn't have someone show him how to do this, he's never going to feel comfortable enough to take those necessary steps outside his comfort zone--This guy needs sweat sessions.

During a sweat, obviously a bad coach is going to sit there, play the session for him, and just tell the student how he plays it. A good one will have specific goals he is trying to reach during each sweat and won't allow the student off the hook by making all his decisions for him.

--my 2 cents.