View: The #1 problem with Coaching for Profit

Hi, I know this was a while ago but I just stumbled onto this thread and I'd love if you could elaborate on this a bit. I can imagine that at HS, copy-pasting an MDA strat is not going to cut it. But in what way would joining an MDA based group cap your ability to play higher later on in your career? I'd think that worst case, it becomes more obsolete as you move up, and you just stop using it vs regs. The reason I'm asking is because I'm considering joining a CFP myself, and it seems that unless you already play pretty high, most of them are mainly MDA oriented.

Coaches provide you a way to make income for years, maybe even decades, 50/50 is the fairest split considering you can always walk away/stop playing or if you're playing with their money just not pay them.

Good coaches aggregate information that may have taken them 1000s if not tens of thousands of hours of their own play/study into 20-40 hour packages and just give it to you.

The variance thing doesn't play much of a role at lower stakes that can be beaten for 10+bb/100 and also high stakes coaching is mostly touching up what the student already knows and it makes more sense for both parties for the student just to spend the $500/2k per hour for the coaching.

For a lot of things in life this might be true, but in my experience not poker. In large part due to the direct financial benefit, either in cfp models or sustained hourly from a winning player.

Ive been getting mtt coaching from the same person for 5+ yrs(obv way less sessions now but still buy a few 10hr packages a yr + hes very good at responding to anything that comes up) and have helped him get other players so I know hes still regularly doing it. Hes probably top 3 winning mtt regs on wpn. 10k+ games 7fig profit, and he still fires his dick off every week as hes been winning on there since Id guess 2017?

He looks at coaching as consistent income and a hedge against variance. Hes also married with a child so I imagine his wife really likes that he isnt purely relying on playing poker. I have asked in the past and he said the same thing the BitB guy said that coaching keeps him active and on top of his game.

Point being there are some really good coaches out there. If youre looking for coaching Id suggest finding someone whose a coach for a training site or puts out content, verify their results and try it out. Its hard to conceptualize how much they truly can improve your game until you try it.

As for cfp Id probably do a cfp if it came with access to liquidity if needed, but have only ever paid by the hr. Previous staking didnt come w coaching but that would obv benefit any staking deal.

I think this is what he meant when he said it caps your ability.

You made very good points. I hate generalizations, coaches cant win, coaches are bad. There are bad coaches and good coaches. I am 100% sure i can take any breakeven 10$ abi regular and make him a winner in 150$+ abi within 20-30 hours of coaching. I am also 100% sure that 99% of people who are coaching cant even make him a winner at 50$ abi in this time frame

CFP without staking is fully a scam and the worst possible path to success for the people that would've made it regardless. Coaching can be great, but these companies prey on desperation, selling the lie that their coaching will be the deciding factor in their success, signing them up under terms that would make the devil blush. Using the ample amount of free resources until you build relationships with other dedicated people around your skill level, advancing together will always be a better path, if you get to a point where coaching from an endboss will be worth it, you can always make a deal once you've created a solid foundation for yourself to stand on, knowing much more about the industry and holding on to all of your profits until then.

Both parties should have skin in the game. If you believe in someone enough to sell them dreams, give them legs to stand on and put them in games where you can both reap the rewards equally. Thinking a product is worthwhile because people pay for it is a childs understanding of economic literacy, I assume you people invest heavily into MLMs. If you listen to people grinding HS today, notably few mention CFPs are instrumental in their success. There will always be exceptions and some people will excel in these enviroments, but you can't convince me they wouldn't have otherwise made it. Enjoy your rake slaves, though.

This thread resurfaced!

I still agree with my original assessment.

I also agree that CFP's should have skin in the game.

You need three things to succeed in poker imo.

1. You need a solver (or a huge DB of solved sims)

2. You need MDA (the more the better)

3. You need people to bounce ideas off of

Always remember that poker is a concept game, not a memorization game.

How have things changed for you since you made your original post?

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/174/p...

RE staking, think it's a bit misunderstood - in cash at least staking isn't really 'skin in the game'.

I just checked and at bitB we have never had a player lose money in his contract (outside of one guy that ironically was staked, but we chopped early for other reasons).

It would have made no difference if we'd staked everyone to our downside.
However, staking dramatically increases the downside from being scammed. If you send someone a bankroll for 1knl, you often end up with 60-80k in their accounts across all websites.

We do provide liquidity when needed/ or buy action to let people play higher games, when we think their game supports it and we have requisite levels of trust, but offering it as a default doesn't seem to make any sense.

Secondly staking, and specifically MU staking is often quite bad for the student anyway. It's effectively a loan since most MU staking contracts say you must pay back, so it's akin to leverage trading, a loan to play higher stakes than your bankroll allows.

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Also - the guy who said most HS players don't mention CFPs as instrumental to their success, must simply have not listened to many HS guys.

The problem with pure MDA approaches is that they are quite formulaic.

At the simplest it's:

DO X here - because the numbers support it being overbluffed, underbluffed, overraised.

This doesn't create freedom of thought and a framework to assess new spots or be able to adjust to stronger players with better fundamentals.

In fairness as a counterpoint, there have actually been some really strong players now that came from pure MDA backgrounds, which wasn't the case when this thread was first made - which at the very least illustrates it's possible to pivot successfully.
Also, I guess raw MDA is still probably the quickest way for most weak to average players to improve their WR. Simply put, you win more money at poker if you call when people are bluffing.
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I mean if one of those stables who really have taken players to play and win at 5/10 and 10/20 and up would take the OP from nl25 he should be happy to pay 150% of his winnings over a year.

Simply bcz the fundaments he would learn would be valuable enough that by all likelihood him (just as like 75%) of guys there would beat nl200 after a year .

Obviously bitbybit doesnt probably want nl25 players in first place bcz they don't provide much value. They want ideally someone beating nl100 or nl200 already.

Where vast majority of the students end up and where do they peak is another question and conversation I guess but honesty paying a chunk of your winnings when you stop sucking and start winning by very large probability is not a question if 30% or 50% or 70% is too much or too little over a period of X - because if you play nl25 you suck at poker with all due respect