Student application

I've been toying with the idea of hiring a coach for a while. The main reasons I have not yet done so stem from my stakes and my schedule. Well, the stakes are hopefully about to be at the level I had thought to be reasonable. Borrowing heavily from a post by Verneer on Cardrunners, here is my background, what I'll bring to the table, and my hopes/expectations of the coach and the coaching process. If anyone who is being coached or any coach has some feedback on how reasonable any of this is, please let me know.

Background
If you really want details, the first couple posts in this blog have more than you want -- maybe this post alone will have more than you want! Bottom line is that I started to take poker seriously in early 2005 as a recreational player, grinding up 6 max limit from .50/1 to $5/$10 until UIGEA. I was a consistent, if unspectacular winner over that time....just over 3 BB/100. (I think that would be decent now for LHE, but back then the games were great, and that winrate included all stakes I played.)

After the US legislation fallout, I cashed out almost all my roll and played only live for a few months. Sometime this year, I decided to take the couple hundred I still had on Full Tilt to learn NL and donkaments from the ground up. Quickly decided that I much preferred cash games, and here we are. My game has subtly changed over the last few months, as I've digested more NL content and started up a blog/study crew. So, here are results since 9/1.

Disclaimer: the results for August were the sux. You can see those from a previous entry. You can also see that my game has changed since then as well, though. The sample I've shown I've run hotter than heck. For the year, I am 3.6 PTBB/100 over 70k hands across 10NL, 25NL, and 50NL, most at 25NL. Not shabby, but certainly room for improvement.

[Update Nov. 1: Crossed my bankroll threshold last night, so even though the stats shown are for NL 25 and NL 50, I am now moving up to 100 NL with 19 BI, prepared to move back down to 50 NL at 15 BI.]





What I Bring

I take poker study seriously, and have for about 3 years. So, I am going to treat any coaching with a high amount of dedication. I have a very (too much at times) competitive nature, to the point that I actually enjoy being told what I am doing wrong, especially when I can get an explanation of why it's wrong and what I can do differently so that I don't make the same mistake in the future. No one has to worry about hurting my feelings.

On the other hand, I don't need or want to have every last detail spelled out for me. I won't be afraid to push back on a coach's suggestion if I feel that I can support a counterpoint, but mostly, I'm looking for someone to just point out where I need to think about differently, rather than spoon feeding everything. I think this works well in poker conversations because a lot of actions depend on your assumptions. So, as long as you are thinking about the correct set of pros and cons for a situation, you are going to be in good shape. If a coach wants to teach someone to fish rather than just giving someone a fish, I'll work well with them.

I mentioned earlier that one thing holding me back from getting a coach is my schedule. I've got a busy job and a relatively hectic life besides poker. I've been logging 2000-2500 hands per week, four tabling, which I know is not much. I do use downtime at work for surfing poker sites, watching videos, and chatting with my review crew, which gives me some decent amount of study time, but time is definitely a precious commodity. I've blogged about some monthly goals the last couple months, so you can get in idea of what I try to do.

Hopes and expectations

The biggest goal I have now is recognizing when and how to change gears. My game doesn't really change that much. It's a decent game to beat the lower levels, but a decent player who adjusts to TAGs well could feast on me. Also, some specific situations I'd like help with are 3-bet pots, playing against floaters, and playing top pair/overpair hands. On the last, I've got value betting down (good), but feel like I probably pound too indiscriminately and probably don't get away from quite enough hands (bad).

Having coached and been coached in other areas, I assume that the main benefit will be uncovering problems that I'm not aware of, or not fully aware anyway. In general, you get knowledge through reviewing yourself, from posting on forums, and from working with friends on your game, but I don't think there is a substitute for individualized attention an expert gives you.

Assuming I start with a coach about the same time I start 100NL, I would want to work with someone to figure out how much and what type of coaching is best for me. Going into it, I think it would be to either sweat me or review PT with me, in order to identify some systemic deficiency, and then of course talk about correcting it. But really, I'm not sure at all the best way to approach, and would be open to hearing a coach's ideas. There's also the matter of quantity. For the amount of hands and level I play, is it better to have 2 sessions a month with a very high quality coach providing extremely tailored coaching, or 4 sessions a month with someone not quite as proficient and who has a more cookie cutter approach (but who is still a good player and has a strong approach)?

Something Verneer mentioned is that his students could/would sweat other lessons he gives, or at least that others would be sweating your sessions. I think that's a great idea, and although I hadn't thought of it before, the ability to form a serious crew is great. I kickstarted one made up of other low limit CR members, and those sessions have been fantastic, regardless of whether I'm the one being reviewed or I'm part of the review crew. I would look for a coach's own student crew to be an extension of that, with one more expert leader (the coach). In general, I would hope that a coach would be somewhat available beyond just the lesson times (email, AIM, forum, review my blog periodically, whatever) for quick questions, as long as it wasn't overwhelming.

Speaking of overwhelming, I am going to end this post now. It started -- several hours and interruptions earlier -- as a quick post with a tiny bit of background and a few other thoughts. It's certainly grown beyond that, but at least for any coach who I send this post to, if you can get through it, then you certainly have some review stamina ;).

I don't suspect anyone will come across this without me initiating the contact, but if you have and you'd like to speak with me about your coaching or if you're looking for a coach yourself and want to discuss it, feel free to leave a reply here or PM me on either Cardrunners or 2+2. My name on both boards is Disconnected.