Coaching - 1st impressions

Tonight was my first 1-on-1 coaching session with Messiah from DeucesCracked. As much as I'd like to I'm not going to go into any of the strategy discussed as that's between me and the coach. However I do feel happy to give my overview of my first impressions of coaching...

$$$ Cash monies
I've always been dubious about whether coaching is worth the money. I mean my CR subscription costs $50 per month, and DC costs $25 per month... however my monthly 1-on-1 coaching bill will come to $600. This is currently 10% of my bankroll! Quite a big outlay! Financially bankrollwise next month will be very interesting, as I'm going to be taking a lot of shots at education, cash, and tourneys... I'll post on that later, back on topic...

Railing
The coaching session went a lot better than I expected it to go. It was really really beneficial. Messiah seems like a fantastic coach, and there's a lot more included in the coaching package than I expected. To start off I 4-tabled and commentated on my own play, and Dave made comments. Here's how I ran.


I didn't expect to have any real "light bulb" moments, more just to have what I already knew re-enforced, but I was way wrong. In just this session alone Dave fixed a few massive leaks in my game, and got some what I think was pretty incredible advice on plays I would never have thought of making. In one spot I said "I'd never re-raise here, just call.", and Dave was like "For starters I'd rather fold than call, but I'd re-raise here every time, in fact I'd re-raise any 2 cards". There was literally no way I'd have made the play there, but now I think about the situation in a completely different way, and realise I was leaking so much money. Amazing.

PT Analysis
Some of the other stuff I was impressed with was the PT analysis. I'm now used to being able to look at 25nl or 50nl players PT stats and tell them how to improve their game pretty easily. In the same way, Dave was able to look at my 100nl stats - stats that I hadn't even used before - and point out big flaws in my game. This I thought was hugely beneficial. But here's the main reason I think coaching is so beneficial to me...

Changing the learning model
Reading books and watching videos are great, however I can't gain instant access to exact information I want in order to fix my game. I have to watch the whole video and the chances are that video won't cover the exact problems I'm having in my game. So I could try asking the questions on the CR forum or on my blog, however the responces I get are likely be mixed, not from great players and I won't have confidence to apply them. So fixing my game up is pretty tough, I'm often shooting around in the dark trying to make adjustments and I'm honestly not sure if they're right or not.

Coaching changes this purely because I can ask any question I want, and instantly get back a correct answer. This to me is why coaching is so valuable. It cuts out all of the uncertainty and just gets you straight up correct answers. And get this... In addition to receiving correct answers to my questions, my coach will answer valuable questions that I didn't even know to ask. He'll look at the way I'm playing, and fix things that I'd have no way of knowing needed fixed.

So the whole learning model has been changed, and I have to say it is awesome. I have complete faith that my coach is telling me the right things, so I suck up all of his information and apply it without hesitation.

In addition to this after playing sessions through the week, I can ship 4 or 5 of my toughest hands to Messiah and ask questions on them. No need to forum post or blog post, etc and just get the odd solid answer. I get straight up answers of how to play the hand right then.


I can think of a ton more benefits of coaching, but I've already pimped it too much ;) Anyways, next month I'm going to take coaching every week for the full month while beasting 200nl for 20k hands and I'm sure I'm gonna see a big improvement in my game. I'm really looking forward to it!


Off to Stockholm, Sweden tomorrow morning with a bunch of mates. It's 3am now and I still have to pack lol.


Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh femalesuperrace/10


Oh aye I almost forgot... Had quite a lot of emails about the iPoker deal, I'll get back to those when I'm back in Edinburgh. I'm not ignoring u guys!