Bring back the Hand Judging Service!

Originally posted by mlatasrb

10 hand evals -$15
20 hand evals - $30
50 hand evals - $60
100 hand evals - $100

I heard before that coaches were paid very little by pokerstrategy for evaluations, but such prices are really almost for free. I think pokerstrategy exploited coaches in this way (cheap labor). I understand that coaches have commercial for coachings this way, and they practice hand analyses this way, but still it is almost as doing it for free (your hour rate for this is almost like working in mcdonalds, considering how much effort and knowledge you put for this.

A couple of things to mention - I was paid the lowest rates, some of the other coaches were paid higher.

Also I agree with you that these are potentially low rates. But that's also why it made an interesting job. Most people would do this job and end up making $10/hr. The only reason it was a reasonably decent job was that we could do it fast. I can type at 120 WPM and was able to respond to posts at just over 1 a minute without damaging the quality of the response. So it was possible to make $50+ per hour if the hands posted were reasonably simple.

Originally posted by mlatasrb
Anyway, I would be interested for hand evaluations, but not for so cheap prices. I am interested in whole range evaluation, something like Janda did, 10 examples in his book "Application of no limit holdem". If you didnt read it (but I am sure you did), he first analyses ranges on all streets for one villian, then for other. I would like to send you such range analyses for typical boards, positions, preflop action, and would expect your feedback, how to improve it. Would it be possible? Are you good at range constructions? Also prices for such special format?

Yup, I totally understand what you are saying. For $1.50/hand you can't expect me to break down the hand range-by-range on each street in huge depth. And I wouldn't want to do that either. Actually that's why it used to be vaguely annoying if some guy posted a question asking for a detailed range analysis on the hand eval boards because it'd be -$EV for us to answer it.

Anyway, I literally just posted those prices in 5 minutes to scope the interest. You make an interesting point though, so I'll check out the examples in jandas book again and see what kind of service I can potentially offer.

Originally posted by w34z3l

Originally posted by sirilidion
@w34z3l: oh, so now it was about money last time I checked the excuse was it "wasn't really popular" and "not something from this time" glad to so pokerstrategy respects it users soooo much.

Lol, there is no point venting at me. This affects me more than anyone in the thread since I have lost a chunk of income.

Anyway, I believe it's a combination of those things. Only a small percentage of users were actually using the boards yet it was costing pokerstrategy.com a decent amount of $. Pretty sure it's about $ and making the business model more efficient, and it's difficult to really have problems with that, it's what any business should do.

Fair, enough :).

Still I might even be interested when I find 10 hands that are interesing enough to discuss. Is it within the price to ask follow up questions if you can't understand how you came to the conclusion of your advise and stuff?

Originally posted by AtrociousNightmare

Originally posted by imfar
I checked how how this topic looks like on Polish section. I was expecting a great war users vs staff and wow!?! They/we still have it. Why the hand judging service can work on Polish section and can't on English
OMG man you saved me! I can't believe I've never thought of it before!
In the italian forums as well it's still up! w00t! ♠_love: ♠_love: ♠_love:

Pokerstrategy, will you take them down too in time or it's a completely different administration?

Cześć imfar, ciao AtrociousNightmare, hello all

It is correct that in some communities the hand judging service is available. The reason to leave it unchanged was the considerable interest from the users. At the same time the investment is on a level that we are comfortable with. There are no ready plans of removing this service any time soon however I wouldn't want to make any promises regarding the future. At the moment it stays as it is.

Regards.

If the handjudges are paid by hand, then why does it matter how much interest there is? The cost/interest ratio would be the same. Also, it would reach a much bigger part of the memberbase in english, because obviously more people know some english compared to polish/italian.

Let's compare how much interest there is for the NL100+ section (where the threadstarters probably rake the most):

Polish: Oldest reply on first page is from 2 januari 2015
Italian: Oldest reply on first page is from 6 may 2014 (lol)

and *insert drumroll*...

English: Oldest reply on first page is from 9 februari 2015

Yeah clearly not much interest from the english memberbase

He guys,

let me bring you some light.
We have a bigger english community with luckily a bigger userbase that is active in hand discussions. This allows us to let our coaches concentrate on videos, coachings and also the highlight threads. I acknowledge that this is a decrease in value for the users that actively used the HE forum. However, we operate on limited ressources and try to invest where we can reach multiple users with one project.

Lol, there is no point venting at me. This affects me more than anyone in the thread since I have lost a chunk of income.

We as users also lost a lot of income, I wouldnt say that you are most affected. Pokerstrategy saved some $ or €, after all, life is zero sum game.

Anyway, I believe it's a combination of those things. Only a small percentage of users were actually using the boards yet it was costing pokerstrategy.com a decent amount of $. Pretty sure it's about $ and making the business model more efficient, and it's difficult to really have problems with that, it's what any business should do.

yes, agree, and finally someone from pokerstrategy stuff says it honest, what is the reason

I can type at 120 WPM and was able to respond to posts at just over 1 a minute without damaging the quality of the response. So it was possible to make $50+ per hour if the hands posted were reasonably simple.

Did you account the effort you put in improving your own game? Off course you also use that knowledge when you play poker, but thats imo not excuse to be payed so little. And if you are having super fast fingers, and super fast brain so that you can make e.g. double money than average guy, still not an excuse to be payed so little. Ok, I see it is still nice money though, and I understand why were you doing it

Anyway, I literally just posted those prices in 5 minutes to scope the interest. You make an interesting point though, so I'll check out the examples in jandas book again and see what kind of service I can potentially offer.

Ok, I am waiting for your offer.

Originally posted by mlatasrb
yes, agree, and finally someone from pokerstrategy stuff says it honest, what is the reason

I just need to clarify something here =p

I am a freelancer and hence do not know all the inner workings of the company. I just gave my opinion which is not necessarily representative of the views of pokerstrategy.com. If you want the official views/statements of pokerstrategy.com you should listen to someone like SvenBe. Although to suggest that pokerstrategy.com staff haven't been honest until now is not grounded in any accuracy imo. Nowhere did any member of staff suggest there wasn't a financial reason for making the changes to the boards.

Originally posted by mlatasrb
Did you account the effort you put in improving your own game? Off course you also use that knowledge when you play poker, but thats imo not excuse to be payed so little. And if you are having super fast fingers, and super fast brain so that you can make e.g. double money than average guy, still not an excuse to be payed so little. Ok, I see it is still nice money though, and I understand why were you doing it

I have a different view to many other coaches on this. The average coach, if he makes $150/hr over a recent sample, will charge you $150/hr for his coachings. I'm not really of the viewpoint that $1 of variance free money is equal to $1 made at the table which is subjected to large variance especially at the higher limits. In other words you can't pay your bills with sklanksy bucks, some of that hourly may never materialise.

Not to mention, a hard grind could be considered a high stress activity, whereas hand evals or private coaching is quite simply, not. If guys don't want to offer coachings at rates below their hourly, that's fine, they can grind for 12 hours a day if that's what they prefer. I would much rather grind for 4-5 hours and then spend the rest of the day coaching for a lower rate. It's not an opportunity cost for me because I don't want to grind for 12 hours a day anyway.

Basically using this logic, absolutely anything we do should be paid at $150/hr regardless of whether we are trained for it, and regardless of how simple the task is. If I go to my neighbours and cut his grass for him, $150/hr. If someone wants me to knit a sweater for them, $150/hr, I have no clue how to knit. Jobs should be paid at what they are worth, not at what the opportunity cost is for the worker. Someone saying they should get paid $100/hand-eval because their hourly is over $1000/hr just doesn't make sense. They could however decide to not do the job if they didn't think if it was a logical choice in terms of $EV.

Your examples don't work here, coaching someone poker you substantially increase their future EV which means increasing their learning curve, increasing their earning potential etc etc. As in they are gaining some of the knowledge and skills you possess, when you cut the neighbors grass, they don't get to learn your special zig zag technique and the grass is going to be back in 2 weeks.

Originally posted by mlatasrb

10 hand evals -$15
20 hand evals - $30
50 hand evals - $60
100 hand evals - $100

I heard before that coaches were paid very little by pokerstrategy for evaluations, but such prices are really almost for free. I think pokerstrategy exploited coaches in this way (cheap labor). I understand that coaches have commercial for coachings this way, and they practice hand analyses this way, but still it is almost as doing it for free (your hour rate for this is almost like working in mcdonalds, considering how much effort and knowledge you put for this.

Anyway, I would be interested for hand evaluations, but not for so cheap prices. I am interested in whole range evaluation, something like Janda did, 10 examples in his book "Application of no limit holdem". If you didnt read it (but I am sure you did), he first analyses ranges on all streets for one villian, then for other. I would like to send you such range analyses for typical boards, positions, preflop action, and would expect your feedback, how to improve it. Would it be possible? Are you good at range constructions? Also prices for such special format?

That's what private coaching sessions are typically for. Also anyone that plays any semi decent stakes spends quite a bit of time with range construction.

Originally posted by serverm07
Your examples don't work here, coaching someone poker you substantially increase their future EV which means increasing their learning curve, increasing their earning potential etc etc. As in they are gaining some of the knowledge and skills you possess, when you cut the neighbors grass, they don't get to learn your special zig zag technique and the grass is going to be back in 2 weeks.

I agree with what you are saying mostly and totally respect your viewpoint. It conforms with the vast majority of coaches out there.

I don't think either approach is necessarily incorrect although they have applications to different markets imo. For example someone could come to me for game theory or maths coaching with no intention for it to increase their future EV seeing as they don't necessarily intend to use that information in a real game environment. Perhaps they need it for a college course or something. It suddenly becomes impractical for them to pay $200/hr for coaching because they aren't necessarily investing in some future potential. Not to mention when hourly becomes too high you start to isolate yourself into the market of higher stakes players which is a much smaller market.

So from a business model point of view I think it makes sense to choose reasonable rates for coaching which are significantly below hourly rate at the tables. Currently I probably have the most active coaching thread in the English community - take that for what it's worth. It could be that my business model makes a lot of sense, or it could be that I'm simply underpriced and being exploited. I also offer music tuition at similar rates - but I don't start charging $200/hr just in case my music students become famous and make millions. I'm thinking carefully about the market I'm targeting with my prices. In other words there is a huge gap between what people typically pay for private tuition in pretty much any other area besides poker.

Having said that, I do think my coaching rates are too low. They will probably be increasing at some point. There is also something to be said for perceived value. Generally players perceive higher priced coaching to be worth more. So in some instances a player would pay double for the exact same coaching session and feel the more expensive session was much more valuable.

Having said that, I do think my coaching rates are too low. They will probably be increasing at some point. There is also something to be said for perceived value. Generally players perceive higher priced coaching to be worth more. So in some instances a player would pay double for the exact same coaching session and feel the more expensive session was much more valuable.

I think this is a real problem. Last year I was planning to take coaching, and since I was posting a lot in forum, I liked the most your answers because they were most detailed, and you were answering everything I would ask. Then I went to your coaching page, and I saw super low prices, compared it to coaches such as mblm, Internet, Uri Peleg, etc, and my first thought was, there must be something wrong with a quality of your coaching, if the prices are so much lower. Similarly, if I want to buy a pair of shoes, and I see a pair of shoes that are very very cheap, i will not buy them, even if I like how they look, because I would expect something wrong to happen to them (typical dummy customer). But I understand now that you are targeting micro players, and have this way bigger market.

For everyone interested in getting there hand evaluated by a coach there will be a handevaluationcoaching tomorrow with confidant91:

https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=332878&page=4

I like the idea of the token system. You could earn a certain amount of tokens according to your status, and then increase that number by being active on other people's hands. For example, a member posting high/mid stakes hands, would be generally more than qualified to answer low/micros posts, and this could be rewarded with some extra tokens.

Yes, I also think you should implement a system, where people on a certain status are able to post an amount of hand.

I think the main issue, the concept wasn't profitable, because a lot of hands were posted from NL2 players. Honestly, most hands there do not require a lot of evaluation, they can be answered pretty easily by most players just a few stakes higher.

But I think people on Gold + status should have the opportunity, to get some of their hands evaluated.

For me personally, I sometimes read through my old hands, which have been evaluated, which still help me now. So I really hope, that at least there will be a chance, that players on a certain status are given the opportunity to this service again.

That said, I think it's just fair, to limit that service however, because I don't think it's reasonable for Bronze NL2 members to spam standard spots a.k.a. JAM JJ VS UTG? THOUGHTS? and get them evaluated.

People who put in the effort to study and have a general question about their hand/range construction (I mean you can just make up a hand, if you have a question about it) then those people will choose their hands wisely and prepare them in order to get a better learning effect.

I think limiting HH's to a very small number/month and encouraging people to participate in others HH threads would have been a better solution.

I really liked hand coaching forum. Still I was not able to use it fully and could not value it enough.
I do not like current system. As I have some of posts of mine, what are important for me, is not answered at all.
And system how hand is highlighted should be explained better - what is possibility that my hand, which is important for me, but not very well-going for public - can be highlighted? Should I just post "interesting" hands to get coaches attention? That is not fair thing.
Therefore - as I posted in my blog - I will get my hands posted in Pokerstars forum - and those hands will be well answered by their professional coaches. (I play only in Pokerstars now).
... Or even I will move away from pokerstrategy.com at all. Because I do not have Pokerstars affiliate here, and I can not earn higher status than bronze now. That is possibility - do not want to insult anyone - just to let You think about ways, how You can keep me here.

I like Pleno`s tokens idea.
I would add such things as a silver user - you can have, for example, 1 token per month, or as gold member you get 4 tokens. So - forum posts would be well controlled then. Also PS.com could make some promotions to get tokens.
Also user could buy those tokens too..