Hello, dear Pokerstrategy Member,
welcome to my “Private-Coaching-Thread” and thank you very much for the interest that led you to this place! 
My name is Jens (just call me „Tack“ if this name is too difficult to pronounce :)) - and being slightly beyond 40 years old I´m certainly among the elder guys here. Recently somebody even told me how nice it was that I´m still engaged in GTO-strategy ... at my age!! 
It all began 2006 with a pokershow in TV … a time at which Poker - assumed as a pure game of chance and luck - seemed as interesting to me as the athlete's foot, when “all of a sudden” the banner advertisement of Pokerstrategy.com caught my attention. A strategy? Really? Something to learn? Something to master? Always interested in challenging experiences I immediately registered with Pokerstrategy.com, got my start-bankroll and began grinding the lowest stakes on Limit Hold´em.
Now I wish I´d be able to say that the rest was history, but that was not the case, unfortunately. I worked my way up and somewhen switched to NLHE. Still I´m not sure if starting with Limit Holdem did more good or more harm to my game. Anyways, I´ve read about three dozen books, had several coachings with different coaches and worked my way up the stakes - many times, only to get thrown back on a moreless regular basis.
2011 everything started to finally running smoothly, in 2012 I got pro - supported by a second source of income as a self-employed project manager. Another downswing, immediately after starting my pro-career, almost had destroyed everything, but the support of my spouse as well as the backing of my (by now) best poker buddy helped me keeping my head above water.
It´s round about one year now when I started shifting my strategy from the „exploitive“ approach in the direction of GTO-play, as I finally had to admit that I am not good (and never was) in clearly detecting the habits and tendencies of my opponents and adjust accordingly. Too often I just ended up wrong and made horrible plays - when I failed in outguessing my opponents. That way I never really found “my own game”. Since I stopped the “guessing game” and concentrate on my own strategy, my game almost skyrocketed.
Currently I´m playing mainly NL200 Zoom on PokerStars, sometimes NL500 Zoom and from time to time I can be found playing NL200-400 on iPoker.
Now, after this introduction, let´s come to the point and talk about the subject “coaching”:
What makes me an outstanding coach?
As described, I have long-term experience in poker, as well as profound knowledge in pokermath, GTO, stat- and database analysis and analysis-tools in general (as HM2, PT4, CardrunnersEV).
Beyond that, I have been working for over 15 years as a management trainer and coach. I have a strong feeling for how to transform knowledge in the best possible and efficient way, individually designed according to my students.
Furthermore, as you can probably imagine after the introduction, coaching and knowledge transfer simply are topics that I´m really enjoying, especially when I see that my work bears fruit.
When should you consider hiring me as your coach?
- You´re convinced that the mathematical part of the game takes a more important role than “outplaying” your opponents.
- You want to spot and eliminate weaknesses and leaks in your game / strategy and prevent your opponents from taking your money by exploiting those.
- You want to learn the ideas behind GTO and / or learn how to actually implement those into your game.
- You look for a coach who not only has profound strategic knowledge but has experience in coachings and is able to efficiently teach others.
- Finally, you´re not afraid of your coach´s German accent.
In short - you want to be the one who casually puts the .44 magnum on the table and gently smiles while collecting the chips of your opponents …
OK, but seriously again …
What can you expect from my coachings?
First of all, I will expect something from you, namely information. I want to know where you stand, how you assess yourself in terms of poker, what stakes you play, what motivates you, what your plans for poker are and what led you to consider taking private coaching.
The method of the coaching itself will follow your personal ideas and goals. If you want to improve your game and strategy, I´ll regularly start with a video-review or - preferably - a database analysis (at least 50k hands needed). After that, in our first session, we will talk about the topics and issues that resulted from my first analysis and we will set up a plan for your coaching.
Of course we are free to simply talk about certain strategic topics if you like or analyze hands, deeply diving into optimal range construction.
In any case we will define the goals of your coaching together and create a master plan, an overview, what and how you should work on for the next period of time.
That way you will improve your game step-by-step.
You already see that it´s in my main interest to engage in serious coachings with my students, who should be keen on working on their game. I´m likely no coach for “one night”, not, because I don´t earn enough money then, but simply because I have no fun then - and me having no fun likely will result in you getting inefficient coaching and spending your money for less than the maximum possible value.
As mentioned before, a coaching will be valuable for myself when I can see my student growing, when I recognize that our corporate work bears fruit.
That´s the reason why I will always offer a reduced trial session to my students, to give you the chance to see if we fit together.
Obviously you´re free at any time to end our coaching (if you didn´t buy a package) if you think you´re not getting what you expected or what´s best for you.
What are your necessary qualifications to get into coaching?
You should …
- use a tracking software (HM2, PT4),
- have solid basic knowledge of the game,
- be seriously interested in poker and improving your game,
- have some basic knowledge of math and serious interest in math-related topics,
- be prepared to seriously work and bring in ideas of your own.
For the execution of our sessions you should have at least Equilab, Teamviewer and Skype at hand, ideally (but not necessarily) you´d have CardrunnersEV and Camtasia (or a similar tool) available.
Finally let´s talk about the more painful aspect of the topic, the payment. Personally I find it´s a difficult question, as, especially on the low(er) stakes, a reasonable fee stands in no good proportion to the stakes played. Unfortunately that´s something inherent to the topic, but it´s the reason I normally recommend not thinking about private coaching with me before reaching at least NL100. At the end, obviously it´s a very individual decision though …
That said, here´s the
Price List (all fees are based on 60 mins. - if not stated otherwise, valid from 2015-08-01)
Trial session: $120 (45 mins)
1 hour: $175
5 hours: $790 (~10% discount)*
10 hours: $1,450 (~20% discount)*
Payment can be made via Moneybookers, PayPal, PokerStars or Full Tilt.
Package rates can only be granted when paying in advance and are (generally) not refundable.
* Please be aware: package sessions that are not requested within a regular 2-week-period can't be guaranteed shortly anymore; packages have to be used within a six months period, otherwise all unused budgets will be forfeited.
Group coachings can be offered on request.
I hope to have given you all the necessary information to decide if you could imagine hiring me as your future coach.
That said, if I caught your interest by now, please contact me by the ComTool, then I´ll immediately get back to you!
Good luck at the tables – und maybe talk to you soon!
- Tackleberry -
