[Fechado] GG > Girah em Gibraltar!

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Original de Girah

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Pergunta séria: Isto é um tema muito interessante para mim, aliás, eu escrevi um blog inteiro sobre isto, vou fazer copy-paste para aqui apesar de estar em inglês. Inclui a minha opinião sobre coaching, como escolher um coach, como se preparar para um coaching, etc: Coaching. That being said, In the past few weeks I’ve had several requests for coaching, so I’d like to dedicate the rest of this blog to coaching. I will begin by giving my opinion on coaching, and how to select and distinguish between good and bad coaches. Then I will talk about my experiences in coaching: both getting coached and giving coaching. Finally, I will briefly outline my own coaching philosophy. I really hope you guys enjoy it/find it useful and leave me any feedback you might havePersonally, I believe coaching is arguably the third best way to improve at Poker. In order, it would be: 1 – playing hands (provided you are consciously analyzing decisions and playing no more than 8 tables), 2 – reviewing hands, 3 – getting coached, 4 – reading/posting on forums or talking poker with friends, and 5 – video training sites. However, unlike in training sites or forums where the few excellent videomakers/posters may get diluted among the majority who are subpar, with a coach you get only one person’s unfiltered view. This makes the effect of any advice on your game much more direct/noticeable. This is evidently a good thing if you have a competent coach as his good advice will have a direct positive impact on your bottomline; however, this also makes the drawbacks of hiring a poor coach all the more disastrous.Coach SelectionAfter the breathweapon coaching fiasco ( http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/101/coaching-advice/threatened-blackmail-over-coaching-794740/ ) numerous extremely interesting threads emerged on twoplustwo on the topic of coach selection; specifically on what the most important characteristics/qualities are of a good coach. The debate basically boils down to whether a coach should be chosen based on his intangible skills as a teacher/communicator/poker theorist, or for his skills and results as a poker player. There are glaring issues with single-mindedly adhering to either approach, but more importantly they both ignore the single most crucial quality of a good coach which is unique to each individual: how they think about poker. Because ultimately, the best coaches aren’t the ones with the fancy graphs, or the ones with a university teaching degree and a book on Game Theory. The best coach is the one that makes the student the most $. Some coaches are great players, but they have developed their skills through millions of hands of experience and experimentation, through which they have learnt practical and empirical concepts which are impossible to translate to a student as they will be intuitive and ingrained in the coach’s sub-conscious decision-making psyche. Their coaching is too practical, they can only teach you how to play a particular hand in a specific situation. Thus, the way they think about poker will not make the student the most $. Some coaches are great teachers/communicators/game theorists, but they don’t have the hours of experience required to test the practicality of the poker theory they preach(which is often redundant) so they end up rambly, vague and repetetive. Their coaching is too general, they can only teach you how to play theoretically and balanced, and its hard to discern the practical effect of their advice on your winrate. Thus, the way they think about poker won’t make the student the most $.Ultimately, the most important thing is that your coach possesses the mental framework required in order to explain the underlying concepts which are fundamental to a solid poker game. For example, let’s say you’re considering calling the river with KQ on Q97ss2c5s, a coach who can only tell you to fold KQ because villains at these stakes don’t bluff in this exact spot is a mediocre coach, even though his advice is probably correct correct and he might potentially be a great player. Similarly, a coach who can only teach you how to play a balanced GTO strategy on that flop (you’re at the top ~10% of your range on the river, therefore call), without concern for adjustments or practical considerations like timing/gameflow and the tendency of this villain and others at these stakes is also a mediocre coach, even though his advice might be correct and he might potentially be a great theorist. A truly excellent coach will be able to tell you how to construct your range on that river, and why you’d want to construct it that way. Not only this, but he will explain that your ranges, not just on that river, but in every spot, should be ever-changing based on new information you keep acquring. He will then explain how to acquire this information and the correct adjustments to make based on it.Preparing for coaching- If your prospective coaches post on any forums or make videos on training sites, you should be reading through their posts/threads and watching their videos in order to understand their Poker philosophy (that is – the way they think about poker, and consequently the way they’ll teach it) . This process should also set the framework for some of the questions you will ask when you first talk to them. Try and finds hands that they played/commented on that exemplify your leaks or concepts you have difficulty understanding or applying. To use a real-life example, I used to have a lot of trouble playing in 3b pots without the initiative, so I would find hands in which my prospective coach called 3bets and see how they played them, then question them about it. Before I got coaching with Jungleman, I found these hands on twoplustwo http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19/high-stakes-pl-nl/25-50-hand-cake-510525/ and http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19/high-stakes-pl-nl/really-weird-spot-all-around-729451/ and asked him about his thought processes. I would then change certain things about board texture, PF positions, bet sizing, action and ask him how these variables would impact his decision.- If your prospective coaches play the same or similar stakes to you, play them. I would say in general, if they play one or two stakes higher than you, it would probably earn you more money in the long-term than you lose short-term(provided you do end up getting coached by them) to play them for at least one hour(the longer the better), even if they have a 5bb+ edge on you. This will not only allow them to comment on your game’s weaknesses and leaks once you get coaching, but it will also allow you to ask more specific and relevant questions about why they played a hand a certain way, what kind of adjustments they made to you and why, what you should do to combat this etc.- Get in touch with your prospective coaches and ask them directly what kind of preparation they think you should do in order to benefit the most from their coaching, what kind of coaching format they prefers, what they believes their strengths as a player/coach. It is also beneficial that the coach knows something about you before he starts coaching you. Personally, I send out a form with some questions to all my students to help me prepare to coach them, many of the answers allow me to select areas of focus for future sweat sessions/vid reviews/hh reviews:· What games/stakes do you play?· Tell me a bit of your Poker history?· How do you tilt and do you think you have any major tilt problems?· What are your goals for Poker?· What are your goals for coaching? What would you like to have achieved from it in 1 month 3 months 6 months, quantitatively and qualitatively if possible.· Do you have any specific leaks you want to address?· Have you had any coaching before? If possible give names and what you thought of the experience.· What are you willing to put into coaching, would you be willing to study, do what I tell you to improve, have some extra work to do outside of our coaching sessions?· To conclude, give an example of 2 hands you think you played really well and why, and 2 hands you think you played really bad, and why.Bear in mind these questions are just so I can get a better idea of you and am better suited to coach you specifically as a person, you can answer however many you want and in as much or as little depth as you want. Obviously, the more you give me the better I will be prepared for our coaching.- Most importantly, you need to have tangible and intangible expectations and objectives from coaching that are somewhat quantifiable, at least to you. It’s important that before you get coaching you understand what you want from Poker, and how your coach will help you achieve these goals. Make specific objectives that are realistic but will force you to work hard, and hold yourself as well as your coach accountable for your success/failure.My coaching experienceAs many of you will know, I’ve been coached in one form or another by a lot of different people (Sauce, Dogishead, Jungle etc. – I’ve had over 15 coaches lifetime), I prepared for each of them differently and attempted to absorb as much as I could from them. Each of them taught me different concepts and ways of approaching the game, and each experience affected my perception of poker and of coaching itself. Indeed, just like I attempted to incorporate the best pieces of their style/advice into my own game, I also sought to incorporate the best pieces of their teaching method/philosophy into my own.Before I got serious about coaching I also coached two people myself through my Poker career. I started off by coaching a real life friend of mine who I started at 10NL and has now moved up to where he’s comfortably playing and consistently beating 600NL over the space of 9 months. I also coached a 400NL reg who I started working with ~10 months ago and he is now playing 5000NL with some shots at 10,000NL and 20,000NL (you can PM me on twoplustwo or my e-mail if you want any of their contact information to confirm what I’ve said here). Ultimately, I’m a strong poker player myself, but beyond that I genuinely believe I have the personal and technical skills to also be a good teacher. That’s not to say that I can promise anything to anyone, since in the end the value of a coach is only a potential. It is up to the student and their own involvement to capture that potential into their own game.Coaching philosophyIn terms of my coaching philosophy/methods, I can help you in two distinct ways: 1) Poker Strategy and 2) Intangible Poker skills.Note: As a coach, I will not seek to hold back any information: what you learn from me will be a blend of what I have learnt empirically and theoretically through many hours of play, study and hard-work, as well as what I learnt from others such as Jungleman/Sauce/Dogishead, by paying them 1-2.5k/hr. I will also constantly be working to improve myself and become a better player/teacher and intergrating every new idea/concept I learn into my students’ games. This applies to both types of coaching.1) Poker strategy (6max and HU): my style is extremely rigorous, analytical and mathematical, and I think all my students would benefit from having read “Mathematics of Poker” by Bill Chen and Jerrod Ankenman, although it’s obviously not a pre-requisite. I also like to focus on people’s reads and how they are using these to make adjustments. I mostly find people’s adjustment games are the weakest part of their game, as they either don’t adjust soon enough/often enough, or they don’t make the correct adjustments. Generally, the first session will be either video review or sweat session, with my preference being video review. The idea here is that I get a firm grasp of what your game is like, your leaks/weaknesses so that we can then zero in on these in the following sessions through HH review or just by making up hands that exemplify what I percieve to be your leaks. I will also be open to answering any questions or comment on hands before/in-between coaching sessions.1a) Sweat with discussion via Skype. I will try to answer your questions as fully and honestly as possible during the session, but reserve the right to say “I have to think!” at any time as I’ll be playing 4+ tables usually. I also, will have the right to end the session at any time, but you won’t be billed for the nearest hour to the time I stop it, for instance if we do a 40 min session and I decided I’m not able to continue talking you won’t be charged anything. Also, we will take a 15 min break at the end of the hour to talk through anything we might have had to gloss over or any lingering questions you might have. I’ve always wanted to do this, would be like watching an interactive poker video where you are able to control the discussion as the observer.2) Intangible poker skills, these are arguably more important to your winrate than the technical skills, this type of coaching will involve: tilt control, session length, focus/mindfulness, taking efficient notes/how to interpret them, how to review sessions, flopzilla/pokerstove/stoxev work, analyzing/studying regs using HEM filters, assigning study time:play time ratios, setting schedules and objectives etc. I will structure these based on your specific needs which we can discuss beforehand.-For all types of coaching, I will also be doing group option of up to 5 people, so if you want to get some friends or poker buddies and do coaching together at a reduced individual rate, I’m open to that too.-I also will often set “homework” to do. This will generally be comprised of things that I find necessary that you read/do/understand but that are relatively simple such that doing them in class would be a waste of my time/your $.

Ótimo post! Pelo visto você é bastante metódico e dedicado. Na primeira vez que vi seu post explicando toda sua carreira no 2p2, não acreditei muito que era você quem tinha escrito aquilo (tanto pela fluencia no Inglês quanto pelo desenvolvimento das idéias). Mas já posso ver que eu estava errado e você... Tanto você quanto a PokerStrategy estão de parabéns Aguardo ansiosamente pelos vídeos. E talvez em ganhar alguma promoção do tipo "1H DE COACH COM GIRAH", hahaha