Posts Tagged ‘Poker Coaching’

My girlfriend was kind enough to let me plan our Valentine’s Day around an interview with Mike and Adam. We spoke for a little over half an hour about all kinds of stuff: blogging, coaching, traveling, and of course strategy.

My only regret is with regard to the last question they asked me, about discussing a current controversy. I paused for a long time trying to choose something good, and then I got self-conscious about how long it was taking and just started talking without really organizing my thoughts. Turns out they edited out the pause anyway, so I wish I’d just taken my time and given a more well thought out response. You can find a more thorough explanation of my take on the ethics of endorsing a certain disreputable site on the premier edition of the Poker Ethicist.

Check me out and please let me know what you think. You should really listen to the whole show, but my interview starts when they return from the break around the 50-minute mark.

I recently posted about Setting Effective New Year’s Resolutions for Poker Success. Today, I’m going to start sharing my poker-related resolutions.

Goal 1: Make Some Money

Dolla dolla bills, y’all.

Average At Least 20 Hours of Poker Each Week

This is a step up from last year, but I can do it. I’m going to cut myself some slack on a few other fronts (not that I hit those goals last year) to hopefully free up some more time for actually playing this silly game.

I’m also going to be more flexible about the types of games I can play. One thing I want to do is learn some new games, so as long as I’m playing, I’m not going to worry about which game or how big. There’s really no danger of me not playing enough NLHE to earn a solid living.

Average At Least 5 Hours of Coaching Each Week

I didn’t do it last year, but I want to try again. I make more money playing than I do coaching, but it’s something I enjoy. I’ve made some friends through coaching (hi guys), and it’s nice to occasionally be in a cooperative relationship with another poker player rather than always being out to take everyone’s money. I guess I could go the Stoxtrader route and do both, but that’s not my style.  Read the complete post...

By Andrew Brokos

There is nothing in poker quite so exciting as making the final table of a large-field multi-table tournament (MTT). Suddenly, you are playing for huge sums of money. A strong performance could be a huge boon to your bankroll. It could even change your life! You are about to experience the thrill of high-stakes poker despite having put up relatively little money for your buy-in.

There’s only one problem: you don’t know how to play high-stakes poker. A final table is exciting precisely because it is a rare experience. Unfortunately, if you play MTT’s exclusively, you probably have little experience playing short-handed, let alone heads up. You may not know what Independent Chip Modeling (ICM) is or how to apply it (don’t worry- we’ll get to that).

This article is not about improving a specific skill such as bluffing, value betting, or restealing. Rather, it is about ways to get more practice and otherwise improve your results during the most critical phase of any MTT. Because the vast majority of the prize money in an MTT is concentrated at the final table, your decisions during this stage of the tournament will influence your bottom line far more will than any other decisions you make. Read on to learn how to improve your decision-making skills at the final table!  Read the complete post...

This is me struggling with the final stretch of the most difficult route we attempted. It was about 10 feet of nearly sheer rock with just a few very small cracks for leverage. I'm still not really sure how I got up and over it, but eventually I did.

As I recently mentioned, some old friends came out to Seattle to visit us over the weekend. We had a great time camping on Orcas Island, hiking, kayaking, drinking beer and making S’mores (the secret ingredient is Hershey’s Special Dark instead of milk chocolate bars), and then to top it all off, we tried some outdoor rock climbing.

My girlfriend and I took an introductory indoor climbing class a few years ago but have done virtually nothing since. Our friends have recently started climbing regularly at an indoor gym but had no outdoor experience, so while they were more advanced than we, all of us were new to “real” rock climbing.

We had a guide to set the ropes, show us the routes, and belay us. He offered some instruction, but not as much as I was expecting. Mostly he just turned us loose on the wall and let us figure it out.  Read the complete post...

I’ve never been a professional teacher, but I’ve done a lot of teaching, in a wide variety of settings, and I’ve observed and worked with a lot of professional educators. I’ve come to believe that there’s a lot more to teaching than being smart or even being able to explain things very clearly. Teaching is also about empathy. It’s about understanding where your students are coming from and presenting material in a way that guides them toward greater understanding. I think this is what people mean when they talk about “getting through” to someone.

This is especially important in one-on-one poker coaching, because it is a highly critical process. That is, I teach by criticizing, hopefully in a very constructive way, the play and thought processes of my students. Unlike my experiences teaching debate, where I was often dealing with audiences who would be the first to admit that they had virtually no prior knowledge of what I was teaching and so no pre-conceived notions to cling to or defend, when coaching poker I am dealing in a subject in which my students are already well-versed. My job is not to teach them something entirely new so much as to refine and in some cases correct things they already know or think they know.  Read the complete post...

A third of the year is officially behind us. Am I 1/3 of the way to achieving my Yearly Resolutions?

Tired of betting with decimal points? Stuck in a rut? Feel like you’re past due to get into the mid-stakes games and start earning some serious money?

Get high-end coaching on a small-stakes budget with my new SSNL Group Seminar.

I’m going to be conducting a series of seminars on small-stakes 6-max NLHE that will help you shore up your fundamentals and learn to deal with the tougher competition at $1/$2 NL and above.

These small group (4 students max) sessions allow smaller stakes players to receive in-depth instruction at a fraction of the price of individual coaching.

For more information or to register, please visit my coaching page or e-mail me.