Re: Video coaching vs. hiring a personal coach?
 

I took the following line as far as NLHE goes:

1) Played for years pre-boom, but played several other games more often. Read a couple books, played marginally ok live at NLHE.

2) Really started hitting the books hard and that started improving things.

3) Got on Cardrunners, 2+2, got set up with PokerTracker, PA HUD also around this time. Later on w/ Stoxpoker.

I don't really believe in coaching at this point because there's so much I can gain from less expensive sources. And beginners, shoot, you don't need an English professor to teach you your ABCs.

If and when I decide to go for coaching, it will be well after I can't get much from reading, training sites and other means. That's hard to do considering the quality of what's out there now.

Re: Video coaching vs. hiring a personal coach?
 

I think it's a really good idea for people to find a coach that they think communicates well once or twice a year (maybe more if you're a really active player) to bump their game forward, clean it up, and give them some new concepts to work on.

I would say that personal coaching and video coaching are largely different products (somebody has commented on this earlier in this thread). One thing to remember is that personal coaching is not always cost-effective for entry level players, and while coaches can be had for $200 an hour the tradeoff you make with getting a coach who is pretty intermediate himself is that you may get one piece of poor advice for every couple pieces of good advice that you receive. Sites like Stoxpoker are can be an excellent tool in that they not only provide a constant stream of content at very economic price, but also give the subscribers access to expert level analysis.

So to summarize, I would say that the coaching sites are no substitute for having an excellent one on one coach, but are an extremely valuable resource in any case (I would be astounded if the $20/month Stoxpoker fee didn't pay for itself many times over for each subscriber each month) and are also perhaps a more economically sensible alternative for newer players.

Re: Video coaching vs. hiring a personal coach?
 

I never know if I'm supposed to say thanks to lots of helpful responses in a thread fearing a useless bump, but thanks everyone, tons of good advice here.