[CharlieDontSurf]

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Couple thoughts about how much coaches should be paid and how coaches add value.

The market for coaching was basically set, initially, by hourly rates; the first nl cash coaches started charging a little less than their hourly and prices fell in line from there.

But value to the student is unrelated to a coach's hourly, and there are a lot of people who make $200/hour playing poker but aren't capable of improving someone else's game any more than that person can improve via free sources like 2p2 and aim. On the other hand, if a particular coach is capable of explaining things in a way that significantly improves your understanding, you pay for the lesson once but it repays you every time you play poker. Paying ten hours of a 400NL winrate to learn how to go from beating 100nl to 400nl is obviously worth it for anyone who plays a lot of hands. The key question is whether a specific coach can do that for you.

The most important quality to be a successful coach is the ability to teach, not the ability to play, although you need to be able to play in order to be able to teach. In most endeavors, the people with the most talent aren't necessarily the best coaches (most of the most successful pro and college sports coaches were very good but not great at the sport; they had to learn every nuance in order to stay in the league; the great coaches are guys like Phil Jackson, Bobby Knight, Jerry Sloan, not Michael Jordan.)

Imo, there are very very few MTTC guys who are worth ~$300/hour. Honestly, if I wanted coaching at that price, I think my list would have two names: Ansky and MLG. I don't even know if MLG coaches, but I name those two because each is *both* an excellent player and poker-articulate. I imagine there are others who haven't posted here as much, like ActionJeff, who are worth that much as well, and obviously someone like Strasser is probably worth more.

There are a lot of current regulars, however, who I think are worth $75-$150/hour (maybe a little more for the best ones) to a lowstakes grinder who has trouble with fundamentals and wants to be a consistent mid-high mtt winner (equivalent to the move from ssnl to msnl, imo). Which of those guys to pick is based more than anything else on how clear their explanations are to *you*, that is, how compatible their teaching style is with your learning style.

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LFT, just based off the quality of your posts...if i ever have the time to play more often, just a weekend warrior now, I'm def. going to hire you as a coach to teach me to beat 100NL+.