Coaches and Coaching Sites: Getting a Free Ride?

[BluffTHIS!]

The thread discussing the rakeback forums brings to mind a similar issue. And that is regarding poker coaching sites, whether of individuals, or largers sites with multiple instructors selling articles, vids and custom coaching and review. These get discussed all the time in the forums, and there are well-known posters who derive income from harvesting customers here on 2+2. While it is true that they mostly don't spam, and rather that posters are asking other posters for their opinions of such coaches/sites, it still amounts to those individuals/sites getting a free advertising ride from the largest poker forum on the net.

And there is another issue as well, which is that such coaching is somewhat analogous to poker books. In the books forum Mason generously allows a non-2+2 author to make one thread or respond in other threads started by posters, about his book. But the book forum generates a lot of knowledgeable and critical discussion and review from many posters including Mason. The difference though, is that in order to give such a review, one generally only has to spend $25 or so for one book. But when coaching fees, or the monthly fees for large sites, run many times that, not only is Mason not going to pay that to review it, but neither are many posters. So those sites not only are getting a free ride, but a mostly unreviewed one, and on a site committed to giving and supporting only sound strategy advice.

I just wanted to bring up this issue as perhaps the admins might consider, as has been suggested in the past, a coaching forum, but where it (or they if more than one) must be sponsored, and otherwise not to allow discussion of such coaches and sites elsewhere on 2+2.