Coaching WARNING

[ledfoot]

I have worked with Joe Tall, TWP, and Surf. Each of them is absolutely credible as a winning player and coach. In my opinion, the best way to learn is by having them watch you play and talk via cell phone or Skype. Nothing beats the quicker response and interaction versus instant messaging.

[futuredoc85]

wow i cant imagine dealing with that in schultz's shoes or OPs, although in OPs spot theres nothing he can do if snowbank decides to keep the money since its unethical rather than illegal. when my coach (not sure this needs to be a big advertising thread) coached me we did a % of my winnings over 35k hands and we did weekly sessions that would last for 2+ hours and were always scheduled in advance, and he would look at hands any time he was on AIM, even if i had a ton of them saved i had questions on he would go through each and every one when he had time. the actual sessions themselves were freed for theory and any random Qs i had because we had already been through my saved hands at random times during the week. didnt realize quite how lucky i got till this thread.

[Terrabon98]

didn't read any of the posts...

but snowbank looks like a giant tool douchebag who probably doesn't make as much as he says or people think

[pwnasor]

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when my coach (not sure this needs to be a big advertising thread) coached me we did a % of my winnings over 35k hands

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what % and how much did you end up paying him?

[schwza]

my first reply in this thread was that you should suck it up, but i've come to believe that snowbank is a [censored] coach.

[Terrabon98]

People need to stop being so trusting and naive...my god. I am so sick of hearing all these ripoff stories. If the money is that important to you, then don't pay a huge chunkof it upfront against an unreliable guy unless you KNOW you are going to go through with all of it.

This is honestly your fault to a huge extent for being so naive and cavalier with money that you clearly cannot afford to lose

[TheWorstPlayer]

From my perspective, coaches should definitely be free to answer questions/review hands during the week in between sessions by email or whatever, within reason. 150/hr or whatever is a lot of money and coaches should see themselves as providing a high quality service for the money. just my two cents. but you should definitely get these things specified upfront. you definitely have to protect yourself and make sure you're getting what you want BEFORE you enter into any agreement to the extent possible.

[Surf]

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He bought it - opened the wrapper - ate half. But just because half the candy is left, doesn't mean the remaining half is worth half of what he paid. The wrapper is used (planning) and the opportunity cost of selling the full bar to someone else (tufat) has been wasted.

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Planning coaching is quite easy. The student sends an email or IM requesting a time, if that time is satisfactory you are done, if not, a quick reply to figure out a better time and then you are done. It's like 5 minutes. It's pretty clear that snowbank hasn't spent hours on AIM with OP scheduling lessons.

And he can sell that other half of the bar to others! PSJ bought 5hrs, fine. Say it's monday, and he sets up a session for thursday. There's NOTHING stopping the coach from booking lessons on tuesday and wednesday with other students. Failing to do so because you sold bulk coaching to one student is the coaches fault.
[edit: Hell, I coached two different players on monday! A 1-2 hr session should take just about that, with maybe ~5 minutes on either end for chat and planning.]

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In fact, the meat of his knowledge may be revealed in the first two lessons and the next 3 are worth marginally less anyway.


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Then he should charge $250 / hr and do 2 lessons. That's tantamount to your candy bar explanation where you buy a box of 20 candy bars and it turns out 15 are empty wrappers.

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I still maintain that an individual lesson would cost more per lesson than if you buy a package of 5. Then throw in the opportunity cost of losing out on signing another long term (5 session) student, etc.


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That's up to the individual coach. I've coached over 40 students and i've only done the "Buy in advance" thing with maybe 1 or two, and i've never had a problem. The only opportunity cost i lose out on is the 2 minutes it takes me to write reply emails/pms to potential students that don't follow through.
There's nothing wrong with scheduling in bulk, but it is by no means necessary.

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Things are cheaper when bought in bulk. You can't buy a value pack and then return the unused portion for the cost of the individual sale price and that's not even the crux of the issue. A refund certainly does NOT apply when we're talking about intellectual capital, or service that requires preparation and a committment of services that come with an opportunity cost.

The committment to 5 sessions is to PROTECT the coach and it has worked in this case.

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Protect the coach from what? The 15 minutes he's spent setting up sessions are not worth $450, if you are talking about opp cost then snowbank should deduct the time spent setting up lessons from the remaining amount and refund the rest.

Surf

[Surf]

[ QUOTE ]
From my perspective, coaches should definitely be free to answer questions/review hands during the week in between sessions by email or whatever, within reason. 150/hr or whatever is a lot of money and coaches should see themselves as providing a high quality service for the money. just my two cents. but you should definitely get these things specified upfront. you definitely have to protect yourself and make sure you're getting what you want BEFORE you enter into any agreement to the extent possible.

[/ QUOTE ]

Absolutely. It sucks that OP has no recourse, at least it was a (relatively) cheap lesson.

Surf

[Dire]

Wow. Those chat logs are atrocious. Snowbank clearly has zero interest in coaching which means he's only doing it for the money which also probably means he's not a particularly good poker player. There's a similar situation in chess. There's alot of poor grandmasters who are charging rediculous fees to patzers (chess equivalent of fish). The grandmasters have zero interest in trying to teach players who are invariably well below their skill and put zero effort into doing so. Moral of the story is that image is nothing. Make sure you're actually paying for a coach and not just some guy trying to make an easy buck off his name or image. From the posts in this thread, it looks like with a minimal amount of research you could've easily found out that snowbank is a less than stellar coach.