An offer of coaching/mentoring

[Pokerdemic]

You should coach me because I am right at the point where a coach would make a world of difference.

I built a bankroll from scratch moving from .01/.02 to current NL50. But I am struggling with my winrate at NL50 about 2ptbbs/100 and I am spending way too much time there. My BR is right about at the point where I can move up to NL100, but I need some confidence.

I'm a broke grad student, and supplementing my meager income would help me finish grad school and my dissertation.

I have a decent understanding of the basics, equity, position, etc. I can also identify my major leaks. I need to open up way more in position, I need to be more aggressive, and I need to extract more thin value as I am currently playing weak tight.

My schedule is pretty flexible too.

Coach me?

[luke4130]

[ QUOTE ]
My schedule is probably not flexible enough to be a good candidate, and other people here are more deserving anyway, but I must say it's somewhat inspiring to hear about someone starting at 1c/2c and working up to 25/50, especially since I started at 1c/2c with about the same bankroll as you just a few months ago. Thanks for taking the time to do this luke, and congratulations on your success.

May I suggest it would be pretty awesome if you were able to make a video of one of the coaching sessions and post it? Perhaps of you sweating the coach-ee and recording a ventrillo/skype conversation about the hands as it goes. Obviously since you are busy this may not be possible, but I hope you don't mind the suggestion.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm definitely open to this idea if the student chooses to take sweat sessions. My personal opinion is that coaching time can often be better used elsewhere, but if we do sweat sessions, i'm up for this, though I can see the coachee being less keen about the idea.

[bozzer]

[ QUOTE ]

Please use this thread to tell me about yourself, why you should be chosen, what your goals are, what you want to get out of coaching etc. To be honest, i'm not sure what i'm looking for yet, but I will have chosen someone by Sunday. I will post in this thread, with an explaination of why they were chosen, and at that point the thread can obv be locked.


[/ QUOTE ]

thank you for offering this.

I've been playing poker for about a year seriously (reading 2p2) and about a year (without 2p2) before that. i've built my roll up from 1/2c to 25/50c over about 60k hands. i recently went through a really rough downswing after breaking even at 50nl for a while and losing all my confience/luckbox and have only just got a 50nl bankroll back again.

my poker goals: to be a really good, intelligent MS/HSNL player. I'd be happy to be beating 1/2 in 6 months though.

coaching goals:

- try out coaching without paying. i feel like i should be able to beat the next couple of levels without coaching, so makes sense that coaching money is probably better off remaining in my bankroll for now.

- that said, i am really keen to establish a solid foundation to my game so i can be in a good position to crush small stakes. specific things i feel i would like to work on with a coach:

* getting good frequencies for rr pots nailed down
* i am quite aggressive, checking i am aggressive in the right spots and also learning to adjust when people adjust to me
* getting better at more specific hand ranges and not just 'hmm there are some pairs, there are some draws there are some sets, i has bottom two so i bet!'
* related to the previous two points, i want to be smarter about semibluffing

- ultimately i would like to put the theoretical knowledge together and be making the right decision at the table 99% of the time.

- i contribute round here a fair bit, i'd like to get better at that.

- basically i really don't want go through what i have in poker in the last few months: i don't mind variance, but i want to be confident that my game is on the right track.

i think 4 hours of coaching would probably be a massive help towards that.

I have similar lifetime preflop stats and street by street AF to OP fwiw but have much lower wtsd.

[ShipitFMA]

Basically I have just finished high school and have 4 months of free time on my hands. There is little clogging my schedule at the moment and I'm hoping to develop my game alot over the next few months.

I'm currently playing 50nl and looking to move up soonish. At the moment what i hope to achieve from poker is an income throughout university and enough saved away to start investing once uni is over.

Reading over what I wrote I doubt that I'll be chosen, but at least its worth a shot [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[whyzze]

im having fun railing this thread.


edit: im not laughing, Im seriously interested.

[iheartponeez]

I'm coming to this thread because I feel like I'm hovering. I started in 25NL with 350, an after doing some reading on here and disciplining myself, I started wrecking 25NL, grinding my way up to 1000. From there I moved to 50NL. Now, at 50, I'm at 1300, but progress feels much slower. In fact, I think I was making more profit at 25NL, which is disturbing to me. If I can't improve at 50, I can't ever move up to 100, or I'll get crushed!

So I feel as though I've hit a poker version of writers' block. I know what needs to happen, but I just can't make progress. Maybe some outside guidance would help me push through it and put some new things together.

As for life goals and such (which seem to be a theme in this thread), I'm a recent creative writing graduate, so I'm struggling to find work in media. I'm thinking of taking an unpaid internship somewhere to gain the experience I need, but in order to live and work for free, I need poker to continue to be profitable. Right now it is, but just barely, and if coaching helps me move a rung or two higher in terms of my gameplay, it would make life a rung or two simpler, I imagine.

[ra]\\[dom]

I am 23 and taking a break from university this year, so I have lots of time that I spend playing and studying poker.

I started playing in spring of 2007. Shortstacked NL10 and slowly moved on to big stack. I beat fullring on NL10 and NL25 and about 2 months ago started moving to 6max. I struggled there so far but I'm not ready to give up yet.

What I'm expecting from this coaching is to help me beat the level I am playing. Starting from zero, helping me understand the game, find ways to exploit other players, to adopt to different tables and to teach me to find leaks and make changes in my game.

My goals are to move up to NL100 or NL200 during next year and then continue to move up as I build up the bankroll.

I am willing to try any kind of coaching you will prepare. After we are done with it, I'm also ready to make a video or two of my improved game to pass some knowledge to other uNL members.

[Genesis]

About Myself
I’m probably one of the older people in this forum at 30 years. I have been playing uNL for about 2 months. I started at 10NL and now play 25NL, however I am rolled for 100NL so taking shots is not a problem if I feel confident in my game.

Previously I had played limit hold’em for about 2 years but never took it very serious. I played limits up to $3/6, but my progress stagnated as I became progressively more bored with the game and slowly stopped thinking and became an ABC robot. I took off several months in the spring and summer and finally decided to get back into poker, but this time at NL. It was a refreshing change and I’m now enjoying poker again.

Poker Goals
Poker serves 3 purposes for me. First, it provides a competitive and entertaining venue. I am naturally a very competitive person, and use this as one of my outlets. Second, I am a logical, mathematically oriented person (Computer Eng grad) and love to continually utilize and improve those skills. And the last one is obviously money.

So, my goals in poker are simply to become the best player I possibly can while making as much money as possible. At this point in time I’m trying to solidify my game and plug any glaring leaks while progressing through the limits. Ideally I would like to increase limits about once per month, at least up until about 200NL. I think this is a very attainable goal with the hard work I am willing to put in.

What I hope to get out of coaching
I have been contemplating getting a coach for a few weeks to increase my rate of progress and find any glaring mistakes I am making. I’ve got a few general areas I’m concerned about. First, I’m trying to iron out any leaks that exist because of my limit background. I think I’m doing ok in that area now, but I’m sure issues still exist. Second, and my main focus now, is trying to maximize my profit when I make a hand. I feel as though I’m leaving a ton of money on the table in some spots and also misuse slow playing and inducing bluffs. Third, I want to mix my game up. I would like to increase my deception and be able to handle the situations that arise from this, such as value betting weaker holdings and playing marginal hands when I think my opponent is taking shots at me because he thinks I have missed the board.

After writing this post, which is much longer than I anticipated, I realize there are probably people who need coaching more than me. But, just typing this out has been a good exercise to clarify why I play this game and the direction I’m headed. I think I have a decent grasp on my weaknesses and now it’s just a matter of working on them. With a coach I believe this process would be greatly improved and could also give me insight into other areas I haven’t even considered yet.

[AHMWM]

Hey,

I'm 19 years old and currently going to a community college in the middle of Iowa. I started playing micro-stakes more seriously after buying PokerTracker and PokerAce HUD about 3 months ago.

I started playing poker when I was 15 and a freshman in high school. It started out normally playing sng's and learning from a friend's uncle who was playing as a sorta part-time job. Most of his learnings were outta Hilger's ITH book and he really taught me and my friend the basics. Me and a friend brought what we had learned back home and created some home games (virtually all tournaments). Now in the time of 4 years we have expanded poker in our area from about the original 8 or 9 players to closer to 140 regulars.

As for online...Years ago me and the same friend had a few decent sized cashouts (lol small for most). Most of the money came from 33$ 6-man SNG's. This was at a time when online poker seemed easy and everyone was even fishier than us.

I took several breaks from poker before my most recent jump back in. I hope to make this a permanent thing. Maybe it will never be the big-money job we all hope but I do play with making money a goal and not just having fun. I started by playing SNG's again but after getting into 2 + 2 I decided to try to convert into a ring game player. The transition has been hard. The games are much different. I almost dumped my whole roll playing games I didn't have the money for and have now become much more disciplined about bankroll management. I have set goals for myself and plan to move up to NL25 level soon.

I think some of my weaknesses include: cold calling slightly too often, overplaying over pairs, continuation betting, and blind stealing. I've tried to address these problems recently but I think it would be a big help if their was experienced player who could help guide me.

I think I should be chosen because I am always willing to learn. I think I can apply the knowledge quick and I have the potential to make myself a very good player and can use your coaching as a huge help.

[bravos1]

[ QUOTE ]
im having fun railing this thread.


edit: im not laughing, Im seriously interested.

[/ QUOTE ]

Same here, but I'm also gonna throw my name into the hat.

I just started playing NL about 2 months ago after playing limit for the past ~3 years. I was primarily playing 3/6 FR LHE and 2/4 6m before making the transition.

I've put in ~12K hands at 25NL and ~13K hands at 50NL 6max. I have been doing pretty well, but also feel like I have been running hot and am trying not to let positive variance influence me. I will be trying out some 100NL this weekend.

One thing I feel I need help on in NL is hand reading and quick equity determination. I always considered myself a good hand-reader, but I feel like I'm a total noob again regarding hand-reading in NL. You typically have far less info before a big(gish) decision in NL than limit and really need to be able to quickly have a reasonable range early.

A plus side is that because I am fairly new to NL, I don't have to many ingrained bad habits other than what I bring over from playing limit. There are a few of those still, but because I understand the games are actually very different, they should be easy to put aside once I know exactly what they are and why they are bad.

I have also coached a few people and am currently coaching another 2p2er in limit so I am good at expressing and understanding poker concepts.

Anyway, I'm offering up myself as someone who is new in NL, but has a solid understanding of poker. I'm looking to be playing NL200 and NL400 by next spring/summer and I know those games are completely different than the games I'm currently playing, but I am also wise enough to not just jump into that pond w/out being prepared first.