Thoughts on coaching rates/quality

[aislephive]

I disagree with a lot of the stuff said in this thread, namely that your CR should be equal or > your PR. In fact I think it is optimal for your PR to be > CR.

The only reason you should get into coaching is because you enjoy it, and your hourly for coaching in comparison to your hourly when playing should not affect the quality of coaching. Looking at time spent not playing as money you're entitled to is not something I agree with. If making money is so important to you, then it makes no sense to coach. There are almost no cases where your hourly while coaching exceeds your hourly when playing, and if it is then you are almost undoubtedly overcharging your student, and chances are you won't get much business.

If you're charging say 50% of your hourly while playing, it shows me that they actually enjoy coaching and aren't just in it for the money. Somebody who doesn't really have any coaching experience and beats MSNL for a good clip shouldn't just look at their hourly while playing and think that their coaching hourly should match it.

Inevitably it's going to come down to supply and demand to set your coaching hourly. I think that some coaching hourly rates people are throwing around are a little high. A lot of the people who are interested in coaching are the people who are marginal winners at $1/2-$5/10 and don't have a ton of money to spend on coaching. For most players to really get a lot out of the coaching need several sessions, and to get one of the better MSNL players to coach them they know they might have to spend several thousand which represents probably 10-20% of their bankroll. That's a pretty big turnoff.

It's just my opinion and I know a lot of you will disagree, but I really don't like the way people are approaching coaching hourlies. Just because you are a successful player doesn't mean you'll be a good coach, and the latter should determine your hourly more than the former, IMHO.

[Ship Ship McGipp]

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Jones, it's getting very irritating with your [censored] advertising writing 350/h in every god damn thread you get a chance to.

As for prices, supply and demand, everybody have to realize they can't charge more than better coaches are charging, that just won't work out.

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ignore me or let the mods deal with that

edit: this is what the thread is about man, jesus

[jfish]

a5,

i agree with pretty much everything you wrote actually

[ImsaKidd]

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also dj sensei i duno if u missed it but fsuplayer made a thread a while back which had a poll asking how much % cut in ur winrate would u take if it meant variance-free

a lot of ppl voted up to 50%

which is basically what coaching is, a variance-free winrate

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I thought his point with that thread had to do with being staked?

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CR < PR

The coach is basically charging what he would exchange a variance free win rate for.

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http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...rue#Post5891872

This is the thread I think both yves and I were referencing, started by AZK.

[KRANTZ]

good post a5

the analogy comparing variance free win rates to coaching is a bad one, imo. is a lawyer's salary a variance free winrate? what if the lawyer plays poker?

i agree that some coaches treat it that way, but the ones who enjoy coaching usually don't.

it's a tough market - you want to be coached by the best, but often the best player isn't the best coach, or he is a great coach... but he just doesn't want to coach anyone, so he sets his hourly rate near his opportunity cost and as a result, it's too high for people who want to learn from him.

a ton of players coach. just because they say they are a coach and have or have had students does not mean they are qualified to teach - i know mdma trumpets this and i'm in firm agreement. you should pay according to supply/demand, fair market rates... but use your noggin and don't just blindly jump into a relationship with a poker teacher.

[Triumph36]

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good post a5

the analogy comparing variance free win rates to coaching is a bad one, imo. is a lawyer's salary a variance free winrate? what if the lawyer plays poker?

i agree that some coaches treat it that way, but the ones who enjoy coaching usually don't.

it's a tough market - you want to be coached by the best, but often the best player isn't the best coach, or he is a great coach... but he just doesn't want to coach anyone, so he sets his hourly rate near his opportunity cost and as a result, it's too high for people who want to learn from him.

a ton of players coach. just because they say they are a coach and have or have had students does not mean they are qualified to teach - i know mdma trumpets this and i'm in firm agreement. you should pay according to supply/demand, fair market rates... but use your noggin and don't just blindly jump into a relationship with a poker teacher.

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i'll quote this because it is entirely correct.

dj, i don't think coaching rates should be the same as one's hourly rate. the whole point is that you're supposed to coach players at a lower limit than yourself - if you're coaching at that rate, how is the player supposed to legitimately afford you? i also think a lot of people think because they are good players they should be good coaches as well and that is obviously not the case.

[NoahSD]

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Jones, it's getting very irritating with your [censored] advertising writing 350/h in every god damn thread you get a chance to.

As for prices, supply and demand, everybody have to realize they can't charge more than better coaches are charging, that just won't work out.

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Problem is that many students have no idea who's a good coach and who's a bad coach. There are lots of guys charging way too much because they have reps as great players/coaches

[cero_z]

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Problem is that many students have no idea who's a good coach and who's a bad coach. There are lots of guys charging way too much because they have reps as great players/coaches

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Yes, but that is usually a lesson learned for the price of one or two buy-ins, which hurts, but shouldn't be devastating. For people who are dedicated to improving, and just barely beating 1/2 or 2/4 (which seems to be where the vast majority of my students hail from), a good coach can help them a lot in one session. So, get a bad coach, he/she does little/nothing for you, and if the problem isn't with your work ethic (learning-wise), you need a different coach. If you're playing lower than NL 200, any midstakes coach should be able to provide you with tons of help in your first session.

I don't know for a fact that this is the case, but I suspect that most coaching consists of the coach watching the student play for a while, then telling him what he did wrong, or telling him what to do for the rest of the session. This seems like a huge waste of the student's time to me, so I recommend against that approach when a new student suggests it. IMO a video is a far more time/cost-efficient way to be sweated, for obvious reasons.

Also, most students would benefit more from thinking about where they think they have problems, and bringing their coach prepared questions for an hour, as opposed to being sweated. The reason this doesn't happen more (if I'm right about it being the norm) is that a lot of students either don't know what will help them most, or don't care to put in the greater amount of work (and have less fun) instead of simply playing while a better player watches. Another obvious reason is that it's easy money for the coaches, so they may not object, even if they know it's not the student's best value.

[smartalecc5]

well written cero

[fees]

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i love you dj

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