(Please keep in mind the date when this post was written)

In many forums you can find countless threads about “which training site should I join?” Forums have been a very helpful tool in the beginning, especially the 2+2 forums for me. Today I do not see great value in them in regards to poker strategy. They still have their social value, news & updates etc . There are also great forums for travelling, meeting up with fellow players. Really awesome stuff.

Anyways, there used to be only a few training sites out there and now every player owns one ;). Let me give you a few guidelines and recommendations that I found helpful in the post How to pick a coaching site .

(Please keep in mind the date when this post was written.)

In many forums, you can find countless threads with “which training site should I join?”. Forums have been a very helpful tool in the beginning, especially the 2+2 forums for me. Today I do not see great value in them in regards to poker strategy. They still have their social value, news & updates etc. There are also great forums for travelling, meeting up with fellow players. Really awesome stuff.

Anyways, there used to be only a few training sites out there and now every player owns one ;). Let me give you a few guidelines and recommendations that I think will be helpful in the post How to pick a coaching site . But first of all, let me tell you that I handpicked a few sites.

There have been many threads and discussions on forums about which coaching site “is the best”. Due to the appearance of PTR (pokertableratings.com), the stats of well-known coaches became public – and not too rarely, their numbers were in the red. Doubts arose in regards to the quality of their coaching. “Good coaches are not always good players” is one of the things you might hear.

In this article I want to provide you with a few guidelines on what to look out for and what not. I assume that your main goal is to improve your game. There is something to be said about entertainment, but I will not include this as a variable.

1) What is the target group / Is my game among the target group ?

Very often people join poker coaching sites because one of their idols/super heroes is coaching there. But what if you´re playing NL 200 fullring and your coach crushes high stakes HU? Keep on admiring him, but you should rather look for somebody as your “idol” who is beating your stakes AND does coaching. To see if you are among the target group, check out;

Just a list of players/people that were the most important in regards to Poker, in no particular order.

Taylor Caby:

Well, joined Cardrunners, and he was a champ at that time. Now he´s basically out of the playing business and focuses more on growing his company. Anyways, today I don´t recommend watching his old strat vids, since they are outdated, but at the time, huge help. Thank you!

Brian Townsend:

Through his well post on 2p2, I got to join Cardrunners. Basically learned what a cbet is!!! At that time pretty major. A year later, he joined CR himself as co-owner and pro. What I love so much about him:

1) Make a conscious decision to get coached (or not) – to Hire a coach or not

Haha, that “conscious thinking” stuff again. I´ll be preaching it like a mantra. But your decision to get coached by somebody should be clear and not out of pure actionism. You should have a plan, where you wanna go, why you need coaching. A good poker coach will setup a “roadmap” together with you.

2) Don´t get coaching only because you´ve just hit a downswing.

Get coaching because you feel you have big leaks to fix. And those leaks are best fixed by somebody competent from the outside. Everybody hits a downswing, and you´ll feel bad. You want to change the game you´re playing, change every habit, change… It’s not all bad, and giving the chance to reflect on things is very great. I´ve had most epiphanies on downswings (mostly playing bad) and without those, I´d have never reflected upon what I´m doing.