The Truth About The Poker Community

I thought this video turned out great and had a lot of interesting and relevant stuff within. A few thoughts:

- The title; Reflections sounded a lot less interesting and engaging to the audience than "The Truth," at least to me. Any thoughts there?

- I thought the section about the poker coaching world was extremely good and relevant to a good bit of the poker world, so I made that the free embedded clip. The part about sweat sessions is something I've agreed with for awhile, for the most part.

- Cutcha was unbanned a week or two ago (reference).

- Being stiffed by the trader was a really interesting story, same with the cash guy (don't wanna spoil any of it).

- The US facing site stuff is also interesting and I agree with both his views on BCP and Lock (there may be some back and forth influence there between us, but that obviously happens when two people discuss decisions and issues together).

- True +EV theft is really interesting and I loved the way he explained it. I almost wish it could only work that way, but unfortunately it seems increasingly often to work where someone steals a stupidly small amount of money, ruins their reputation and that is it. All or nothing/Dean Letham and Maxi Stochyk come to mind. Neither of those thefts was worth the time they put into poker or their potential future gain*

It will be interesting to see comments on this video.

*In Maxi's case, I think he was a losing player, so the immediate gain was greater, but the long term cost plus the comparison to a $8hr job both end up with the scam coming up short monetary wise (-EV).

Just saw the clip and since it seems to be more about insights and talking topics for the community as a whole would it not be good for it to be realeased as a free video for everyone to see?  Definitely a good point about the coach/real estate agent analogy.

I disagree with your comments about live sweats. Any experienced coach DOES have the responsibility to talk students out of using this format. It's not a situation where you should say "Well I'll tell him it's not a great format and if he still wants to do it, it's his problem."

no offense but its pretty weird to hear your opinion on live sweating when you have done it yourself aswell as a coaching service 

I may be jumping the gun here, but I would guess maybe you coached emilio and did live sweats?

Emilio, it's my opinion that solid, higher stakes guys can get a lot more from live sweats.

When you get newer players though, they need more time to go over fundamentals, more time to digest things and doing it in the live sweat method is just overhwelming for them I feel like. Newer players take a lot more time to make decisions and are less comfortable.

Now, that doesn't mean live sweats are perfect for higher stakes players, but you can see a lot more value on average for guys that are comfortable playing 2+ tables, firing up 1 or 2 on a live sweat, used to making a lot of standard decisions. They can take feedback live a lot faster and more efficiently without screwing up the dynamic of the game.

Also, you don't find many players that have success at $50 that just don't listen well. In some sweats with lower stakes players, either earlier in my coaching career or guys that just insist we do a sweat despite my advice not to, you do get guys that flat out won't listen to you, and it's sad because those guys aren't getting much value and won't go anywhere if they can't listen. I try to do a writeup or provide some extra post session info in those situations to those guys, but that's probably to make myself feel better when I really think about it, because if I had to bet, I would bet heavy that they will never succeed.

is lock *that*  bad? Recently deposited a small amount, not planning on keeping a lot on there though.

I have no idea if he was referring to anyone in particular but he's right about somewhat hidden interests. For instance, I wanted to take part in the staking project setup by other HUSNG.com coaches but it turns out the main requirement isn't being a strong winning player. It's not having a Lock account so that you can be signed up under Hokie's rakeback. While this wasn't mentioned anywhere, it was an important drive behind the project. This is probably a fair trade-off but I wish this information was provided from the start so I avoid wasting time in the submission process.

I appologize for the misunderstanding, I thought that that you were taking shots at hokiegreg a player/coach I respect a lot. After realizing that you weren't targeting him directly I removed all bias and rewatched the vid and I actually do agree with many of the points stated throughout the vid especially the coaching world stuff.

In the first meeting it seemed clear that already having a Lock account was a serious problem although not insurmountable. I guess there was a misunderstanding about how imprtant this was. In any case, I've been in the top 10 on Bodog since the first year I started playing HUSNGs and I'm surprised that's not evidence enough. I was playing 50s because it's hard to deposit a lot of money through Western Union, and not because that had anything to do with my skill level.

Either way, I'm glad I didn't go through with it because now I'm rolled for 500s on my own money without needing to give anyone else a cut. Although, I've since focused on $183 STs more than $500 regular speeds primarily due to lack of action.