Poker coaching is a good way of earning some extra money. If you have a proven track record of winning poker there are many players wishing to join the “Winning Online Poker Club” and depending on your skill level that you can prove through your statistics you can charge a handsome hourly rate for your advice. Some Cardrunners tutors (the video producers) can make $100 dollars an hour coaching, often much more, if they are profitable at very high stakes.

First Things First

You must be a winning player in order to teach others. Having a good grasp of poker theory and not being able to show a player that you can put into practise what you teach will not gain you any students. When someone parts with their money they must be sure you can deliver. So keep your statistics either using Poker Tracker or another piece of software. I am sure you are honest enough to include all of your hands, but it goes without saying you should not doctor your results as that is dishonest.

Personally I like showing players I am about to coach how I identified a hand of mine that was bad and how I analysed it. You will spend more time searching through a session with your student looking for bad hands to diagnose mistakes than you do going through winning pots, so showing how you helped your own game will give them encouragement you can do the same for theirs.

What Makes a Good Coach?

The abilities you must have are patience, a good personality and the ability to teach. If you stumble over explaining key ideas and strategies and you are unable to verbalise what you are thinking this does not bode well for you as a poker coach. You must have patience with a player. Remember that everyone repeats errors until it “clicks” into their mind the reason behind the concept you are both working on. Patiently remind them of the right moves to make and calmly identify where they went wrong. Remember if they suddenly become Tom Dwan or Patrik Antonius you will not make any more money coaching them. Being friendly and becoming friends will make the student more likely to want to continue paying for your expert help.

The student will have their own ideas of how they should play. Do not get arrogant and touchy about this and start saying things like “if you know so much why do you have a coach?” Stay patient and offer your view, which if you are a good player will pull ideas from various areas of Poker strategy to give a more sophisticated and +EV viewpoint on the situation.

Rocks in the Road

Clearly state your method of coaching and what the player is paying for before you agree to coach them. Some may expect you to “show” them a way of winning money which is not what coaching is. Coaching is harvesting the players learning experience through guidance and unlocking their own poker mind. Set out the hand review sessions and how you do them. A great way of adding value for money would be to record the session either on a screen recorder or mp3 audio files so they can revisit the lesson at a later date in their own time. Not setting out clearly what you want to do could cause problems later.

Your first session could be analysing the play of your student from a submitted hand review session then you go through it with them and they submit a preset amount of hands the next week for review. You can then book live Skype or railbird sessions to watch them play. I would review the progress after this point to see if you wish to continue. Some people have a personality clash and you would benefit from a different student just as they would benefit form a different coach.

Coaching can be a profitable sideline to your actual poker hands. Like everything else some people are more suited to it than others.

By Malcolm Clarke

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