On a near daily basis, someone PM’s me or IM’s me asking to be their coach. Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally flattered at the requests and the fact that people respect me enough to ask, but I need to make one thing clear; There’s no such thing as coach Bond.

There are numerous problems with my trying to be a decent coach for someone. First of all, I’m a busy guy. Outside of playing 9 hours a day I’m pretty active socially, going to the gym again, read for hours, and watch a lot of movies. On top of that, I’m extremely flaky. One of the pleasures of this occupation is almost never having to keep a schedule or appointment, and as a result of this lifestyle over the last few years I often fail to show up for things or remember to get things done in a timely fashion.

When left to my own devices I have difficulty accomplishing the little things in life that aren’t urgent. Take laundry for example. I’ve accumulated in the area of 50 pairs of underwear because over the course of time I would forget to do laundry for weeks on end, and as a result simply jump in a store while out somewhere one day and buy a few new packs and BAM, problem solved. Then there’s getting a hair cut. When I came home from Australia the first time around everyone was constantly asking “So, what made you decide to grow your hair out so long?” Laziness. I just never could find the 60 minutes of free time to run out and get it cut with so much poker to play.

The next problem I’d have with being someone’s coach is the money involved. To make it ‘worth my while’ I’d probably want a truly absurd sum in order to commit my time and brain to it. I think to seriously consider coaching someone I’d have to be offered like $300 US an hour, and it’s just retarded to pay me that when you could get Ansky or NoahSD.

However, my biggest problem is that I feel people are expecting something out of coaching I can’t really give them. I think a lot of people are looking for me to tell them what to do, give them ‘the secret to pwning’. It’s kind of like when I play with a person like Imper1um who destroys poker and I wonder “man, what could that guy tell me to get so sick good.” The answer is likely not very much. The players that are better than me are better in spots where they find equity in places I haven’t known to look yet, or find lines that are more optimal to accomplish what they want in a hand than I do. Overall though, their likely not doing anything THAT different than me.

Most of getting good at poker is massive trial and error. For months I posted hands that I played like a retard on 2+2 until the right moves got drilled into my head. No, you can’t call early position raises in the BB with Axs in the 100r. No, you shouldn’t be raising the flop with a high top pair weak kicker 50 BB’s deep. No, you can’t call off 1/8th of your stack in every situation with a pocket pair before the flop just because that’s roughly the odds of hitting a set on the flop. God it’s still so tempting though, sets are very sexy. Getting good requires an enormous amount of self analysis and review, and a thick skin for criticism. There is an absolute ton of little things and errors that have to be ironed out. Even worse is the fact that I still make so many mistakes on a daily basis, so who am I to coach when I haven’t figured them out yet?

The only person I’ve spent a really high amount of time coaching has been my girlfriend. For a long time she was fairly good but still way to passive. Then recently with my being able to coach more hands on she’s really started crushing it. In the last 3 weeks she’s won the 11 rebuys on Full Tilt 3 times for about 4k each and just tonight got 3rd in the Tilt $150 for over $8000. So I guess yea, eventually I was able to teach her how to pwn at poker, but what that mostly consisted of was my watching her table and as she moved her mouse towards fold screaming “FOR FUCKS SAKE RAISE! GOOD GOD WOMAN THEIR GONNA FOLD! PLEASE RAISE!!”

Still, having a girlfriend who gets poker is pretty damn cool. I’ve probably gotten too used to it, as both my girlfriend and the girlfriends of many of my degenerate friends understand it on a pretty good level. God forbid I have to try dating again and while telling a girl over dinner “I’m having a rough day cause some fucking spastic decided to limp reraise all in pre with ace queen and 3 outed my ace king for 30% of the chips in play at the final table” and having her looking at me blankly and confused, resulting in my storming off yelling “Useless!” half way through my veal (I don’t care, cows were put here for me to eat. Even the little ones.)

Besides, serious online poker is a two person job. I’m always curious how guys out there who 8 table alone find the time to eat, drink, and most importantly, use the bathroom. Last time I tried that I ended up at numerous final tables with my bladder about to explode and urinating in a Gatorade bottle to prevent missing a hand. When my friend Jensen stopped by later I offered him the bottle innocently “Thirsty Jensen, care for some Gatorade?”
”Sure.”
Then at the last second swiped it out of his hand yelling “Don’t! It’s my urine! Hahaha!”
Wacky college kids.

Somehow my girlfriend manages to masterfully play 3 or 4 tables at a time, cover my tables when I have to go, and make lunch while I’m playing. She’s overall learned pretty well, but still doesn’t quite like the idea of doing things that are “scary.” Shoving K4o over a raise is never easy, but often necessary. Like ordering a possibly suicidal charge on a hill, risks must be taken for ground to be gained. Or maybe I just shouldn’t use references after watching The Thin Red Line the previous night, which was much worse than I remember it being. I mean seriously, no soldiers in the history of war ever sat around speaking in metaphor with each other all fucking day. And certainly no war ever had so many highly unnecessary star studded cameos for 3 lines of cliché dialogue. That means you, Clooney.

Coming back to coaching though, I guess if somebody really wanted me to coach them and threw enough money at me, then sure, I’ll sell out. I’m a poker player, it’s not required of me to have integrity. Though, I think people see me making a lot of final tables and get the wrong idea, because I’m not really THAT good, I just play THAT much. So I guess if I had to give you the one secret to MTT success, it’s play like 8 billion tournaments a day, I promise you’ll make a couple final tables eventually.

EdmondDantes says

How about wife coaching? $300 an hour seems reasonable. Nice post!

09/05/07

Anonymous says

Someone told me over at twoplustwo that you have a blog now. This is fun stuff. You should probably add it to Jurollo's thread at twoplustwo MTT community forum.

Funny, post. I was wondering how the girlfriend would help your bathroom issue. Your explanation did address it and I wasn't quite expecting such an innocent solution. If it's not too much trouble, maybe you can do a post where you explain some of the stuff you briefly hit on in this post. I'm not offering you $300 per hour, but maybe 300 of us can chip in $1 each!!!

So when you tell your girlfriend to raise instead of folding, what situations do you look for? The not calling off 1/8th of your stack to flop trips is pretty basic, but what about not calling an EP raise from the BB with Ax. You're saying that this is not profitable and you will fold A5s from the BB when an early position raiser makes it 3xBB and you're deep? You will not fire at a flop with K9 on a K75 board? What if you have position and you are the PF raiser? What if it's checked to you and there's a flush draw?

Great post again.

09/05/07

Anonymous says

Maybe someone can stake me for a lesson. Would you take a well trained lhasa apso as payment? Another excellent post Bond!

09/05/07

lakong says

Nice one, Tony. Would you do it for a % of my winnings <G>?

09/05/07

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