Not me of course. Don't get too excited. I just want to talk a little about two of the most useless devices in poker, as they're most commonly used. Basically, I think in most staking or coaching agreements, at least one of the people is getting ripped off.

Staking

I'm not talking about one-time stakes for big events or splitting action in a big cash game or anything, only about long-term tourney stakes and cash game stakes. If you're on or looking for a long-term stake like this it's for one of three reasons:

1. You got hacked or some sort of disaster struck and you lost all your money
2. You're a degen with no bankroll management
3. You suck but managed to convince someone that you don't

If someone wants to convince me otherwise they're welcome to try. I'm not trying to be a dick but it's something I have to be frank about because nobody seems to realize it. I just can't think of any reason someone would want to get staked to play something they aren't rolled for unless they've already played a bunch of it and they're a proven solid winner. Otherwise they're just giving away half their winnings in a game they probably shouldn't be playing.

If you're as good as you advertise to your staker, it should be really really easy for a cash game player to grind up a good bankroll playing 1 level lower for just 1 or 2 months. You make some loot while grinding lower, and now you get to keep all of your winnings when you move up.

The Turning Stone trip got me thinking more about this because half the guys who show up there are staked, low-mid level MTT players who are dead broke because they choose to get backed in the most high-variance form of poker while not grinding any SNGs or cash games. And that's not to mention the possible psychological effects of the staking agreement. Because of the way MTTs work, you're really likely to start out in some sort of hole. If the hole gets big enough, which it often does, you get to a point where if you spike a big score you aren't going to see any of it, and every day you don't spike big, well you just dug yourself a deeper hole. Seems like it would be very depressing.


Coaching

Pretty obvious paradox in coaching. Coaches usually charge less $/hr than their supposed playing hourly because potential students couldn't afford that hourly rate. If that's the case then my question is, why are they coaching in the first place instead of using that time to play, or talk with people of the same or higher skill level and make more money?

Another problem is that a lot of people are much better players than they are coaches, so the player seeking coaching also gets screwed a lot. I hope all you guys out there paying for coaching are getting more than just sweat sessions and talking for an hour. I'm talking long written reports on your play, homework assignments, etc.

Oh yeah, I forgot to say that when a player gets staked & coached (for free) by the same person, it can work out well for both. I did something where I watched someone play for 3 or 4 hours for a week, commented the whole time, then at the end of the week I wrote up a long report on what he was doing right, what he was doing/thinking wrong, how to start thinking about those spots better, HH examples, etc. I probably invested 6 hours total and he made me $5k or something over the time i staked him.


Me

I didn't play all that much while I was at Turning Stone but I made $ online. Up $74k online now this month

Oh yeah, driving back from Turning Stone today on a rather empty section of highway in nowhere, PA, a stock (I think) Mustang decided he wanted to run. Smoked him getting up to 140mph, not close. Sick brag.

I'll be grinding the rest of the month so I shooooould be updating this more often. Peace,

John