Hey guys, so I just wanted to say for those of you who missed my last post, I'm organizing a LeggoPoker snowboarding / skiing trip for sometime around the end of March or beginning of April. The location is kind of up in the air, so any suggestions are certainly welcome. I'm looking for something with an introductory park area so I can try to kill myself grinding some rails, etc, but not completely kill myself. Guys, if you're interested, leave a comment here or Facebook me. I'm going to make a Facebook group to keep things organized and so we can figure out exactly what we're going to do.

Secondly, welcome Nutsinho! Rich is the fucking man, so I'm pretty happy to see him making videos and being signed on as a LeggoPoker pro. Every time we talk about poker it's an eye opening experience. If you haven't seen his video, it's up now and it's very good. I gave it a 10.0 and learned a lot, which is a rare thing since a lot of videos are regurgitation of other peoples' videos. So, welcome Rich!

Lastly, and I can't believe I'm even addressing this in my blog, if you guys have seen the comments section of Greg's blog lately, it's blown up with people accusing people who offer coaching services to be scammers. Some of the worry is warranted after the entire Jason Ho scandal, but I think you guys need to realize the difference between teaching someone to lose at 400nl for like 100k and teaching them to move well beyond that for a lot less.

I'd like to take this opportunity to ad hoc reject each and every one of peoples' arguments that coaching is a scam (mostly from comments in Greg's blog). While I do this, I ask that you listen to this song:

• Price The reason I charge what I charge isn't arbitrary, it has to do with my hourly rate. I think it's fairly obvious that coaching should be a mutually beneficial relationship and one worth both of the peoples' time. If you're learning to snowboard, are you going to cry at Shaun White for not taking time to give you lessons for the price a random board instructor costs at Ski School USA? Seems like some of you would. Is Mr. White going to tell an intro boarding the same things that the Ski School guy would? Maybe. He'll do it faster and better, but it's probably going to be tough for you to understand all his talk about how to do the perfect 1080 quadruple mctwist when you're just trying to stand up so you can get down the mountain without wiping out.
  
  I'm no Shaun White of poker, but I'll say that I'm getting pretty solid and that I can help out 50nl players with their leaks as much as the next Leggo coach. I'm trying to offer nuanced advice to people who have leaks so small that they don't even know what they are and probably can't find them in a training video. Like their frequencies here might be a bit off, or you're misunderstanding why people did this, etc. I'm talking about things that someone else is going to have to see and understand by talking with them and seeing their specific thought processes in certain spots.
  
  
  
• Experience Some people say I don't have enough experience coaching. I've coached over 50 different people and I've had one single person complain because I didn't teach a "style that he wanted to learn." I teach readjustments and ways to think about the game, not a concrete style of play or system. I think your poker style should be an extension of your personality and naturally work for you as you play, but also there are times, just like in real life, where that personality needs a little push to shine through. I'm not asking people to pay me to tell them what to think, I'm trying to help people learn what they should be thinking about and then go from there.
  
  
• Student Success Level I've heard so many success stories after lessons, it's ridiculous. It's almost like a broken record now after a theory lesson. I'll get emails or see posts saying how much this idea turned someone's game around and helped their win rate so much, etc etc etc. I've never heard a single comment said about my coaching from a student in a negative way. More importantly, if I did, I would fix it immediately. I work hard to see that all these guys succeed and that haters can't debunk all my hard work with comments here or there.
  
  
• Coaching "Hourly" I touched on this issue a bit earlier, but there are tons of other factors other than that one hour time slot for which people are paying. I spend so much time AIMing students, answering emails and PMs, making theory presentations, grinding math for students, and even IMing students to see if things are going ok, that that "hourly" you are criticizing me about is probably close to half of what you think you're talking about. I truly do care about my student's progression in the game, and I like to think it shows.

I didn't write out everything because I'm going to work on my book some and go see Alice in Wonderland with some friends. Hope this gives the haters something to think about.

Take care guys (even and especially the haters).

-Reid