Since I rarely have original thoughts I thought (wait . . . ) that this guy raised an interesting post about poker coaching. Now, I guess one (perhaps even me) might respond to this guy by saying it’s probably not worth it for this type of player. Well, at least not in the sense of a paid professional coach. At the level this guy seems to be at, posting hands on 2+2 for feedback and reading a few more books would probably be a much cheaper alternative.
That being said, I’ve actually seen a number of posts on 2+2 from good players who have paid for private coaching sessions with people like Bob Ciaffone (the link in the left nav goes to Bob’s site where he offers this service) and David Sklansky. At a certain level, posting on 2+2 just isn’t going to help you analyze your game with a tough critic’s eye the way getting a top pro player might.
Now, I guess this really all just brings me to where I started with the idea for this post; Howard Lederer’s All In Reality (formerly Fantasy) Camp. Cost is $3500 for 4 days of intensive poker training . . . or is it? Let’s look at the itinerary:
Thursday – March 31
2:00 p.m. Check-in at MGM Grand6:30 p.m. Check-in begins for opening banquet
7:00 p.m. Opening banquet
7:45 p.m. Introduction of the holder of 10 Major Poker Tournament Championships.
Friday – April 1
8:45 a.m. Check-in begins for Poker Seminar9:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Poker Seminar
11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. Commencement of Shoot Out Poker Tournament to determine 9 camp participants to be included in the Celebrity Poker Tournament Sunday morning (Sit n Go Tournaments will be available for players who are knocked out of Shoot Out Tournament)
1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Lunch break (2:30-3:00 p.m. camp participants may have their individual picture taken with Howard and other other Poker Celebrities)
3:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. Commencement of $50,000 No-Limit Tournament
7:30-p.m. – 9:30 p.m. Dinner and Howard goes heads up against a very famous Sports Celebrity in a $100,000 winner takes all Limit Hold ‘Em match.
Saturday – April 2
8:45 a.m. Check-in begins for Poker Seminar9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. Poker Seminar
10:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. Continuation of $50,000 No-Limit Tournament and commencement of $200 Buy-In Tournament with 2005 WSOP Championship seat as first prize (Sit n Go Tournaments will be available for players who are knocked out of $50,000 or Buy-In Tournaments)
1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. Lunch Break
2:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. Commencement of $200 Buy-in Tournament with 2005 WSOP Championship seat as first prize (Sit n Go Tournaments will be available for players who are knocked out of $50,000 or $200 Buy-In Tournaments)
7:00 p.m. Banquet of the Stars hosted by Howard with presentation of $50,000 Tournament and Buy-In prizes and speeches from Phil Gordon, Chris Ferguson and two other widely recognized Poker Celebrities.
Sunday – April 3
8:45 a.m. Check-in begins for Question and Answer Session9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. Question and Answer Session with Howard and friends
10:30 a.m. – noon Celebrity Poker Tournament. Included will be 9 camp participants, Howard, Chris Ferguson, Phil Gordon, Annie Duke, Erik Seidel, Penn, Richard Lederer, Erin Ness, and Jon Bierman.
Day 1: Doesn’t really look like any coaching or education goes on the first day. Just check-in, grub, and a meet and greet with Howard.
Day 2: A two hour poker seminar, a shootout tournament, a $50k tournament, dinner with Howard, and you get to watch Howard play a sports celebrity heads-up.
Ok, you got the seminar there but how much can one learn in a two hour seminar? A two hour one-on-one session perhaps, but a seminar, by design, is meant to be very general in nature. I’m guessing this seminar is similar to what Phil Gordon teaches celebrities that have never played before on Celebrity Poker Showdown.
Day 3: A one hour poker seminar, continuation the $50k tournament from the day before, a tournament for a WSOP seat, and some Sit n Go tournaments for those who have busted out of all of the above.
One hour? So in three days you get three hours of instruction?
Day 4: A Q&A session with Howard and friends, and a celebrity poker tournament.
Now, don’t get me wrong here, I’m sure that if you don’t play much poker (like daily) four intense days of doing nothing but playing poker and getting some seminar level advice might improve your game but this doesn’t seem like something any serious player would get much benefit from. And perhaps serious players aren’t the target market for this camp but as the popularity of poker increases I suspect we’ll be seeing more of these types of events where the objective is not coaching people into being better players but to provide fantasy weekends where people can rub elbows with poker celebs and pretend that they’re getting better as a result (maybe there’s something to this osmosis thing).
Or, to put it another way, for $3500 you could pay a top pro $200 an hour (which I think is Sklansky’s rate according to a post I read on 2+2) for 17.5 hours of one-on-one coaching or you can go to poker camp and get 3 hours of seminar training.