Playing very little, coaching a lot, preparing videos...

That's exactly what has happened to me for the last two months. I'm dedicating more and more time to coaching, with an average of 20 hours a week doing hand history reviews. The quality of the sessions, be it private or group ones, is really good, and the reviews I receive from students are fantastic... as well as their results.

Last Sunday, the guy I always said was destined to poker greatness, chopped 5 ways the PS Sunday Million for $120K. When I started my coaching project, I sent him a private message on P5's telling him I wanted to work with him. I knew nothing about him, other than the many posts he had on the forum. He would ask the simplest questions, he would get harrassed by many "regulars", told to stop posting, or be plain ignored...but I knew he wanted to be really good at poker, and had one quality that many lack: He was willing to listen.

After 1-2 weeks of messaging each other, we started to work together on Sept 1st, 2,010. Prior to our deal, his average buy-in was $4, and he had very good stats at the three major poker sites, with close to $15K in profits. 7 months after, he has won the FullTilt $75 24K and 40K guaranteed, the PokerStars 10r, the 10 1r1a, made top 3 finishes in several more MTT's, won most of the UB guaranteed MTT's, etc, etc... and he topped it all last Sunday with that $120K score.

When I heard about it, my first reaction was not related with the amount of money won; I felt proud of him, proud of his consistency, hard work, willingness to learn, humility to accept criticism, to change his mind when he was wrong...he is not a one timer, he will continue to improve, to get better, to accumulate victories and final tables. Take note of his name: Joe "Shipthisplz". You'll hear a lot more from him soon enough.

We will make a video for the Pokertfives training site analyzing his play during that tournament, so stay tuned, it should turn into a very interesting discussion.

Besides Joe, in the last weeks the guys in the group have made consistent money, including a $25K and a $15K scores, along with many smaller wins and final tables. Other than the players I work with every week, many of my private students, those who hired me for 1-2 sessions, have improved their results and in some cases have experienced impressive success. It feels wonderful when, a few days or a week after a session, you receive an email saying "hey, I just won xxx on FTP-PS , my biggest cash ever, thank you"... and I am fortunate to receive that type of message very often.

Overall, coaching makes me feel better than playing. My wife, who is a school teacher, says that I was born to teach; that teaching is something you have to have in you, otherwise you won't be able to transmit to your students, no matter how much you know about something. And she thinks I have it in me, to which I won't argue, because I truly love what I'm doing right now, and will continue to do so for as long as people thinks they want to hear what I have to say.

This Saturday I will be giving an hour long seminar about basic tournament strategies in front of a 200 people crow. If the experience s good, we will repeat it in the future. I am nervous about it, mostly because my old self-consciousness regarding my poor English, but you can only regret what you don't try. I will talk about the experience next week, and let you guys know if they threw rotten tomatoes to the stage :)

In the playing department there will be no news unless I happen to do something interesting next Sunday, which will be my first day playing poker in a month. Besides that, I won't be playing much until next FTOPS and SCOOP series.