I’ve been very busy behind the scenes working on new poker coaching techniques.  I have some new tools where I review hands in a replayer, my student can see my desktop and I record all of it to make a video for them!

With this and getting ready for Gracelyn to arrive, I’ve been slammed!  I hope to get some time to write out My Poker Story IV, next week should settle down a bit as all preparations are made for Gracie and we are sitting and waiting!

Players always ask me, “How do I play 30/20?”   How do I play LAGTAG?  What changes should I make?   There is no single answer for them.

It took me a long time to get over 30VPIP in 6-max games.  My game has just slowly grown of the years, one percentage point at a time.  Get some poker coaching, make some posts, find some hardcore poker friends and work, work, work.  That’s how I did it.

I’ve been poker coaching like crazy lately and there has been high demand for in-hand No-Limit poker coaching beyond my poker mindset practices. I am proud to say that Josh (sthief09) of the twoplustwo forums is now working with me to do the in-hand NL coaching. Josh has been coaching for few months and has been crushing No-Limit Hold’em since he made the switch from limit two years ago. Josh is a featured guest video maker at DeucesCracked and a great guy, helluva player! Check out my poker coaching page for details, Click here.

I am now able to record my internet-phone conversations and can package them in a MP3 file so my clients can have them for future reference.  I have started group coaching programs where I work with a well known NL-coach to teach in-hand NL.  These two new features are new to poker coaching and should give more value to anyone who is looking to get coaching.

My coaching has improved a lot lately, and that has a lot to do with some coaching help I received from my coach, Tommy Angelo.  Updating my poker story later this week.

We last left off in August of 2004; I just left my job and couldn’t be happier about it. It was the upper management that drove me out. I liked the industry I was in, railroading, but the company I worked for was heavily mismanaged. I had to work in order to work. I never had the right tools, personnel, help, etc. I liked working with my boss at the time. He gave his resignation on Aug 1^st, by the end of the week all my personal stuff was out of the office. I left for lunch one day and instead of meeting up with the boys, I got on the highway and went home. I never returned, didn’t call, and didn’t answer my phone. Finally when the police showed up at my apartment door to see if I was alive, I called into work and told them I wasn’t going to be coming in anymore. I was suddenly without a job but for the first time, I was without care for a job. It was liberating.

I was not sure if I was going to play poker full time. I was going to let two weeks go by to see what will happen and still played poker online and at Foxwoods regularly. Soon enough a month had gone by, I was playing poker fulltime and loving every minute of it . That fall, as the Red Sox were on their way to the World Series, I felt like I was the top of the world. The feeling I had walking into Game 2 of the World Series at Fenway (Bloody Sock II), I will never forget.

Around the end of October, I was approached by Kerpowski of the 2+2 forums to do some poker coaching. I was recommended by El Diablo (Ulysses at the time) to Kerp and Kerp lived in my hometown of Worcester, MA. I met Kerp and we talked poker for hours at a local Starbucks. This is how my poker coaching career began. Kerpowski was a low limit learning player at that time and he has moved up to high stakes NL over the last few years, doing very well.

I continued posting non-stop on the twoplustwo forums as poker exploded into the mainstream. I lived very comfortably, playing live and online. I signed up as a poker affiliate for several online sites and started giving rakeback. I never pushed my rakeback programs; just let it all happen organically. Slowly, I build a solid affiliation with a lot of my contacts in poker. I remain a small affiliate for a lot of those same players today.

Soon after I had student after student contact me for coaching. I wasn’t charging all that much back then, $30/hour or so. Twoplustwo posters, Wacki, Bakku, bottomset, Brettbettr, among many others were my first clients. They are still very active on the twoplustwo forums and in poker.

It wasn’t soon after I started in coaching that I decided I should get some coaching myself, this when I found Tommy Angleo’s website, www.tiltless.com. This was the most critical point in my poker career. I flew to San Francisco to meet with Tommy, shortly after the new year in 2005.

Part IV, coming soon, Me and Tommy.