I saw a screenshot of him having a negative winrate for over 1million hands iirc at microstakes fwiw. (Not entirely sure, but his results are very bad at least over a big sample)

I dont think being a good player = being a good coach, but i agree that it seems like its a bit over the top imo. Probably over priced, yes.

"maybe I am teaching my dog to play PLO, why does it matter".

What a lovely way to respond to your potential students. Such a nice human being.

Why would anybody pay 10000$ to get coaching from a mid-stakes player at best! This price is insanely high! Oh those coaches these days. Just makes you to appreciate Jnandez`s work even more.

A little over a year ago he playing 25z what seemed like full time on stars. Then it looked like he sold some coaching packages and moved up to 500z then probably busted his roll and disappeared for a while and now is trying to run it up again.

I don't have a problem with him playing games he isn't winning in or even offering overpriced scam coaching. The issue for me is that he is a mod here on RIO so it gives him a position of authority and it legitimizes him. I think RIO shouldn't allow him to advertise on the forums because it calls into question the integrity of the site when they endorse somebody like him.

Maybe we can have a no non-pro coaching advertisement rule? Or maybe a coaching specific subforum where people can post what they are offering and we can leave reviews? I'm not asking that we get rid of all scam coaches in poker because that would be impossible. I'm just asking for RIO to take some responsibility and not allow scammers, especially those on their mod team, to prey on the newer more susceptible players that come here wanting to learn.

I hope Jonna102 would comment on these accusations and defend himself.

This thread reminds of when the bodybuilding.com moderator Teampunishment was questioned and someone made this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVKvyO_KkkA

Interesting to see what develops here

About a year ago now, I withdrew everything from my stars account save for $50 of fun money. I did this in order to focus full time on the PLO Fundamentals courses, as I wouldn't have time to play and review my own play anymore. I still played a bit, but just recreationally. By the end of the year, that $50 had grown to around $20k from only PLOZ.

Sadly, I ended up running really poorly at 500Z. 20 BI behind EV over a small hand sample, and since I was still doing this just half-recreationally, I decided to stop playing 500Z, withdrew most of my BR again, and played some lower games. I played some 200Z and 100Z, but continued with the sick variance. The kind where you get it in with top set on a dry board, and your opponent hits their only backdoor draw. And repeat 40 times per session.

I could obviously have continued playing higher if I wanted to, but it's not as important to me as it apparently is to some others. I love the game, but contrary to most players I'm not actually in poker for money. I'm in it for the love of the game, and because I enjoy the intellectual challenge.

In this light, I find this thread very odd, and I haven't really known if I should comment or not. As far as I'm aware, OP has never been in any of my coaching programs or have had any substantial contact with me at all. I think I should be legitimately allowed to make responsible choices with poker winnings, and make conscious decisions on what financial risks I take, and when. How that translates into a need to make groundless accusations against me, is beyond what I can comprehend. It's unfair and uncalled for. (Aside from also being against the rules of conduct of runitonce.com.)

I still don't really know how or if I'm supposed to respond to any of that, since it's so far removed from any substantial reality that I know of. All I can say is that I've never pretended to be anything I'm not, I'm just offering to teach the skills that I've picked up over my years as a PLO player and researcher. If people value those skills and what I do (and they do), then I think I have fair cause to continue.

https://www.runitonce.com/terms-conditions/

LOL...Rules of conduct :D,
GT, did you just add it now for giggles? :)

Would it be at all fair that those who ask for scrutiny would perform even a minimum of fact checking? Or at least stating what it is in the products that is in question? That would give us something tangible to discuss, create feedback that would be meaningful for me, and give me the opportunity to correct whatever you find questionable with the products.

As it is, this thread only serves the purpose of publicly discrediting an individual, without any substantial reason presented at all. As such it is nothing but slander.

As I'm partial, I'll ask the site staff to judge whether this is acceptable.

Why don't you start off with your results in the last two years? Alternatively, you can explicitly state that you are a recreational micro stakes player offering highly theoretical coaching. And all the questionable HHs are just research.

There was a similar thread regarding Tom Chambers course, and he didn't find it libelous.

Wow full roast is on. Tofu goes to the history books as a dude who started World War III.

The simplest thing to do would be to post the graph of your $50->$20k and then the runbad in 500z.

Really, not much else you need to do to earn that credibility. Post a
full graph, not 10k samples of where you won here and there. You just
gave the backstory (above), so just provide the evidence and all
should be good.

If that's really all that it takes...

I feel incredibly silly doing this because I have no desire to brag. I don't think this is anything to brag about. I'm sure any good player could repeat this and more. But if it really helps anyone believe that it's legit, then here goes.

This is $50 => $20k. It doesn't quite go all the way up to 20k -- this was back in the day when there was still rakeback on stars, and I fed that back into my account to land at at bit over $20k.

It turns out that it was actually more like $22k:

This is the same hand sample but in BB/100. It shows the consistent results a bit more clearly. Both of these are unfiltered hand samples from around mid Aug 2016 to mid Feb 2017, and represent ~6 BB/100 over ~250k hands. Not at all destroying the games, but winning quite consistently. The first part of the sample is swinging that $50 back and forth a bit. It's the insane variance that you get when you're winning 20 bb/100 but rake takes 18 bb/100.

This is from 500Z at the beginning of the year. Small hand sample, only 14k hands so nothing much can be read out from it, but it's what I have. It does show though, that I was 20 BI behind EV at the end, or around $10k off my true winnings.

With the graphs out of the way... mediocre micros player? Anyone can have a crazy run over a small hand sample, but for it to happen consistently over 250k hands that is fairly unlikely. I think I deserve credit for being a good player. It should give anyone the confidence that I'm not going to give advice that is entirely wrong. But ultimately I'm much more a poker theorist than player. I'm ok as a player, but my real skill set is in poker math and computation. But I've also never claimed anything else.

Concerning the pricing of the courses:

The Basic course is priced at €800. It includes a total of 24 coaching sessions, 12 theory and 12 practical sessions. I frequently bring high stakes players as guests to the practical sessions at no extra cost for the students. There is also fairly extensive homework every week, plus a chat room where students can discuss hands among each other, and I'm also available in the chat to answer questions. I also have optional live play videos available to students who want them. If you just count the cost per sessions it's around €33, which is really as low as you could possibly expect for the kind of attention that you get as a student in this course.

The Advanced course is priced at €2400. The theory and practical session setup is the same, as is the homework (though it is more sophisticated). For this course I haven't been providing live play videos, but I'm looking into doing that for the next iteration that starts early September. This course covers PLO range construction, plus some related thing like review of range interaction on every flop texture, and some minor game theory content, and includes material that is not fully available anywhere else to my knowledge. The price ends up being higher, but we're also talking about theory content that is much more exclusive. And still, if you split it into session costs, it's still only €100 per session, and the sessions frequently last 90 minutes or more.

The Elite course is of course the flagship product, and is listed at €9600. It's an applied game theory course for PLO. It targets at a very small group of high stakes players (essentially 25/50+), but aims to lift the level of game theory sophistication for PLO to similar levels to what we see in NLHE. There are some challenges with software availability for PLO, but I've had my own software running for weeks and weeks to calculate the results we present. I believe I personally solved around 1500 games for the first two weeks alone! Every session represents many weeks worth of offline work, and that's how it ends up with the price it has. And still, this kind of knowledge has value to some, and I wanted to make it available since I have the skills. The theory and practical session setup is the same as for the other courses, except each session is around two hours and have two coaches. This course extends and modernizes some of the material in Advanced PLO Theory. Tom Chambers is my co-instructor for this course, and has created half the content. I've seen another thread on Tom, and I can't comment too much, but I'll say that Tom is possibly the brightest mind that I've ever come across in poker, and he puts an incredible amount of solid work into everything he does. I'm honored that he's decided to work together with me on creating and delivering the Elite course, and I couldn't possibly have done it without him.

Many players appreciate the scientific and systematic approach we take in these courses. It won't be for everyone, but there's no need to be. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive for the most part. Some criticism has also been received, and we're updating the courses for every iteration to improve them based on student feedback. We also offer students their money back if they take a week or two and are unsatisfied with the value. Nobody has yet decided to take that option.

As far as is at all possible, I base the material at least partially on published material. The board texture categories are exactly as in Advanced PLO Theory for example. I do this so students can get an extra level of confidence in the material, and a source to go to if they want deeper knowledge. Just like in any university course. For Advanced and Elite it's somewhat hard to find published resources. Elite is a bit easier, because I can point to raw math or science papers (just on the off chance that anybody would be interested). With range construction it's harder because there isn't much available, but I do link to videos here on Run It Once, that at least partially provide such coverage.

So let's keep this discussion in perspective, please. There are solid products that are valuable to some, for the price offered. That's fair business. 1000+ hours have been put into producing this content to make it valuable for students. If people have comments on any of the content, then I'm happy to discuss, but I've seen no such comments in this thread. If there are other products in the market that other people prefer, that's also fair business.

Let me also state clearly, for the record, that these products are entirely separate from Run It Once. This is also why I've kept a low profile about these products in the forums. They have been mentioned occasionally, but not much. And I cleared this with the site beforehand.

My role as a moderator for the PLO forums is really nothing much other than being a normal member keeping an eye on the forums. I get no compensation from RIO for it (other than access to the site) and my skills as a poker player have not been reviewed for this role.

Thank you for posting graphs, they are pretty cool, my only questions are why you only have EV line for one graph, and also why your graphs stop after February?
Thanks.

I have used Jonna as a coach for the last few years, and have also discussed a lot of strategy with him. I am mainly a live player, but have learnt to handle myself in games which are 2/5 zoom to 10/20 online though my sample sizes are small. I am fully aware he is not a high stakes crusher, and I am in strong disagreement with people who want a high stakes crusher to teach them because in my opinion that is not how people best learn.

I have done a lot of reading on books such as Outliers by Malcomn Gladwell, Deep Work by Cal Newport, The Talent code by Daniel Coyle, and I have developed my own personal views on how and what it takes to improve myself. I recognise it is not a one size fits all, but this is what works for me.

If I had a highstakes crusher telling me how to play, I feel that yes it would make a difference, but it would not give me the long term tools to think for myself. With Jonna, he has done a vast amount of work on theory, and he will talk you through how he got to these conclusions. I am not someone who is going to go away and do the highly theoretical work myself; so I like how he has done that work and how he presents it. To learn at a deeper level, it is creating an understanding of how Jonna came up with these theory points, discuss them, and have me argue with him when I don’t think they work in reality. If you have read the Talent code by Daniel Coyle, he would probably argue this is a process, which will create Myelin, and thus creates a better understanding of the game mechanism through deep learning. I find this methodology of “deep learning” much more effective than what I would classify as shallow learning eg. Only watching training videos and not bothering to examine, discuss and challenge them; or just blindly accepting what a coach tells you.

I feel if you are wanting a coach to tell you to simply do xyz, Jonna is not the coach for you. He is a coach who has a real passion for the game and it's theory. Use his tones of work to discuss and argue with him. It is our responsibility to then build upon his passion for the game and work as hard as him. Add some of his theory to your arsenal, see what parts of it work for you and what doesn’t. This for me creates deep learning and greater understanding of the beautiful game which I will never fully comprehend its depth :))

This thread turned from negative to postive quite fast.

Should I make a thread 'Questioning tofurocks as Jonna102's shill'?

Like = yes, comment = no

I am definitely not a shill for Jonna unless I misunderstood your post. As I said, I find the lack of EV lines and cropped graphs kind of suspicious and I am still highly dubious of his ability. I think that a non-cropped by-stake breakdown with EV lines would be a lot more convincing, I still don't see why he would move from 500z down to 50z if his theory is so strong and actually worth paying for. I know solid players who have run unbelievably bad for a long time and they never had to move down to 1/10th of the stake.
Regarding David, I believe that theory is a good way to learn , I just think it is better to learn theory from somebody who is a proven winner at reasonable stakes (in EV). Obviously I am not saying "do xyz" is what coaches should be telling you, this is kind of a strawman.

I skipped the EV line in the other graphs because it didn't add any useful information and cluttered up the graph. (I consider EV adjusted winnings to be a close to useless metric anyway.

If you think ev is useless and only clutters up the graph why did you specifically feel the need to add your ev line in the 500 graph?

You've had two chances to post the winning graph with EV and you have chosen not to do it both times which makes me (and I imagine many others) very suspicious. Especially since you have shown that you do think ev is a good metric by posting that 500 graph. Is ev only useful when you run below it and useless when you run above? If you ran perfectly at ev like you have said why don't you just post the graph? I think we can deal with the extra line in there it won't be too cluttered don't worry

This has gone way too far already. I am deeply opposed to this blind use of results as a metric of someone's skill in a game of chance. I am deeply opposed to the stake envy that is displayed in this thread. A good poker player knows immediately from talking to another whether they know what they're talking about or not. No results required. By continuously insisting on results graphs, all you do is prove that you don't belong in that category of players yourself. And yet, against better judgement I have still provided more than plenty of results graphs to disprove the accusations in the original post.

This will be the final results graph I post in this thread.

This is no blind use of results or stake envy. It is simply heuristic: a player with good results/higher stakes is more likely to be a good poker coach than a player with poor results/lower stakes. Tofurocks reached out to you and you responded with trolling comments, so result is the only metric he can go on. He never claimed to be a good player or even a winning player. But he doesn't need to prove anything because he isn't selling a 10k USD course.

Jonna, do you publish all your reviews or only 5 star ones?

Would you be willing to share how many people have reviewed your courses, and if you have ever offered discounts on the programs for them?

" A good poker player knows immediately from talking to another whether they know what they're talking about or not. No results required."

Completely disagree, the knowledge one acquires directly relates to results. And when your selling 10k a package i for sure want to know that the knowledge your selling has given you great results, which it hasn't.

" I love the game, but contrary to most players I'm not actually in poker for money. I'm in it for the love of the game"

you sell coaching packages for 10 grand

I think we can all agree that for a player who isn`t capable of beating PLO500 the price for elite course is little bit too high. Still I respect Jonna for showing his results when asked to. Yes you can take things out of context, question and pick at everything he says forever but at the end of the day his results up to PLO200 are quite impressive. Its time to let it go and not to go too overboard with this and accept the fact that the man knows what he is doing. Everybody can now make their own choice whether they like the price or not.

His graph is still cropped to end at February and has no by stake report, I wouldn't say that he has demonstrated impressive results up to 200.
That being said I do agree I don't need to go any further with this, I think the evidence speaks for itself.

I have a couple things to say and then I'll leave the thread. Over time when such threads have appeared, I addressed the couple about me because it was necessary, but I've stayed out of the others, whether I thought the subject person or product was good, mediocre, bad, well-priced, overpriced. It's not worth the time to me, I prefer to keep my opinions to myself, especially negative ones - something about glass houses. That said.

In choosing to work with jonna, I never asked for a graph or about results. That doesn't make those things unimportant. What I found important was:

• he is articulate and extremely absorbent of poker content. He's watched more videos and read more books than almost anyone I can think of. He understands poker and game theory and he explains things well. And he is very organized and good at presentation.
  .
• he is an exceptional programmer. During my poker hiatus 2012-2016 I worked with world class programmers. I am far from one but I know one when I see one. He would fit in in any CS context. I've seen code snippets and programs that answer questions that are not available publicly. Some of that was disseminated in the Elite course. What he does in terms of making the work public and how is up to him, and beyond what I've said I don't want to make my views known or to over or under sell it. So that's that.

But it is key to understand that these skills are orthogonal to playing results in a coach, and they have value too. This doesn't make playing results irrelevant, but it does explain why the well-packaged Fundamentals courses (the lower two) are valuable - he pulled everything that is/was out there together and presented it extremely well. He has many satisfied students from those courses.

Regarding Elite. It is expensive, but it is also a large program, 40-45 hours of course time (1.5-2 hours/week x twice/week x 12 weeks). If anything, for the students in the course, the question was not whether the hourly rate was reasonable, but whether the time was most efficiently used versus their other options. The first iteration left us with many thoughts on how to improve. We are working on that. We also understand that regardless of the rest, for such a price people will want pretty graphs too. So we intend to post pretty graphs before offering Elite again.

I hope this post is useful to those without already-set opinions.

My feelings would be hurt if I were Jonna102.... I think we need to make another gay theory post about how Ike Haxton has been trolling us all along.

People are allowed to ask questions. With this kind of price tag you shouldn`t be surprised at all. PLO University has just a perfect price and the best thing is that Jnandez is adding even more content to the course. I think its actually very smart to sell your products at a reasonable price. There are way more beginning and mid-stakes players ready to buy 1k package than players who could actually afford and are willing to spend 10k for a poker course.

I have had a change of heart. I apologize for calling Jonna102 a scammer. I have had the chance to play with him recently at 100z and after seeing his game firsthand I think he should be allowed to sell his coaching packages... because that is the only way to keep him in these games :)

Population tendencies in zoom100: 3beting too much and betfolding in 3bet pots with spr=3 ? I doubt it. Would be amazed if you get a fold more than 20% in this specific spot given blockers.

These are my latest 500 or so stack-off situations. I had one slight slip-up, and you guys fall all over yourselves to snap post it in your desperate search for something to hate on.

I know players who rage tilt when they lose 10 stack-offs in a row. This graph shows my performance after being 80 BI behind EV over two weeks. Under those circumstances I can forgive myself if I make less than one mistake per 100 stack-offs.

I can go back several years and show a similar graph. There is just no foundation at all for the mindless hate that you guys are spreading. There is a word for posters who behave like that. It's really embarrassing to see so many of you have such disregard for source control.

Now let's see if you guys are prepared to back up your words with your own stack-off graphs that so obviously humble my results.

Jonna taught me PLO. I went from PLO5 retarddonk and now I'm putting myself thru uni, it doesn't cost anything in Sweden to go, but you have to pay rent, books and all that stuff. I've been able get an average of ~$1800(15k SEK) each month (since Aug 2016) playing on Svenska spel. And since I'm an idiot who goes on tilt for the most stupid things I think that's decent.

Just ignore Jonna if you think he's a bad? Stalk Jonna and win all the money. If he scams people I think we'll hear about it? "This guy is charging $800 and he doesn't know shit!!", post like that would surface really quick. I'm really happy with his coaching, I've won back what the coaching cost and more.

I don't have any graphs atm because I'm home on summerbreak. I can post them late september when I move back to my Uni town and get access to my stationary computer.

Pic of username + a recording of coaching with Jonna to prove I've had contact with hen (genderneutral swedish pronoun). No matter how I try phrase this message it looks sketchy, w/e,. take it or leave it.
inb4 jonnas 11th acc

this website is terrible from a userexperience perspective, cant embed img.
https://anonimage.net/db/full/uouBMXUTH5.jpg

'sup J
//P

Now let's see if you guys are prepared to back up your words with your own stack-off graphs that so obviously humble my results.

Again, people who post here don`t need to prove sh*t. They are not the ones taking other peoples money. As a coach you are only one who needs to show that you are actually competent enough to justify the price you are asking for your products. People have their doubts. Your only goal should be to prove them wrong not to compare yourself to them.

phil-galfond-reviews-jonna102

High priced poker coaching is just the garbage business idea of fraud players. 95% of high priced coaches are losing players or have virtually no winning online. The list is Tri Nguyen, Gordon Gekko, Jon Beaupreaz, Splitsuit, Nick Howard etc. All bums trying to make a buck off stupid peasants who play poker.

Jonna is a bum too. Youd have to be a complete imbecile to pay this low stakes scrub a penny for his coaching.

Watch your RIO videos, kids, and eat your vegetables.

Case closed. Jonna is a crook and a fraud.

I just wanted to leave this hand history here because I am interested in hearing how we can construct a GTO leading range from BB here into the pre-flop 3-bettor.

Jonna is a mod at RIO because he has been a loyal member willing to help, who's made great posts and helped us improve our forum participation for years.

Mod-ship is not an endorsement from RIO about his abilities as a coach (nor is it the opposite). Reviews of the coaching offered are welcome, but the personal attacks have crossed the line. Please keep the conversation civil going forward.

Mikey Stotz said: personal attacks have crossed the line

Copernicus said crook and a fraud. Others expressed their opinions also in variety of ways, but, at bottom of it all, that is TRUTH and nothing is personal in truth, except truth is what it is, sometimes very harsh and painful, unforgiving and occasionally very offensive because in its core, truth cant chose to be mannered polite and distorted , softened just so people dont get offended.

In a way you are somewhat right in thing being personal, because to extent it is. Someone among us distorted truth,misrepresented himself and as that is not enough, clearly and unmistakably falsified results to gain credits he is not due for, and most of all , to lure people into buying rather expensive products that he as a poker player cant stand with results behind at all.

You refer to him as loyal member willing to help, who's made great posts and helped us improve our forum participation for years., and he clearly did use RIO as a platform of his fabricated lies (see his thread Experiment: Starting with $100) where he is clearly fabricating evidence since his posted results for 2013 for micro stakes clearly show that he was losing over large sample -7.9 bb/100 ( unless you want us plo or nl players, to start believing that reg table loser is zoom winner, might as well believe in santa@! )_ and having a MOD status @ RIO, indeed though does not make you endorser of his coaching , but makes you in a subtle way enabler, and i hope that you come to a realisation that you should take it personally too!!!! because that reflects community you created, in which you as site do have responsibility for us to feel SAFE from fraud lies and intentional deceit.

I believe people are kind and good in their core, no one here wishes anyone anything bad, we dont want people and coaches to fail or lose, but still , everyone does occasionally lose and fail, people then are NOT entitled to know it because it is usually no ones elses business, but when it becomes business like selling people products , then it is their business and their losing and failure is on DISPLAY, not because people are mean, but because they want to protect themselves from such, and by extension, community they are a part of.

It is not pleasant to be involved in debunking a fraud and a cheat, and everyone decent usually stays away since its rather unpleasant to roll in the mud and pithole of humanity, but sometimes, it needs to be said, and you, as site , should be grateful for people coming forward with TRUTH, and stand by your people and not Jonnas of the world, because we need to know that you are standing there trying for this things NOT to happen, and when they do, debunk them with admirable velocity ,,,

Love to RIO but not today
Aleksandra

PS - Also, not sure if this is clear enough, its not about coaches and people losing some at some point of their lives, not playing for couple of years but stil have valuable thoughts to offer, sometimes it is totally transparent sometimes not, but in this case it is obvious clear misrepresentation of always losing micro - player who fabricated and falsified results in public and found his predatory way in this community .

I took the first iteration of the Elite PLO course ran by Jonna102 and Tom. I don't care to comment on how they are as actual PLO players, frankly I've never played a hand with either, but what they both are is great teachers and the Elite course was of great benefit to me and my PLO game. It's clear Jonna is very math/game theory based heavy in his approach to PLO. It may not translate well into his own play(?), but as a recipient of his knowledge and the work he put into the Elite course it has without a doubt made me much more verse in game theory and how it applies/should be applied to PLO. No doubt it was a ton of work for both Jonna and Tom to construct the course, it was also a ton of work for me to get the most out of the course, and months after it finished I'm still chipping away at the mountain of work the course allowed me to discover about PLO. It's a fucking big game after all.

I wouldn't normally get involved in petty troll threads like this (made a new anonymous account to post this) but the level of abuse Jonna is receiving is an absolute piss take. You may not think he's a great or even profitable player but I'm telling you he is a very good coach. You get hundreds of hours worth of pre-work from the guys in the Elite course on top of the actual coaching sessions. $/hour wise is pretty good value.

Happy to answer any more questions people may have about Jonna (specifically as a coach) and the course itself.

If you wanted to be chess grandmaster, you wouldn't get coaching from someone who wasn't a grandmaster. If you wanted to score 98-99 percentile on a standardized exam to get into a most selective university, you wouldnt get tutoring from someone who scored in the 75th percentile. For mid/high stakes PLO, it would be incredibly foolish to get coaching from anyone who isn't a big winner over a statistically significant sample size online at high stakes PLO. For $9600, you could likely get coaching from Jeans89 or Sauce123 or other nosebleed players. To hire anyone else for that amount of money would be silly.

A little reflection on this post that seems to have some argumentation going on in regards to - is it important to be a winner to coach poker or not.

Most would say it is, but some claim it is not obligatory.
Maybe it is not , maybe trusting someone is good is good enough, but im not sure how can anyone possibly trust someone who blatantly lies and forges!!! results in order to gain peoples trust.

Bottom line, Liar and Forger :

Jonna102: With the graphs out of the way... mediocre micros player? Anyone can
have a crazy run over a small hand sample, but for it to happen
consistently over 250k hands that is fairly unlikely. I think I
deserve credit for being a good player.

What to comment there, fake forged graph, or claim of being a good player???

The math on the PTR graph shows a player losing 3 years in a row. 2013-2015, playing mostly 10plo (average stake calculated from $ loss and bb/100) and not improving, actually dropping stakes. PLaying almost million hands like this!

Posing as "expert" during this time. (his Poker Theory Explained articles + was coaching other micro players at the time) and disguising his recreational, losing micro play by claiming to "researching the state of the games" to anyone who asks. 2 years later selling coaching for $10k.

Being somewhat transparent and truthful would be in place.

Like - "Hey , Im struggling and losing quiet a bit, but im really great with theory, if you want you can try my coaching package for 1, 2 ,10 or 100 k" . and advertise with SOME facts, omit some,

OK, Truth can and maybe streched to extent,

Like - "Hey , I played quiet a bit of volume this year and im selling coaching packages, im good with theory",..... yes, thats stretching it, but VALID and can hold somewhat

BUT

lie in public , forge results and actually take money for it, because people made decisions based on written statements and claims on reputable site , like purchasing said product, it is close to criminal act , in which victims will probably not come forward because - it implies they are stupid and silly, so it is better to defend their decision to buy whatever they want, in regards to which MIKE is right, it is customers own responsability to check what he/she is buying, but that is also a reason why we are having THIS THREAD, so people can have more accurate information to make decision.

Sry late to the party. Did Jonna deny the forging accusations???

Wow this is so scummy... especially to come here after being exposed and defend himself with fake graphs. wtf dude

Seeing threads like this make me incredibly wary to hire any kind of coach. Major trust issues now. I am surprised RIO keeps the endorsement of him.

what he isn't doing that bad....At least I think his $1,000 coaching is worth it, give him a break, he only lost 1 training course over 1million hands doing research for...students...lol

Just for fun...But really look at this, really look at this we are talking about micro stakes...micro stakes......this speaks for itself

Looks like I'm late to this thread, but wow, somebody can get away with this?

I don't have problems with a micro reg coaching high stakers, after all it's all dictated by supply and demand, but lying about and forging results is just beyond me. So is chalking it up to "I'm doing this for the love of this game" when you are charging your students a huge chunk of money while deliberately hiding or lying about your results as a player.

Dude, wake up. I mean, wake the hell up!

Sry guys but to me Nick Howard is in the same boat. No proof of winning graphs, crazy expensive packages, winning student graphs could easily be forged. Help me understand how is his situation any different, maybe I have missed something. I`m very suspicious.

Lets be honest here. He was a losing player. And all this was back in the day when rake wasnt so crazy high and players got a lot of rakeback. Now tell me what kind of chance do his students have nowadays if even expensive coach like him was barely a winning player back when it was way easier to beat the games? I would say chances of him making lot of winning players are very-very slim.

Zenfish theres two different things - theres honesty and theres reality. If I want to improve my game I want to learn from the best and we all know they are not even close to that level. Those prices are ridiculous. Im just worried that people might be little bit misinformed and all I know is that I for sure don`t like scammers.

It's just quite simple to me.
"Did/Does he lie to his potential customers/students? or not"

this thread is fire.

I have a dragon in my garage

I hope I don't have to explain why this video is relevant and the first thing I began thinking about once I read the defensive posts from the accused. This is my first post, yes.

I am a piano teacher. I don't have a degree. If someone asks me what my background and education is, I don't tell them I don't have a degree in piano performance. But I do say that I have enrolled students into achievement program adjudications and they all received at least a score of 80. These are young children and the program is very serious. The judges do not care what age they are. There are 40 year old adults and 5 year old children taking the same tests. A score of 80 at a level 2 examination by a 5 year old is really quite remarkable! They have to memorize their music, play scales, etc.

I also posted videos on my website of my play. If the parents ask me to play something for them, I happily sit down at my piano and perform a small piece of work. I also have reviews online from other parents saying nice things about my methods and style of teaching.

If someone asked me to "prove" I was a capable pianist or teacher and I said "There is no way to prove it, I broke all the fingers in both my hands years ago" - and they asked for videos of me before my fingers broke and I said "I never recorded myself playing" and someone asked me for the # of another family who could vouch their children are developing at a nice rate and I said "Sorry I protect the privacy of other families"

You would rightfully conclude I am a fraud until proven otherwise.

If you then saw a video of me playing the C major scale and I kept making mistakes, you would then have proof I was a fraud, rather than an educated and rational assumption.

I think this proof has been given.

That is all I wish to write.

Also what site, software did you use to data mine 800,000 hand history???

out of the last 3 years, this has certainly been the most entertaining and fun thread hahaha, i love rereading it now, it's beautiful

All elements of greek drama / tragedy present in here :) so cant fault a guy for rereading it, i think there is a name for it:
Catharsis (from Greek κάθαρσις katharsis meaning "purification" or "cleansing") is the purification and purgation of emotions—particularly pity and fear—through art[1] or any extreme change in emotion that results in renewal and restoration.[2][3] It is a metaphor originally used by Aristotle in the Poetics, comparing the effects of tragedy on the mind of a spectator to the effect of a cathartic on the body.
Amusement , as bad as it is, is still amusement, :-) but yes lets show some restraint, and bury this one in past and let the new times and winds come :) for all, Jonna102 hopefully too.
Spring time :D!

this is still a fun thread to come back and revisit

Just find this thread, wasted quite a bit of time, but it was worth it, lol.