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Joe Tall is a coach. Yet he doesn't wear a Tom Landry style hat and you won't find him barking orders to his players from a sideline. There will never be any Lifetime Achievement plaques on his wall and his coaching will never to lead to a Stanley Cup, Super Bowl or NBA Championship.
Tall is a different kind of coach. He charges by the hour and can coach through phone conversations or e-mails. Though his services won't get anyone signed to a multi-million dollar contract by the New York Yankees they will make a healthy amount of money for those who take advantage of them.
Joe Tall coaches poker. For $175 an hour he analyzes the play of his students by picking apart hands, analyzing bets, and judging which game is the best fit for a particular player. Both amateur and professional poker players come to him for advice, and he has had some 50 clients within the past year. He has helped people playing in $1-$2 Limit Poker games move up to the more lucrative $10-$20 limit range.
Tall, who is a frequent poster on the heavily populated TwoPlusTwo forums, makes most of his living from playing $20/$40 or $30/$60 online limit poker. The coaching he does allows him to supplement his income while standing firm in his own play. "I enjoy how it keeps me on my game and sharp on a lot of the fundamentals" says Tall.
After working for 10 year as a civil engineer, Tall decided to make poker the main focus of his life. And while the lure of the poker lifestyle drew Tall away from an already lucrative practice, it's obvious that he's perfectly fine with the decision he has made.
"I can't even think about going back to an office. I realize how lucky I am" says Tall adding "I think I work more hours now, but I don't realize it because it's what I love to do."
All of the success he has achieved in the poker world comes from a deep appreciation of the game. "I coach because I love the game and I love to talk poker" says Tall.
Love For Poker
For Michael Ives, another successful coach, coaching is also a natural extension of his love for poker. “I’ve always coached” says Ives, “I used to coach basketball and I always get a kick out of a player improving. From my end, to get paid to talk about poker, well, it doesn’t get much better than that.”
Just like Tall, Ives is a frequent poster on the TwoPlusTwo forums. It was on those forums that he started to read about poker coaches and decided it was something he'd like to try. The following night after making a post that volunteered his services he received 30 replies. Spurred by the response, Ives started out charging $125/hour before eventually increasing his price tag to $150/hour.
A specialist in online no-limit play, Ives usually frequents the $5-$10 or $10-$20 tables. Yet his coaching methods have allowed some students to reach beyond that range. One client in particular (who was already an experienced limit player) reached the $25-$50 no-limit plateau with his guidance. Ives, who has a very humble, down-to-earth personality, is proud of the situation that would make others jealous, saying in reference to his student "I'm getting to live vicariously through him."
While he’s certainly doing well in both play and coaching, Ives isn’t going to quit his job as an accountant anytime soon. In fact, he used the recent tax deadline to take a break from coaching.
"I don't want to jeopardize the track I'm on. When you don't have a real job you have to worry about health insurance and other day to day quality of life things" says Ives adding "Some people would rather kill themselves than get up at seven o'clock and sit in an office, but I'm fine with it."
They Aren't Poker Gods
While Ives hasn’t noticed any consistent problems in the 12 or so clients he’s coached since starting almost a year ago, he has noticed a common awareness among them that they aren’t Poker Gods and therefore have something to learn.
“The people that seek out coaches are the ones that appreciate the skill that goes into the game, and they are generally very humble. They know that paying money is an admission that they don’t know everything” says Ives.
Both Tall and Ives have encountered their fair share of poker poseurs. These are the type of characters that have had a couple winning nights in their basements games, watched poker on ESPN and therefore conclude they are the next big thing to hit the game.
“I’ve run into plenty of those people, and the best thing you can say is ‘Good Luck’, because they are just going to learn the hard way,” says Tall.
Good decisions don't always win money
“The reason that most people, particularly those people who try to relate poker to sports, don't get poker and all of its intricacies is because there is such a disconnect between what should happen and what actually happens. Good decisions don't always win money if the cards don't fall the right way” says Ives adding “To be good at poker you should be able to not only make the right decisions but understand why you’re making them.”
With a growing online poker industry it’s no wonder that people like Tall and Ives are able to prosper. While some pros or onlookers may consider this new wave of players to be somehow inferior, two of the last three World Series of Poker Champions were online players and 2/3 of the entrants in the 2005 World Series qualified through online sites.
As the world of online poker grows, and more non-poker playing, mainstream America types come to hear about this world the job of a professional online poker player could become a more widely accepted profession. And once that happens, those Lifetime Achievement plaques may not be too far off for Tall or Ives.
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