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.

Take care everybody...

Andres

It's been well over two weeks since the last update, and I think is time to punish readers again with my incredible bad English grammar and endless rants. After all, those of you reading these lines have already shown a likelihood for pain, so I won't feel any guilt if your head hurts after reading.

What happened in my poker life since we last spoke? There is a very easy answer to that question: I lost. I lost when I was ahead, I lost when I was behind, I lost when I was flipping, I lost whenever I had a chance to lose.

FTOPS was a particularly painful experience for me. I had some semi-deep runs, some bubbles, and one hand to add to my own "will haunt me forever" list: Lost AA vs AK all in preflop, for the chip lead, in event #20, a $216 Rush event, with 12 players left. Short after I ran 55 into 66 blind-vs-blind, and finished in 11th place. End of the "bad beat stories" section.

One of the first consequences of my recent run is that the quest for SNE has been put on hold. I am not willing to dig a deep make-up hole for the sole purpose of achieving certain status. My playing schedule for the next weeks will be focused on small-mid buy in MTT's with the addition of Sunday Majors. There will be no 24-30 tabling sessions until I figure out what I've done wrong lately...and there HAS to be something wrong.

Today I had a 2 hours HH review session with "Herschelw", and we found a couple details that needed some work, although those details alone don't justify my recent results, so I will go through many more hands until the criminal is spotted, detained, and put under custody. I am of the idea that if there is smoke, there's a fire somewhere, and I can not let this one grow anymore than what it already has. Besides reviewing my own play, I will be watching videos and reading good strategy articles in days to come.

Meantime, my group sessions have been getting better and better, with more guys joining us every week (I have opened the sessions to guests who can join us for I consider a great price), and the guys seem to be thinking and approaching the game in a more effective way. We had our biggest score to date for $25K when one of the guys finished 3rd in the FTP 150K two Sundays ago.

A week ago I sent an article to Card Player Magazine that will appear in their "Hand for hand combat" section. I believe is a decent one, but everybody will have a chance to judge once it gets published. I was nervous about it, because many good players will read it and maybe think is bad.

In the next 2-3 days I plan on sending my new series of videos to Pokerpwnage. I received feedback pointing out the mistakes made in the first videos, and expect to do a much better job with the new ones.

So far this is all, good luck everybody

Andres

I have been extremely busy lately; playing a lot, doing 4-5 coaching sessions a week, dealing with family routine, making my first series of videos for Pokerpwnage...I am really tired.

Lat night I had to take a plane to San Francisco, show up at the Spanish consulate, give them some papers, and 2 hours later take my plane back home. Fun day to say the least, but it's done and now I can buy my tickets and go visit my dad in Spain next month.

Pokerwise the last two weeks have been really bad. I made a couple decent final tables, but overall the results were awful. I do feel like my game is fairly good, and have faith on doing good in the upcoming FTOPS. I sold 15K worth of action in 48 hours, and will be playing most events, including the 1-2K's, 200-300r, multi entry Main Event, etc. The fact that people I don't even know decides to invest in me gives me confidence, and hopefully their trust will be rewarded.

Because of all the different activities I was involved, my SNE pursuit suffered, and right now I only have 70K VPP's. It's not too bad if we take in consideration that I started January 12th, but I would feel better if my count was at 90-95K by now. My plan until spring break is to play exclusively on PokerStars during week days, with the sole exceptions of those FTOPS MTT's.

Regarding coaching, I had two really good weeks, not just because I keep getting hired for private sessions, but also because some of my permanent students are improving their results month after month. In the last week they have won the PS 10r, 101r1a, FTP 20r, UB 10 and 20K, and made countless final tables. I have the strong feeling that at least two of them will turn into very well known and respected players in the near future.

On Monday we had a special guest in the group session: Alex "AJKHoosier1" Kamberis joined us for almost two hours, and my conclusion after the session is simple: I could listen to him talk about poker for an entire week and never get tired of it. His thought process, explanations, analysis...everything was incredibly rich, well said and enriching. I will consider myself fortunate if one day I am half the player than he is.

I mentioned that I've been making my first series of training videos. As I type this lines, Jerry "herschelw" is putting them together and about to post them in the Pokerpwnage site. I am terrified, and deep inside I hope everybody rates those videos really bad, so he can't ask me for more :)

I think that's all for now. Thank you for reading, and my apologies if I am not giving updates more often. I will do my best in the future.

Take care everybody

Andres