Poker Articles

Taylor "Green Plastic" Caby is an owner and instructor for CardRunners.com.

Many of you know I decided to take on a student and try to help them develop into a great poker player.  I wanted to take some time to explain my reasons for picking some students as finalists, the process for picking them, and my goals for the whole project.  I hope that after reading this article, people understand that this promotion was simply something nice I wanted to do for the community and not something I planned on being a very big deal.

Over the past few years, my success in poker has been fairly visible.  I have been playing (and winning) in some of the most watched cash games on the internet for quite some time.  For as long as I can remember, people have asked me about how I would play certain hands, or for advice on poker in general.  I've always helped as many people as I can, but I have never really had a formal agreement with anyone. The closest thing to a "student" that I have had has been my friend and eventual business partner, Andrew "muddywater" Wiggins, as with my help and the hardwork he himself put in, he literally went from being a losing player in low stakes cash games to a big winner in the mid to high stakes games. 

Lately there have been quite a few players asking me for personal private instruction, with many of them offering me some very lucrative deals.  Something doesn't feel quite right to me about accepting a lot of money for private instruction unless I am sure it will be a good deal for the student.  I decided the best way to do this would be to take on a student for free and see how they benefit from my instruction.

It was basically a spur of the moment decision to make a post on PocketFives about this contest.  I've always liked this forum, and I have a lot of respect for Adam, Cal, and Riley (and the rest of the P5's guys).  Maybe I was being naive, but I never imagined I would get about 800 "applications" for the position.  Bluff Magazine also contacted me and wanted to turn the progress of my student into a regular column in their magazine.  At that point, it occured to me that I had a tough task at hand, so I tried to find some criteria to pick a student.

I wanted to find someone that has had at least some success in poker.  It would feel great to take a player with little to no poker success and turn them into a great player, but that would be a very difficult task and wouldn't help me achieve my goal of trying to determine if lessons would be beneficial to a solid player wanting to take their game to the next level.  There were also a lot of applicants who told me that they really needed to improve their game to help their personal financial situation.  Again, it would be a great feeling to change someone's financial situation, but I would feel too much pressure to help them win if they HAD to win (note: you should never play poker if you HAVE to win). 

Other characteristics I wanted to avoid were people that had a very big propensity to tilt or that played out of their bankroll consistently.  These are leaks that can be avoided, and there is nothing I can tell a potential student about these issues that they don't already know.  I didn't want to have to worry about my student tilting away their bankroll or chasing losses at high stakes games; poker is hard enough when you avoid these leaks!

After taking all of these things into consideration, there were a few players that I had to choose from.  It was difficult, but I eventually chose Daut44.  He has had a fair amount of success at the 1/2 and 2/4 NL cash games, and he seems eager and ready to learn.  Over the next few months, I hope to help him build his bankroll and eventually learn to beat the 5/10 NL and higher cash games online.  We are going to track his progress on a special blog at CardRunners, so be sure to stay tuned for more news about that.  If this partership is successful, I may run the same promotion again in the future at some point or start to give private lessons on a more regular basis.  I would like to close by thanking everyone who applied; I am flattered that you were interested, and I wish you all the best of luck at the tables.


--Taylor Caby