Private Coaching For Online Poker Players: CPG Welcomes Coach Dmitry To The Team

Coming into poker in 2023 must feel worlds apart from two decades prior.

I was in high school when Moneymaker scooped the 2003 main event and ushered in the poker boom. Back then a newcomer could feel they were on even turf with their opponents. Everyone was trying something new simultaneously. The edges of the miniscule number of professionals around back then evaded the perceptions of recreational players.

However, it didn’t take long for astute minds to realize that a population of unstudied gamblers partaking in a zero-sum game (save for rake) left themselves ripe for exploitation. With obscure writings such as “Super System” and basic statistics, a novice could quickly become a crusher. Simply put, just folding a little bit preflop and making a pair of aces or kings on the flop would yield an astronomical return for a night out at the local casino.

But as the saying goes, “if it were that easy everyone would be doing it” and it seemed that everyone did. As a result, poker theory and strategy evolved exponentially. Equity calculators like poker stove allowed users to compare probabilities of entire ranges of hands, not just individual holdings. Hand tracking programs and HUDs gave online players precise reads on their opponents as well as powerful insights into the strategies they themselves deployed. Forums like twoplustwo propagated this knowledge to anyone incentivized to read it while sites like cardrunners charged fees to access cutting edge poker strategies.

Within a span of less than a decade, the scene changed dramatically.

Recreational gamblers were now aware that people played poker professionally and professional players dealt with the uneasy feeling that what had once been easy money now became something that required effort!

Fast forward to today, poker might seem even more intimidating to the novice.

Afterall, people now have access to solvers and databases of solves which reveal unexploitable Nash equilibrium strategies as fast as your internet connection allows. There are vloggers, streamers, and countless sites offering poker training. Even sitting down in a game at a casino places one at a table where every player seems to have some level of awareness that a newbie does not.

Given this reality, how does someone stepping into this game for the first time figure out what to do? One might even ponder if it’s even possible to turn a profit with this hobby. In short, the answer is yes. Take it from me, Dmitry Yankovsky, a professional poker player, that there is profit to be had in this game even for someone just getting their feet wet. I played live poker professionally before transitioning to the more competitive online environment after the 2020 lockdowns.

To give the tl:dr on the experience: Live poker is easy to beat. Online brings more difficulty, but CPG courses and coaching can catch anyone up to speed. Despite the wealth of information out there, despite solvers and “GTO,” and poker AI, this is still a people game. Humans still are predictable. Humans still make decisions based on emotions. Above all, humans will never come close to matching those fancy solver outputs that many erroneously try to memorize and mimic in hopes of beating the game.

So, for everyone out there reading this that feels unsure about playing poker profitably, for anyone feeling stuck, anyone who wants to realize their poker greatness at the casino or online, here’s my map for getting from where you are now to your truly great poker potential…

1. Create an online poker account (click here to get 3 free CPG courses in the process of doing so!). Even if your end goal is to crush live games, you’ll be able to get in more reps for cheap. A full-time poker player might see ~50,000 hands in a year. Someone playing online could do that in a month. Furthermore, the skill it takes to break even in an online $.25/.50 game is enough to be a small winner in a live $2/5 game.

2. Access CPG courses. The game starts with preflop, so Preflop Bootcamp is a must. This foundation will put you in profitable post-flop scenarios where you can beat up on all the fish using proven, data-backed strategies outlined in Fish In A Barrel and the Neutralizer Bundle.

3. Accelerate your journey and truly shine by getting private coaching from people with win-rates above yours!

Above all, private coaching is what separates crushers from mediocre winners, that is those who stumble into profits but remain blind to their leaks which prolong their downswings and hamper their upswings. I myself found success as a live poker professional, yet could not crack online poker until I sought CPG coaching. I thought I simply did not understand “GTO” enough to crush online, but despite the time I spent grinding the solver, I could not catch a break.

Finally, in the middle of a CPG podcast episode, I had my epiphany! It should have been clear as day from the get-go; attempting to play at Nash equilibrium is nothing more than a defensive effort that should only be deployed when one’s goal is to break even against computer perfect opponents. In my first coaching session with CPG coach Shu, I saw the potential in CPG’s data-driven approach. I realized that Shu, Brad, Jon and other CPG crushers tailored their strategies to real world opponents and their plentiful leaks, which the analysis of actual online hands revealed. Seemingly overnight, with the help of coaches, I went from being a slight winner to crushing 200NL 6max for over 10bb/100… a feat I had considered impossible before.

As I continue my poker journey in beating the higher stakes, I offer my coaching services to get you to your full poker potential. Before poker, I taught history and literacy. I use my educational background to build customized lesson plans that stretch your understanding and skill in a manageable and rewarding fashion. I rarely “give answers” as I rely on a Socratic approach that leads you to them through proper questioning.

I take time to review your play and thought process so you can approach novel situations with dependable heuristics. Above all, I care about you and your progress since it reflects the effort that I put into you. If you seriously want to accelerate your poker learning journey, reach out to me for a coaching session!

– C0ach Dmitry