Move up to the big games???

I've been debating a lot lately about playing high stakes games. I see a handful of online pros having $100,000+ months, and I think I have the potential to be there if I dedicated myself to beating high stakes games, instead of just grinding out smaller stakes games. I've really been debating getting a high stakes coach, and focusing on moving up to high stakes, rather than making money for a couple months. Getting a coach would help get me where I wanted to go a lot faster. I just haven't decided on whether or not I want to do this. I've been thinking of trying to get a successful high stakes player to coach me for a % of my profits. That's mutually beneficial, and I think coaches often want to see you succeed a lot more when they know what they make depends on what you make. It's tough to find someone willing to do this though. Most coaches would rather have variance free coaching rates, which is understandable. I'm going out to Vegas in a few weeks during the WSOP(World Series of Poker), so hopefully I'll have a chance to meet up with a few of the guys I'd consider hiring, and chat with them a bit in person.

I've been arguably the top player on the internet at my stakes for a while now, so some view my decision to stay at those stakes stupid, since I don't improve as much staying at the lower stakes, and my earn is essentially capped out to some degree. However I may give up profits for a couple months to play against much better players, and learn some new strategies/styles. So it's a tough decision for me, since I don't like the idea of potentially going a month or two with little to no profits, so we'll see.


On the other side of coaching, I did my first session with a new student today. I haven't been taking on many students since I'm trying to play a LOT this summer, and I've limited my students to players I know, or players who are already somewhat successful, since it was too much hassle dealing with players who expected to become superstars overnight with little to no effort. The student I took on was someone I've talked to a bit before, and has been asking me to coach him. He's already a good player, and seems like a good guy, so I decided to take him on. His best month so far has been $5-$6k. I talked to him today about his goals with poker, and what he wanted to achieve. I worked out some numbers with him, and I set his goal for the next 30 days to be $15,000. I think he can do this. That would be about 3 times his previous record in 1 month, so it'll be a challenge, but I really think he can do it. At the smaller stakes it's easy to tweak some things in a player's game, and increase their winrate relatively quickly, and have their earning potential skyrocket. I asked him to send me an e-mail each night so that I stay updated with his progress. I'll keep people posted on how he's doing if he's okay with it.