Tommy Angelo joins Jared Tendler tonight on the Quad Jacks podcast. This comes at a great time because I'm faced with a coaching situation that's beyond my ability.

Some background: I saw a player post the following in the forums:

"I play cash games and I am - 27BB/100 after 60.000 hands. I study poker hard and I am not drunk when I play. This is the worst rate I have ever met. Probably I have a mental desease that I found out with poker. Any help?"

This inrigued me and I decided to check out his PTR:

http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/6641/ptrnewperson.jpg
(having problems posting it, so just click on link above for now)

I was really curious what it takes to achieve such a winrate and told the player I would check out his hand and offer some advice. I wanted to see if I could help him turn his game around with some coaching.

After checking out his hands, I decided three things:

1. He is playing too loosely.
2. He is not value betting his good hands.
3. He is bluffing too many rivers.

Some of these are techinical issues. To address point #1, I sent him an opening hand chart. Point #2 is much more difficult to address so I decided to wait. For point #4, I specifically told him to just never bluff on the river. Ever. I figured this would be enough to help REDUCE his losses (to think about winning at this point would be too ambitious).

After he played 1,000 hands, I got the following message on Skype:

Student: Sorry for the delay, but it was quite difficult to send you these hands, mainly the ones from Sunday. It was a disaster. On Sunday I lost 6 BI, because of bluffs on the river with air!!! I'm very disapointed. I have to try harder. Iknew that it was wrong, but I was doing it repeatedly....

I was speechless. In my mind, we identified a simple and obvious leak and then he went right back to doing it. Clearly, his issue isn't the techinical side of poker (although he's got major issues with his A-game as well, but that's not what this post is about). Bottom line: We identified a specific leak, I told him what the fix was, and he went right back to it.

I told him to take the day off and if he plays again, stop if he loses two BI's. Once again, I gave very specific instructions: Never bluff river with air.

So this morning, I look at the hands he sent me from yesterday's session:

Hand 1: http://weaktight.com/4427029
Hand 2: http://weaktight.com/4427031

Guess what? Bluffing river with air. I asked him about it:

Pawel: QJ ... you bluffed the river.
Student: the only one!!!
Pawel: doesn't matter
Pawel: why did you do it?
Student: That player was extremely bad. More than me!!!
Student: He fold before at any bet
Student: When I find a very loose and pasive palyer, i become more loose and more agresive, although I know that I have to becoem more tight

I then asked about the A6s hand:

Pawel: I just saw the A6s hand
Pawel: you said you only bluffed river once
Pawel: that's twice
Student: It wasn't totally air... it was nut flush draw. And against that opponent, he had lost many hands with A high

So my question for you guys is ... what's going on here? Is this someone who can become better and what will it take? At this point, I don't feel like I am able to offer him much help.