Is Jamie Gold’s Training Seminar Worth It?

WSOP Main Event champ Jamie Gold is hosting a one-day intensive poker training camp at the Tropicana casino. The workshop promises to teach students secrets that can’t be found anywhere else. The cost of the workshop it $400.00. So, is it worth the money?

Can Jamie Gold help your poker game?

The answer to that depends upon what you expect to get out of it. If you have a small bankroll and think that this course is going to teach you how to win 12 million dollars, like Gold won in 2006, then it probably is not a good decision. No one day course, no matter who teaches it, can improve you so much that it will make you a winning large field tournament player.

If, on the other hand, you have a big bankroll, and look at the workshop as more of a lecture and information session, then it could be good. Jamie Gold has surely received his share of negative attention from the poker media, but one thing is certain: he has experience playing for huge sums of money and he has played against the best. This includes the WSOP Main Event and in the highest stakes cash games.

There are only a handful of people in the world that have played million dollar cash games with the likes of Phil Ivey and Doyle Brunson, and have also made it deep in the WSOP. Besides Peter Eastgate, Joe Hachem, Joe Cada, and Jonathan Duhamel there is no one else who has made it through multi-thousand player fields and also sat down in high stakes cash games. Hellmuth, Chan, Ferguson, and Brunson won the WSOP when it was a much smaller affair.

Of those players, only Hachem might be as good a raconteur. Gold certainly is a good talker. Part of the experience of the training seminar is going to hear his stories about playing in high-pressure spots. This is something that is exceptionally rare, and yet absolutely vital for the poker player to understand.

If you are someone who is going to recreationally play in $5k+ buy in events, or if you are simply a big time poker enthusiast with lots of disposable money, then it certainly wouldn’t hurt to take the course. From every interview Gold has ever given it is apparent that he gives it his all. Of course, if you are on a limited budget, then you might want to wait for the book version of the course to come out and save yourself several hundred dollars.