I'm sure this question has been asked before, but I'm giving it another shape.
Why do all these strong poker players want to teach other how to play through their videos?
Whoever has asked this before was probably bringing in this argument: by revealing profitable gameplay, there's more skill in the general player pool.
However, I have another: these strong players have such a good winrate (I'm mostly talking about HU's here) that if they keep playing they will surely climb up the stakes until they play at the highest levels, where they will probably be able to win ~$100K per month. So why would they even bother wasting their time in creating videos?
1. Money
2. Money
3. Money gets you Honey
4. Honey = Biatches
5. Money
I gotta say HUSNG.com is a site with very good coaches. You will also find training sites where the coaches / video producers are losing players. And then there are those who are just way overcharging.
But the main reason is money. Besides, 99% of the players who subscribe here are never gonna reach the level of the video producers. That is because most players, just "do as they are told" but have no idea why the should take a certain action. They just take it, because they were told to take it. Not knowing "why" you do something will prevent you from adjusting to situations that are not gonna be fixed with a starting hand chart like description.
Hi.
Only one player has made 100k average a month for a year (mrGR33N13).
Generally, those that do videos, find that making them doesn't hurt their game at all, and the challenge of creating quality content for the community actually improves their own game. You see guys like Chadders, he made his pack when he was in the $60s, and today he's profitable all the way until the $500 or even 1k level. Mersenneary made what were considered the best HUSNG vids at the time (and due to his teaching style of learning how to think about poker they're still considered some of the very best), and he really crushed it as he grew as a videomaker. He challenged himself as much as any other videomaker I've seen and it really paid off for him at the tables. Skates, Coffeeyay, HokieGreg and dozens of others also made far more after making videos than prior to it. The guys i named have probably had their videos seen by more people than almost every other videomaker on this site.
Also, the game is too complex to just teach a basic ABC strategy that anyone can follow blindly and crush. So when people make videos, they're not just "Educating the world." You see guys too lazy to apply concepts, too stubborn to change their decision making, too emotional to avoid tilting, too undisciplined to keep their bankroll in order and not dedicated enough to stick with it through thick and thin.
As the owner of this site, I believe videos can be extremely helpful to a motivated player. But the player has to be motivated, and so many just are not. There's a reason why the video packs don't cost ten thousand dollars. The video pack isn't going to talk to you every week and say "you haven't learned anything, your focus is bad, what's going on?" If you hire someone like Lotte Lenya or Chadders for a few months, it would cost $10k, and they're going to push you to make sure you're studying hard and are properly motivated and they will gear the lesson specifically to you. I'm not saying people should spend $10k in coaching, but there's a difference between hiring a good private coach and buying a video pack (not just the huge price difference).
Therefore, I really think the biggest benefactors to videos (and articles, and forum posts, etc.) is going to be the motivated players. And with or without study materials, the most motivated will always be the best players. Therefore, it's hard to make a case that videos are truly hurting the games in any real way. If you look at the highest stakes players, the common theme is motivation (volume), and many of them also did a lot of hard work studying together (with other good players).
Now, staking on the other hand, with hands on coaching, that's another story. We certainly run a staking program, as do around a dozen high stakes players officially (and dozens more stake a handful of players and coach them as well). Staking is a different story because with the added coaching and bankroll management, you're taking away some of the common pitfalls that players have. Whether it's terrible bankroll management, scared with playing their own money or not being motivated and held accountable for good volume, staking with coaching help is something that I do believe makes the games reasonably tougher. However, there's no way to stop staking, as all the best players are pretty much doing it and with an obvious monetary incentive and being free to do what they want... there's no real argument against staking (just like trying to tell a good player he should not play poker bc it makes it harder for other good players to win... pretty silly when it comes down to it).
There are plenty of people that try to think that poker should be a closed door, since they are profitable now and don't want others to be profitable. But I think they are short sighted and looking at reality and evidence incorrectly and just costing themselves money in the end. It works a little bit better when peers tell people not to make videos, because they can use the fallacy of "you're hurting us all!" when evidence shows the videomaker actually improves (not to mention gets paid). But when a fellow peer tells a player not to stake because it will hurt the games, usually the person he is talking to is far more likely to see it for the selfish poor advice that it is (believe it or not, there are several players that actually try to convince players that they shouldn't stake anyone).