"Poker Camp" - experiences/opinions?

It seems like there are a lot of these popping up -- WPT Boot Camp, WSOP Academy, etc. -- which are 2- or 3-day (or longer) sessions being taught by poker pros, and include workshops and tournaments. They're not cheap, but it seems like they could provide some valuable insight (and possibly networking?), unless they're geared toward absolute beginners.

Has anyone participated in one of these or heard anything about them? I'm considering taking part in one and wondering whether it would be worthwhile or a waste of money.

Heard of a danish one that is running again later this year. Sounded like it was real fun and good value. I have been thinking about going. This one has a small range of various classes, including an online MTT class. Besides, the fun of meeting fellow online pokerplayers for a weekend sounds like a laugh.

Navarro's seminar on tells seem worth while to serious player.

One of the WPT camps is coming to Cherokee Casino in Tulsa (closest to me), but it's $1700!! That's a lot of money to me, so I'll be skipping it, but at this point, I don't see what they could teach you that you couldn't learn through books, vids, places like cardschat.com, and experiance. Networking does seem like it would be the primary advantage, along with meeting some of the pro's.

sounds awesome roundcat. maye i will go with you. be nice to have a friend there. . let me know when you find out more. cost.. times.....etc

I attended a WPT Boot Camp at Foxwoods in early February. It was a great experience and made a signficant difference in my playing.

The lead instructors were T.J. Cloutier and Crispin Leyser.

The boot camp had a focus on tournament play. They now have another boot camp for cash games.

I had been playing for about four months, when I attended the camp.

The camp provided a complete approach to tournament play, filling in lots of holes in my knowledge. Some I knew about, and many I did not realize I had.

Now, when I bust out in a tournament, I know what kind of stupid move I did. The next challenge is to stop making stupid moves.

I finished in third place in the private tournament that was part of the camp. I won a WPT chip set.

I found the weekend to be lots of fun. It was really interesting to hear TJ tell his stories.

I paid a little less than $1500 for the camp. They had a discount program in effect when I made the reservation. I suspect they always have this program. Of course, there were the room costs.

Two weeks after I attended the boot camp I went to a touunament at the Borgata in AC. Applying what I learned, I got to the final table, in a 170 person field, and chopped 1-6 for an $1800 prize.

It was expensive. But if you can afford it, and your game needs tuning, it is a worth while experience.

The WPT boot camp is not for beginners. They do a little review of game basics during the first half hour, but after that you would lose much of the information if you had not played several thousand hands.

I had played about 7,000 hads when I attended.

That's planteriffic! J/K, sounds like you had a good time. Something way out of my price range though.