If you’ve played more than 400,000 hands in this game, then you’ve probably considered, at one time, subscribing to an online poker training site, or getting a coach.

There’s big money in poker, and a lot of people are more than willing to give up large amounts of cash to learn secrets from professional coaches.

But sometimes, those secrets aren’t so profitable. And those supposed elite players are just scam artists.

Take Jason Ho, who on the surface, seemed to be a competent player. He had his own Web site and was promoting his services as a instructor, claiming to have earned more than $1 million in 2008 in cash games. He was also one of the coaches at StoxPoker, a respected online poker training site that specializes in low- to mid-level stakes games.

But, late last month, people started speaking up on the StoxPoker forums, saying Ho’s lessons had a far from positive effect on their games.

Post after post revealed negative experiences with Ho, including a few where Ho convinced players to join him in Macau for private lessons, charging them a $7,000 fee while providing less than seven hours of coaching. Another one of his students claimed Ho sold him a $2,000 poker guide resulting in that player losing $5,000 over 400,000 hands.

After the complaints, StoxPoker recently announced Ho is no longer with the training site, and says it won’t reimburse or take responsibility for Ho’s actions, shifting blame to his students.

The poker site is right, to a degree. Most of Ho’s biggest rip-offs weren’t done through the site, he did most of his scamming through his private lessons. And his story should forever remain as a cautionary tale to anyone considering a poker coach.

But StoxPoker perpetuated Ho’s reputation and should, at least, recognize its influence on poker players. The people who got duped into paying Ho thousands of dollars were mostly StoxPoker subscribers — and they got screwed because the site didn’t properly research Ho before making him one of its coaches.

The lesson here is: Be careful out there. There’s people in poker who want to take your money, both on and off the table.