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Message: [QUOTE="quick, post: 4388651, member: 133269"] A solid understanding of even just the basic math combined with good preflop hand selection helped me go from losing player to slightly break even to winning player. Of course the trick with the math and odds is that if we;re only considering our own odds for our own hand to improve or simply win we're missing the odds that our opponents are playing. We've got to concurrently be giving ourselves good odds while making the opponents pay for slightly worse odds for their hand. That's the hard part. A great concept to consider is how implied odds (which should be very carefully considered and are not an excuse to throw math odds out the window!) come into play. Of course implied odds to work correctly def requires an understanding of "feel" and "reads" of opponents combined with ability to read boards with some knowledge. A few examples that come to mind: - If an opponent bets and only gives us 2:1 to see the next card and we need 4:1 to correctly call based on math (say a strong draw) but we are confident enough players in the hand, based on observing their previous play, will also call...thus building the pot and giving us the odds on our 2:1 call once 2+ more players call the original raise. - If an opponent bets and gives us poor odds mathematically to continue but we have a good read on them and know they will often pay us off for stacks if we hit our strong draw (i.e. they're known for aggressively playing TPGK but don't fold much even when obvious draws complete) then we could justify implied odds even though pot odds are not correct. - We can also of course turn the tables as we should be doing and make sure we're giving worse but tempting odds for the opponents to call and chase. And if we get good reads on an opponent, we can charge more than we would for more conservative players and get a player who will chase their flush draws for example off our pot size bets and miss....and we've taken a nice pot :) - We can also use odds against our opponent by (and this is a concept I've only recently been putting into my online game) betting out our down strong draws because against some opponents it controls the pot in our favor and prevents them from re-raising us or setting the price for the next card and it also build a nice pot for us if we do think we're ahead of them at the turn or river. And in all these examples we can either over or under bet depending on the board texture and villain and manipulate the pot odds in our favor. All this aside, I believe others are spot on too in saying we could just use math and play solid tight poker but as we move up stakes that type of math only play can and will get exploited by better players who use the examples I made above to control the pot odds in their favor and outplay players who go "well I'm only getting 3:1 and I always need 5:1" when in some spots some villains will easily exploit this and C-bet you into oblivion. As Phil Helmuth says: tight is right. And as anyone here says when a specific hand is posted for feedback: it depends. And if you're playing $1/2 live casino poker...well tight is def right. [/QUOTE]

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