[quote = "Thunder"]Also, in one of my first posts, I mentioned how I don't explicitly use EV but make plays and bets based on my reads at the time (like an innate form of EV) yet I was chastised for doing so and told to dig out the EV calculator etc. [/quote]

Thunder, you were chastised for relying on reads and instinct when you had neither played enough hands nor understood enough about the fundamentals of the game for them to be of any value.

As you gain experience and knowledge, this changes. You see situations over and over again, and now you are able to develop "instinct", which is in fact a subconscious utilisation of your acquired knowledge. But it's unlikely to be enough - where the theory and the maths come in is here, when talking about and studying the game - when you can go through hands, concepts and statistics without any time pressures.

No-one told you to try and do complicated, mathematical EV calculations in the 30 seconds you have to make a bet - it's clearly going to be impossible. But once your knowledge is developed, you CAN stop for a sec, work out outs, check notes, consider reads, position etc, and work out a likely best course of action which will determine your next move. And just because you're not doing it on paper, with equations, doesn't mean you're not calculating EV in the necessary and practical way we all do when we play decent poker.

Quote Originally Posted by Thunder
without that thread, we wouldn't know so how do we learn?
Well, for a start, you DO have that thread, and many like it, and a large source of savvy people who will discuss these issues with you. But you don't need a thread on every aspect of poker - you've got to be able to apply your knowledge yourself, and often this will mean understanding the maths behind it.

So what I'm saying, as I've said before, is a) poker is a holistic game, and in every situation there will be a number of variables, some known, some not, which you have to consider to make the optimal move, and b) there are no short cuts - at best, you read wise advice and apply it to your game, but otherwise, it's down to you to follow the logic and sums and come to the right conclusion.

Fundamentally, we are all here to take each other's money, so while sources of info like FTR are brilliant, don't ever feel you are owed help and guidance.