In order for someone to make good contributions to your post they first need to understand your game. That is why it is very good if you continue with your OP thread, because people will put your play into context.

Many people just skim through the threads and make generic responses. They will try to put you down and force you to stick with the basics and recommend the most obvious play.

However, there are many great players here. When players like Spenda, meeloche, Xianti, Chardrian, Spoon and Nutsinho take their time to respond there is often gold to be found.

Increasing our poker knowledge is like digging for gold. We might look for months without finding anything- but sometimes we find a nugget here and there. One day we might find a massive gold ore and reach new levels of insights.

I do believe that refining our own poker strategies, without any input from others, is a very long endeavor. Critique, flaming and suggestions from others might help speed up our rate in which we learn.

But it is also vital that we have strict standards for what we decide to accept as good advice, and what we should disregard. You are God when it comes to creating your own poker system. Anything that you want to add, or deduct, from your system must be very well thought of. Every little change has enormous bi effects to the whole system.

Poker is a game of big egos- and few people will accept that they are no good. This leads to a situation here on FTR where everybody takes on the role as advisors. Some advice will piss us off. Often this is because people do not understand what you are trying to say, or that people have not read the thread thoroughly. Other times advice just suck on principle.

I read FTR for two years before I started playing poker and like you I learned a helluva lot from the veterans here. When I started posting I got mostly negative responses. This was not because people disagreed with me, but because I used common poker terms in a very personalized way.

If we can separate misunderstandings from disagreements we have come a long way. It is when we thoroughly understand the nature of disagreements that we can grasp the conflicting poker principles in play.

The day we stop searching for Gold is the day we stop finding it.