poker and mathematics

i have a good maths mind i believe, (helps studying it and all!)

but is it totally necessary to always having to think mathematically to succeed at poker?

if i make it clearer is it good enough to just have a rough figure in your head on the hand your playing, or is it better to do it a bit more precisely?

If you can do it precisely without confusing yourself thats obviously better. Usually a rough figure will do though. If a decision is close enough that you cant work out the numbers pretty quickly then it probably doesnt matter much which option you pick since the information you are basing your decision on probably isnt 100% reliable anyway.

ok, i tend to play poker as a release, something which is fun to do... i want to be able to think without boggling my mind every hand

^ that doesnt mean you can do it with no knowledge of the maths though.

Its good to go over hands when you arent playing for alot of reasons, but one of the things it will do is make you recognise coomon situations where you will know roughly the odds you need to do all sorts of fun things and wont need to work them out every time.

thats what i've been doing since i found FTR :P (thanks ftr).

Poker requires pretty much ABC math skills and nothing more, you need to be able to do some rough addition/multipication/division calculations in your head and thats pretty much about it,