Quote Originally Posted by Pelion

You cant seriously be suggesting that someone who has decided to put in the time and effort to find FTR because he has decided to really get good at this game will develop a slightly profitable low stakes game and then just stop improving because when he first started he was told not to put his stack in with TPTK. Unless we are talking about someone who is seriously stupid to the point of not having a chance at this game anyway, ANYONE will throw the starting hand chart away at some point once they get comfortable enough with the basics.

Im betting a huge portion of FTR started playing with a starting hand chart telling them what to raise and what was ok to call preflop, and telling them that 2 pair was an ok hand postflop. Im guessing that many of you printed off a pot odds chart.
Id be very suprised if even a small minority of players who have been playing a year or more havnt started throwing in the odd hand or two off the chart by now.
I think a starting hand chart, and a pot odds chart would help anybody sitting in their first poker game. I also think you need to give people WAY more credit if you think they will stick rigidly to the chart for the rest of their life just because someone showed it to them once.

You start with solid rules and then over time you begin to develop a feel for when it is necessary to bend the rules. AOKs rules are clearly intended as a foundation. Thats why they are in the begginner forum.
What I am suggesting is that you create a seperate problem when you start with a set of rules. As we know, most of these "rules" get thrown away when u get better at the game. When u condition your mind to follow a set of rules, it is hard to break those rules. That being said, it is more difficult for a player who started playing with a set of concrete rules to develop their game further than someone who was using analytical thinking and questioning things from the start. Why do i know this? I went through the period of trying to break away from the rules and think outside the box. It sucks. Bad. It costs money. It confuses you. But it needs to be done eventually. I would actually venture to say that the players who start with an understanding that the game is not as simple as ABC will go further, faster, and better.