[SeanC]

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Being totally straight with you Sean, it comes across as pretty arrogant that you go straight in and post this in the HSNL forum. There seems to be one post a month here that starts the same way as yours, and they normally get berated for it. I'm suprised this post hasn't been moved yet. There are great thinkers & posters all over this site and you would probably get a much better response by posting in an appropriate forum.... like beginners or maybe midstakes.

This forum (HSNL) is - to use a fashionable word - very "polarised" and the content tends to be either amazingly good or atrociously appalling. And the best content tends to be very specific to very tough situations versus great players in online high stakes games, and as such the advice is actually sub-optimal or plain wrong if misapplied to other games.

Anyway.... apologies for the rant. It sounds like your taking the right approach.

The truth is that the state of poker books for NLHE isn't great and they can only take you so far. I would advise just reading the hell out of the mid-stakes forum for the next year or two. Seeing how different people think and approach the game is the best way to learn, and I honestly think this site is the greatest learning tool for poker ever. Signing up for one of the video content sites (cardrunners/stoxpoker etc) is also a good idea. Then maybe think about coaching.

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Ah, I understand how it looks...I guess I wasn't aware of the etiquette. I'm actually not too familiar with the various forums, but all my other posts have been in Beginners and Poker Theory. I just was having trouble getting my question answered. I have Stox and CR memberships and actually just got a reply from Bryce on Stox, which was cool of him. Sorry for the post here.

My issue with simply reading other players' posts--and I may be wrong--is that without a true understanding of the mathematical fundamentals of ranging and finding +EV lines, how can I evaluate people's opinions? How can I know who has and doesn't have that knowledge? I wouldn't really be interested in listening to those that don't. And for those that do have the knowledge, I value their opinions but without my own understanding of the math, the learning process takes much longer as I'm basically trying to extrapolate and deduce the cause (principles of why) from the effect (the action taken). Just learning the principles first is much faster. :P

Anyways, my apologies for the atrocious clutter post, haha. I figured I'd probably get flamed, but also may get some kind of answer. +EV post, haha.