G
Gregstocke
Enthusiast
Silver Level
It's only through playing many hands of poker that anyone becomes any good at it. There's just some things a book can't teach. Like, when you start to "get the feel" for when you have a bluff opportunity, or you're just being baited by a trapper. Similarly, experience will teach you the difference between someone who's raising on a great run of cards, versus someone who's treating you like a scared-y cat. You'll go through it all. Going all-in-all-in, teaching yourself the probabilities of that maneuver on a crude level. You'll test what it's like to be a calling station. You'll try to be a bully. You'll try to be a trapper. You will seek to deceive your opponents, bluffing when you've taught them to fear the legitimacy of your raises, springing the nuts when you've taught them you're just a bluffer. You'll learn that raising is not always the answer for high paint, that, sometimes, you're running cold, they know it, and you're out of position. You'll learn that even the coveted AA can lead to ruin, when you've hit a bad-beat streak (yes, bad-beats can come in streaks). In summary, you can count odds until the cows come home, and it is useful, but, there are many aspects of play that cannot be so easily quantified, which belong only to experience.