The best part of that road trip is that he's calculating his odds including outs that he will bluff with.

I think that playing instinctively is a huge part of poker. However, even then you're playing the odds, but they are subjective odds rather than the objective ones we compute based on probability. You know which players you can bully and which ones will call you down. When you make an aggressive bet with nothing in your hand, you have internally calculated the odds that your opponent also has nothing and that he will fold to your aggressive bets. Coupling that with betting patterns (e.g., in tourneys, players often invite you to buy the pot by checking everything down) can be extremely effective.

If you read Theory of Poker closely, you'll see Sklansky talking about these subjective odds frequently. He says things like "if there's a 20% chance your opponent will fold..."

Where does this 20% chance come from? It's your instinct, something you develop from watching others play, and you should use that information + the mathematical odds to make the correct play. You don't use one or the other, you use BOTH.

Two nights ago, I ran over a $2-$4 limit table because I had reads on a couple of weak-tight players and there were about 4 loose-passive "see the flop" types with us. There were lots of limpers, so I was raising reasonable drawing hands in late position because the table was giving me odds to draw and I wanted to isolate the weak-tight guys. These guys would often fold on the river to a single bet, so I kept the pressure on and won several pots without showing down. One of the guys folded on the river to my $4 bet into a $40 pot. All I had was A high. On the next hand, when I raised from one off the button, he said "lol, this isn't a 2-4 table, it's a 4-8" and left. I ended up winning 37BB/100 hands (!) over two hours, mostly because I had a read on the table.

One other point I would make is that ring games are a lot different from tourneys. You might find yourself with a 35% chance at drawing the nut straight and call (but hopefully raise!) without odds in a tourney *even if you know you are behind* because the $ expected value of doing so is greater than the $ expected value if you fold, even though the EV with respect to tournament chips is negative. In a ring game, consistently doing something like that without odds is money out of your pocket, even if you win once in a while.

On this board, a lot of the hand histories are posted without comment with respect to the opponent's style of play. Most of the posts are simply the hand history with a question like "Did I play this correctly?" In such cases, how is one supposed to respond except by looking at the numbers?

(As an aside, I would add that one of the most analytical posters (Fnord) is about the only one I see adding things like "UTG+1 is LAgg." He might rub you the wrong way, but it's clear that he understands more than just the mathematics behind the game.)

Finally, I would say that if this site is to be useful to people trying to learn poker, it needs to include a mix of ideas about the numbers behind the game as well as the psychology of the game. Suggesting that you can get by without learning about one or the other is a disservice to FTR's readers, IMO.