Is poker math an over-rated skill?

Why is it that we always keep hearing about "certain big-name" is a great poker player because they have great math skills? Is math really that important to poker, more than player instincts? It’s been such a raging debate for years and years. Some think it is essential, and to some it’s just plain overrated.

I've been playing poker for a long, long time, and have moved up from .25/.50, 1/2, 2,4, and 3,6 games, and in my experience, I’ve found that math really helps. Like when figuring out the right odds to call and how bad of a dog you are percentage wise, and also knowing how much outs you have out of a 52-card deck, but these things you can just pull out from any poker book. You don’t even need to know deep math when you start. But when you start to move up, the level of competition rises, and you have to rise with it. You can’t show up to a gunfight with just a peashooter.

Think of math as another weapon you can use from your armory. If you know just the basics like pot odds, that’s cool, but why not train and study to add more such as probability, so you have more weapons in store when you need them?

I know that for many, even just calculating percentages and odds is impossible. We’re not all math geniuses, but the truth of the matter is you don’t have to be. You can know what percent of the time a flush draw will come in by the river, and know the pre-flop percentages of different hands just by reading book, watching videos and researching online. It’s Internet man, a lot of the math has been done and put all over the place in books and online.

Now if you have good math skills, but rely too much on it you’d be too predictable, someone will surely pick up on your play because math IS predictable. Use math to make decisions hand in hand with your instinct and style of play and the read that you get about players.  

Anything that gives you an edge in poker is worth studying. Never shut the doors on any skill you might come across with. Like I said, a good stock of skills will help you win, even against monster hands if you know what you’re doing.

If you learn enough math to improve your poker, you’ll know it’s good, especially when you use math to calculate your earnings after a long day’s grind. Not everyone needs math to be a great poker player, but you might be one that needs math to be great so why disregard it? If it can help, never turn it away.