Thats not entirely true. There are many situations where, due to pot odds and bet sizes etc, you end up committed to a hand.

…..committed/

Foucault said

If you’re getting 4:1 on the river but can only beat a bluff, you are only committed if you think your opponent will bluff >20% of the time. Plenty of people just shrug and say “Welp, 4:1, I’m committed” or “I’ve got half my stack in there, I’m committed”, which is not correct. “Committed” just means that calling is +EV, but people act like it’s some weird obligation to call in -EV spots.

Ah I think I have been one of those people that has felt an obligation. I worry about table image so much that I feel if I fold in certain spots then my image will be trash. I think like MovieFX said I need to find more discipline in those spots.

Foucault said

JoStylin said

I worry about table image so much that I feel if I fold in certain spots then my image will be trash. 

What does that even mean? You should basically never do something for the purpose of cultivating a particular image. Just make good plays and then deal with whatever image you have as a result of that. In general image just isn’t nearly as important as most people make it out to be. Mostly your opponents are just playing their cards, they aren’t thinking that much about you one way or the other.

lol when you said “what does that even mean” I assume that is rhetorical? When you say you should never do something for the purpose of cultivating a particular image I am a bit shocked. Several of the greatest players of all time do exactly this. An example is Mike Caro who sits at every table and plays like a maniac for the first several rounds and then tightens up in order to get more action from his lousy table image.

Now its certainly true that on a $3.30 pokerstars tournament, most people will not give a toss about this stuff but I do not believe I should ignore it because the players are level 1. 

Overall you can find articles and books galore that discuss table image and I am a little stunned at your reply.

Foucault said
I meant what specifically does it mean for your image to be “trash”? What kind of image is a “trash” image and why is it bad?

I would not recommend Mike Caro as a source for poker strategy, outside of stuff related to physical tells. I’m aware that there is a lot of talk about the importance of image but from what I’ve seen it’s pretty much all bunk. There is a LOT of bad poker advice floating around out there, and a lot of it is coming from people with name recognition. There are a lot of people who were big winners in poker 10+, or even 5+, years ago who are not remotely competitive in tough games today and are really not good sources of poker strategy.

Virtually every time I’ve seen someone on these forums invoke the idea of doing or not doing something because of image considerations, that person would be much better off just forgetting about image entirely than using it in the way that they’re using it.

More on this: …..your-image

Thanks thats a very nice article. It gets frustrating sometimes because like you say, there is so much poker advice available now that it is hard to find the good stuff.