I think feelings are often just laziness or the only way to explain some subconscious understanding of a decision/lack of articulation.I mean, I've watched a player play and he was about to make a light call and say something like "I just feel like he's bluffing."  When pressed, you eventually get "well he's not representing a hand."A pure math guy might say "the vast majority of his range is a bluff here" or even something as far as "he only shows up with a few hands here, he's bluffing around 90% of the time."Either way, they all arrived there with the same thought: The guy is bluffing a lot so they are calling.I think in very close spots math people can gain a solid edge.  You can also use a lot of math to gain additional insight (and edges) into general strategies and end game spots.But a player with basic math skills and good hand reading will be able to beat the highest husngs, at least potentially.

I also try to stay away from labels/styles of play.The goal should be to try to find the best solution to each decision, and everything throughout the entire game should theoretically be in play for changing/tweaking in order to put the best solution into practice.A lot of decisions won't require math.  Some will, but after using math on similar situations, you won't need to use it in future situations, you'll already have a sense that it's a clear decision for you.

It's not all that connected, no.For example, I'd often take a smart person with little math skills if they have 3k games of winning experience in these over a solid math guy with 500 games of winning experience.Basically, being in those situations constantly and really keeping an open mind towards improving your play should lead you to be plenty good at hand reading to get to the highest levels of the game with minimum math.But being able to solve any situation that you get into, that can be valuable.The biggest problem I see with the heavy math guys, and this is NOT universally true, is that they sometimes have a tendency to incorrectly label their opponent's actions/ranges and likewise their completely correct equation will arrive at the incorrect answer more frequently than if they accurately put their opponent on a range.

I'd say that I do use a little math but it's just simple stuff like looking at stats, I think you'll find that as you get better you'll be playing more by feel, but I always want it to be an educated feel.  The more experienced you get the better your instincts become and you also learn to trust them more, from trial and error.  I do think that your strategy overall has to have sound math behind it, once again though nothing overly complicated.  So in the end it's a combination you're after and keep in mind thhat the human brain is capable of doing some things pretty effortlessly that would be very difficult for quantitative models to perform, so you've got to train your brain but also learn to trust it more and more as it becomes better trained.The question about handreading skills does bring up a very interesting topic, which I'll call the balance of past tendencies versus present conditions.  So we've got a history on a player, how he's played past hands, then we have the present hand history where you see the hand emerging and his actions in it.  So to handread ideally you want to achieve the proper balance between the past and the present, I guess you could say there is math involved in each, to the extent that we're after probabilities here, I think most players put too much weight on the present and not enough on the past by the way, there's an opportunity to develop what I'd call your intuitive math skills, we won't be breaking out any formulas here at the table, you can get a good sense of things here though.  So perhaps it's a matter of blending math and non math skills here that is at the forefront, there still will be some mechanical stuff at times but I think the more experience you get the less you need to rely on it.  

I am not good at math at all and even struggle with simple mental math but seem to do ok so far. I think because of poker experience in the past 3-4 years I kinda know what's profitable in most situations even though I don't know the numbers or math behind my decisions. I think this will have me struggle once I try playing good thinking players though where edges are smaller. It also makes it hard for me to solve things on my own, for example if I have two profitable options such as a flat call, or a shove it's hard for me to figure out which option is more profitable than the other.

Did you say Newfies aren't good at math?  Well it's not a lot different then countin cod as it comes into the boat, or countin the empties of Black Horse to see how much ya drank, never mind who cares how much ya drank b'y just crack us open a nutther one and get back to fiddlin :)Sorry man I couldn't help myself there LOL.