Fundamental groups of elliptic fibrations and the invariance of the plurigenera for surfaces with odd first Betti number

We study the fundamental groups of elliptic fibrations and the close relationship between the Kodaira dimension of an elliptic surface with odd first Betti number and the geometry of its base orbifold. We show that the plurigenera and hence the Kodaira dimension of a complex surface with odd first Betti number are determined by the isomorphism type of the fundamental group.