We were in Las Vegas last week and stopped by our favorite blogger Matt Stout's house to marked card tricks check out his new digs.

He recently bought Paul Wasicka's house in Spanish Trail and after seeing it we have to say, we're a little big jealous. Check out the video and tell us what you think of the crib in the comments below.

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If you follow high-stakes online poker you’re no doubt familiar with Viktor "Isildur1” Blom, Patrik Antonius and Phil Ivey.

You may even know that Ivey’s new account on Full Tilt is "Polarizing” or that Antonius has returned to his old "FinddaGrind" alias.

Over the last couple years cheat poker, however, the next wave of online poker players has encroached upon the high-stakes scene.

It can be hard for even the most devoted online poker fan to keep track of the new handles so here’s a quick guide to the latest movers and shakers from the last year.

Some of these players are still unidentified so feel free to share your thoughts about who the accounts belong to in the comments below.

All profit numbers are from highstakesdb.com:

Ragen70

Real Name: Niklas Heinecker

Online profit this year: $3.8 million

Biggest live tournament score: $4.4 million

Nationality: German

Current residence: Hamburg, Germany

Bio: What a year for Niklas Heinecker. Not only is he one of the biggest online winners but he also took down this year’s inaugural GuangDong Asia Millions for $4.4 million.

Heinecker has actually been around poker for years but 2013 has really proved to be his breakout trick cards.

He travels the international circuit with fellow Germans Igor Kurganov, Tobias Reinkemeier, Fabian Quoss and Phillip Gruissem.

Cottonseed1

Real Name: Kyle Hendon

Online profit this year: $3.1 million mid-2013 (opted out of tracking)

Biggest tournament score: n/a

Nationality: American

Current residence: Mexico

Bio: Despite having played since the mid-2000s, Kyle "Cottonseed1” Hendon has always been well under the radar.

2013 may be the year that all changes for Hendon as he’s absolutely crushing the high-stakes games with $3.1 million in profit on Full Tilt Poker.

Hendon has been particularly dangerous in the big $2k/$4k FLO8 games that have been running.

Interestingly Hendon is one of the few players who has opted out of having his long-term results displayed so his exact profit is unknown.

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How to Host the Perfect Poker Home Game is a 13-part series on how to run the superlative poker night for all your friends and coworkers.

We’ll cover everything from what game of poker is easiest to play, what hand beats what and even what drinks and food to serve. Follow this guide and people will be reserving their seat at poker lenses your table weeks in advance.

For our seventh article we’re going to take a look who you actually want to invite to your game and what you can expect from each demographic.

These are a few of the basic groups that you can choose, or choose not, to invite to your home game.

Best Buds

This is your bread and butter. You want to invite your closest friends because you know they are trustworthy and good people to be around.

You can call them up on short notice and fill out your game if you need.

Pros

• It’s way better bluffing someone you’ve known for years
• Even if they dominate you at the table you may get a free drink out of it later
• Ability to taunt your friends for years to come

Cons

• They’re probably going to borrow money
• They may not leave
• They’re pretty damn offensive

  Co-Workers

  Co-workers are a great source for fodder at the poker table because you know they make money!

  Putting the word out in an office is a good way to build your game quickly.

  Pros

  • You know where your opponents work so collecting is easy
  • Poker can be a bonding experience
  • You’ll all be equally tired at work the next day

  Cons

  • Bluffing your superior out of a $100 pot could make things interesting the next day
  • Things get awkward when crazy Phil from accounting suggests everyone put their next paycheck on the line
  • Bill Lumbergh keeps reminding you about your TPS reports

  Members of the Opposite Sex

  This is a tricky one. If it’s an all-guys game it sounds great to get a couple good looking women in on the game. The thing is it can change the dynamic considerably.

  Remember you’re not going to look very attractive to a member of the opposite sex if you bluff them out of a $100 pot and dive onto the table to perform a chip backstroke.

  Conversely ladies’ poker nights work very well and sometimes women feel more comfortable just playing with other females. Proceed with caution.

  Pros

  • Game tends to be more civil
  • Your home game could conceivably double in size
  • The game is usually more relaxed and fun

  Cons

  • Game tends to be more civil luminous contact lenses
    
  • Sleeping on the couch for check-raising your wife/significant other sucks
  • If you’re a guy, losing a massive pot to a girl who had "double kings” might hurt your ego
  • In the poker game of life, women are the rake

  • Professional Poker Players

    Poker pros are a long shot, of course, and will arguably destroy the game for everyone else.

    On the plus side you have a shot at getting your game televised!

    Pros

    • Good story to tell all your friends

    Cons

    • You will lose all your money
    • Several pros keep nagging you for a buffet comp
    • Phil Hellmuth keeps referring to you as an "idiot from Northern Europe”
    • They’ll convince you to "play with the pros” then simply take all the money on the table and wait for the DOJ to come for it
    
    

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The rumor mills are already grinding away after Doyle Brunson met with Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps recently.

Phelps was in Las Vegas with some of his friends over the weekend. He ended up having dinner Saturday night with Doyle Brunson, and several other pro poker players, which started buzz that perhaps Phelps would be joining the Doyles Room online marked cards poker site.

Brunson blogged about the meeting on Sunday, but made no mention of any business talk.

"What a nice kid! He had a bunch of his friends from home with him and they were the guests of the Palms Hotel and Casino," Brunson wrote. "I got a call that he was an avid poker fan and wanted to meet me, Todd, and Hoyt Corkins.Jennifer Harman

Doyle Brunsonmet with Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps recently.

Phelps was in Las Vegas with some of his friends over the weekend. He ended up having dinner Saturday night withDoyle Brunson, and several other pro poker players, which started buzz that perhaps Phelps would be joining theDoyles Roomonline poker site.

Brunson blogged about the meeting on Sunday, but made no mention of any business talk.

"What a nice kid! He had a bunch of his friends from home with him and they were the guests of the Palms Hotel and Casino," Brunson wrote. "I got a call that he was an avid poker fan and wanted to meet me, Todd, andHoyt Corkins.Jennifer Harman and her husband Marco were also there."

Brunson brought along some copies of Super/System 1 and 2 for Phelps and his friends, and he spent some time answering all kinds of infrared marked cards poker questions from the group.

"Michael said all he wanted to do in life was to eat, swim and play poker," Brunson wrote.That's no surprise after Phelps' performance at the Beijing Olympics this summer. After taking gold in all eight of the swimming events he competed in, news came out about the amount of calories Phelps must consume each day to keep up with his activity level and about his love of poker.

He became a regular at a Windsor casino just across the border in Canada from where he was training in Michigan, plus he's a regular player online too.

It's not a huge stretch of the imagination to put Phelps, who has solidified his place as an Olympic legend, at the virtual tables on the site owned by one of poker's biggest legends.

Phelps is also being courted by other poker industry entities. He was invited to play in the Asian Poker Tour event in Macau recently, and Betfair Pokerhas also extended an invite to buy him into the 2008World Series of Poker Europe Main Event.

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The main event of the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour may have been in the spotlight during the stop in Prague, but one of the side events turned out to be the highlight for a couple of RedKings Poker pros.

Ramzi Jelassi and Jonas Molander, both recently signed as pros at RedKings Poker, made the final table of the €2,000 side event. The two Swedish pros were both in contention, but it was Jelassi who picked up the win.

Both players were still in it when it was down to five, but Jelassi pulled ahead of the pack after infrared contact lenses taking down a decisive pot.

Jelassi reraised all-in with pocket fives, and the chip leader, who'd been stealing pots all night, called him with pocket kings. The board came A-7-2 with all spades.

Jelassi had the five of spades but was still trailing. The turn brought the king of spades to fill in Jelassi's flush, and when the river brought an eight, Jelassi had the hand and the chip lead.

[[PokerRoom:Logo:red-kings-poker:left]]

Molander ended up out in fourth place, and it came down to Jelassi versus a Norwegian opponent in heads-up play.

On the final hand, Jelassi called a bluff with A-T on a nine-high board, and his opponent had jack-high. Jelassi picks up €129,000 for the win marked cards, which is his biggest live cash so far.

"It feels really good to nail a victory after many good finishes but no first place for a long time," Jelassi said. "It was really fun to have Jonas on the final table as well and also show our new sponsor, RedKings, that we can play the game."Jelassi has several cashes in events across Europe going back to 2005. The only other wins on his resume are a €1,000 No-Limit Hold'em World Heads-Up Poker Championships in Barcelona in 2006 and a €200 Super Satellite to the main event of the 2007 Paddy Power Irish Open in Dublin.

Molander also has several cashes in European events dating back to 2005. He has a win in a Bellagio Cup III event in 2007 and a win in the Helsinki Freezeout main event in 2005.

"We are of course very happy to have both guys on this final table and hopefully this is just the beginning for our two Swedish 'Kings,'" says RedKings Live Events Manager Jerry Land.

If you'd like to check out where Jelassi and Molander play online and perhaps join them at the virtual felt, head to RedKings Poker.

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Former Irish Open winner Marty Smyth has agreed to donate all his winnings in the 2010 WSOP Tournament of Champions to charity if he qualifies.

Twenty of the 27 spots at the 2010 event are voted in by the fans and Smyth hopes to get enough votes to be one of them.

Smyth specifically pledged marked cards everything he makes in the $1 million freeroll to the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children and Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Dublin.

His sponsor, BoylePoker.com, is behind the move and launched an online campaign yesterday called, "Vote for Marty", which supports his bid for entry.

"Not only has Marty won a WSOP world championship event, he's won the World Open, Irish Open and Poker Million," said Paul Spillane, head of poker at BoylePoker.com.

"Surely that's the pedigree of a true champ and his generous gesture of donating any prize money he might win to children's charities in Ireland, should see the whole country swing behind him. It's a no-lose situation for the children's hospitals so get voting now people!"

The winner of the 2010 WSOP Tournament of Champions will receive $500,000, the runner-up gets $250,000, third place earns $100,000 and the fourth through ninth place finishers will earn $25,000 each.

At the time this article was published the "Vote for Marty" Facebook page had over 600 members.

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American poker pro Faraz Jaka has been homeless for the last two years but after playing WPT Montreal he thinks he’s found the perfect place to settle down.

Jaka has earned millions of dollars playing poker both online and live and began traveling abroad full-time following the US Department of Justice’s crackdown on online poker in 2011.

Since then he’s come to appreciate European culture and the poker scene outside of North America.

But it was a recent trip to Canada that made him think about setting up a home base.

PokerListings.com caught Jaka at WPT Prague and he told us about life as a traveling road gambler.

PokerListings.com: Today is the first day of the Bellagio Five Diamond, but you are here in Prague. Why?

Faraz Jaka: I really enjoy playing in Europe these days. I started playing in Europe about five years ago half time, and now I play here almost full time.

I love travelling, and I like playing card cheating tournaments, so I enjoy using the time in between events to travel around in Europe.

And it’s also because of the tournaments. There is just more value in the tournaments over here, and blacking out the US from online poker killed a lot of the live action as well.

PL: Most of your Hendon Mob entries of 2012 are European, indeed. Some of them even from smaller events like the ones in Dublin.

FJ: Yes. What I like to do is, I like to go all out or nothing. So, if I decide to go to an event, I’d rather play all the tournaments. It gives you an advantage because you learn about the players. If you just come and go, you miss the chance to take advantage of that.

Of course, I’d like to get that advantage over American players.

Another thing I really like about Europe is where the casinos are situated. In America, the casinos are always in the middle of nowhere, because they are afraid that they would attract drugs and prostitution and crime and so on.

In Europe on the other hand, the casinos are always right in the middle of the city, and the authorities try to regulate everything, which is easier, if the casinos are closer.

I’d love to play an event bang in the middle of Chicago or right in the middle of New York, but that’s just not happening, you know.

PL: If you say you stay here full time now, have you found yourself a place to stay?

FJ: I’ve been homeless for two years. I kind of have a base in Gdansk, Poland, but that doesn’t mean I go there that often.

PL: In Poland? Not the typical first pick for an American in Europe.

FJ: I just love to explore, and I have a buddy who lives there, so I went to visit him, and it’s a really cool city.

PL: Any favorite place in Europe?

FJ: Zürich, maybe. I had a blast when I went there.

But recently I went to WPT Montreal, and I didn’t really know a lot about it beforehand. When I got there, I really fell in love with the place, and I got to know a lot of the locals. So now I’m trying to get back there.PL: So where are you going to settle down?

FJ: I would generally prefer Europe, because of the better cultural experience, but it’s kind of hard to play online poker on the European schedule. Whereas in Montreal, you feel a lot like being in Europe, but you are in a better time zone when it comes to online poker marked cards.

Also, it’s one and a half hours away from Chicago, where I have some business to do on a regular basis, so Montreal is kind of the perfect mix for me.

PL: What does a homeless guy like you do when you want to play online?

FJ: It’s not a big problem, really. You can play while you’re on the road, only that there are some exceptions. Not only the States, but of course you can’t play in Italy or in France and some other places where only locals can play.

I don’t play online that much, though, mainly the big Sunday tournaments or big series events like the SCOOP or the FTOPS. I try to never miss the Sunday, but usually, I don’t play more often than one more week day.

When SCOOP or FTOPS are on, I might play the whole week, though.

PL: You are more of a tournament than a cash game player, right?

FJ: Yes. I started out with cash games about seven years ago, but for the last five years it’s been almost exclusively tournaments.

PL: Have you heard about what happened to Theo Jörgensen yesterday?

FJ: No.

PL: People broke into his house, robbed him, and then shot him in the leg because they weren’t happy about how little money they found.FJ: Really wow. I did not know that.

PL: Is playing poker a dangerous profession?

FJ: I hate hearing stories like that. I try to keep my mind off things like this, but the truth of the matter is you are a huge target as a player because the amount of money you’re making is right there on the internet, but of course your expenses aren’t.

And on top of that, there really are sketchy people in this business. So you have to be very careful about what you’re doing. You have to be smart and research the area you’re in.

For example, I hear a lot of people asking "what hotel are you staying in” or "in which area is your apartment”. I don’t answer that. Many players do, but I don’t. This information makes it easier for something to happen like what happened to Theo.

It’s a measure of protection. It’s part of the "being smart”, that you stay aware of what can be exploited.

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Poker is a unique game and the best players use a combination of math, skill and observation to beat it.

It takes a brilliant mind to understand and win at poker - and an even more brilliant one to invent the strategy basics that are now commonplace.

These geniuses do their best marked cards to solve the game as it’s played at the time.

But the game of poker has evolved a lot over the last decade, and will continue to. What might have worked 10 years ago canseem silly now. And winning strategies today might not be effective at all 10 years from now.

Below are a few of those strategies - endorsed by some of the most famous names in the game, no less - that may have worked in the past but have passed their prime.

1. Reraise with Small Pairs Before the Flop in Limit Hold’em

The Author: Phil Hellmuth

The Book: Play Poker Like the Pros

The Advice: When the pot is raised to you in Limit Hold’em and you hold a small pair, you’re better to make it three-bets rather than call the original raise. You’re then meant to "represent whatever hits the flop.”

Why it’s bad: The problem with this advice is that he’s writing a book for beginners, and beginners are going to play in small-stakes games. People in small stakes games play tons of hands.

You’re not going to be able to represent anything on the flop because people are just playing their hands. They don’t care that you made it three-bets to go. They care that they flopped top pair, and they aren’t going to fold.

You end up just putting more bets into the pot without ever being able to get them back unless you flop a set.

The better approach: In Limit Hold’em, especially in low-stakes Limit Hold’em, you should just call because you’re more likely to get callers behind you. Play the hand to flop a set and if you don’t, fold.

2. The Fourth Raise Means Aces

The Author: Phil Gordon

The Book: Little Green Book

The Advice: "The fourth raise is always aces."

Why it’s bad: It’s not so much "bad” as it is dated and wrong.

The top players today are four-betting so much more than aces it’s incredible.

Take a look at Shaun Deeb’s bustout hand from the 2011 Main Event, for just one example.

No longer is even the 5th or 6th bet guaranteed to be aces.

The better approach: Treat all marked cards contact lenses players individually.

For some players the fourth bet might always mean aces, but other players might still have any two.

3. If You’re Playing Small Connected Cards, They Don’t Need to be Suited

The Author: TJ Cloutier

The Book: Championship No-Limit and Pot-Limit Hold’em

The Advice: Small connectors don’t need to be suited because in multi-way pots there’s a high likelihood someone has higher cards of your suit. 

Cloutier says that the suit causes more harm than good when you make a flush and lose to a bigger flush.

Why it’s bad: There’s literally no way that unsuited cards would ever be better than suited cards.

The notion that the suit does more harm than good is ridiculous.

Yes, occasionally you’re going to make a flush and it’s going to be second best. But also occasionally you’re going to be drawing to a straight and backdoor the flush.

The better approach: Being suited gives you more ways to win. It’s as simple as that.

4. Raise for Information

The Author: David Sklansky

The Book: Theory of Poker

The Advice: You sometimes want to raise to find out where you’re at in a hand.

Why it’s bad: It’s bad because the information you get is often not very helpful.

E.g. You raise and your opponent folds. This is bad. Chances are he folded a bluff and you probably would have preferred he kept trying to bluff you.

E.g. You raise and he calls. How much does that really tell you? 

He could have a draw, he could have a hand he's slow playing, he could have you beat, he could not have you beat.

If he re-raises, he could have you beat. He could also be playing a big draw fast or a worse hand fast.

The better approach: There are ways to define a hand, but generally raising isn’t a very good one.

Pay attention to your opponents and their previous play will give you a better idea as to what they have.

Actively try and put your opponent on a range and with every new bit of information you’ll get closer to his hand.

5. Vary Your Opening Amount

The Author: Dan Harrington

The Book: Harrington On Hold’em 1

The Advice: In a tournament you should vary your opening size from 2x to 4x randomly to make it difficult for your opponents to not get a read on you.

Why it’s bad: The only reason you need to vary your bet sizing randomly is if you’re regularly raising different amounts.

If you’re raising the exact same size every single time it’s not like your opponents will pick up any tells on you because your bet is always the same.

The better approach: If you’re playing in a tournament there’s really no reason to raise 4x the big blind -- ever.

Keep your standard 2.25x to 2.5x raise and stick with it. It risks less chips and is just as effective.

Raising to 4x just needlessly risks chips.

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Reading through the vast piles of poker literature out there, you'll occasionally encounter the notion of "control."

Usually it refers to situations where a player, by virtue of a combination of skill on his own part, a lack of it among his opponents and a dram or two of luck, manages to dominate a table.

He or she pushes people out of pots with well-timed bluffs, draws them in when holding the nuts and acts pretty much like a director on a movie set marked cards.

Most discussions focus on how to establish this enviable position and how to maximize wins when it occurs. Most of the advice is pretty straightforward and typically turns on the use of selective aggression as a potent weapon.

I have no problem with this analysis. But I do have some things to tell you about the psychological issues that lurk behind the strategy. And as usual, when we probe the psychological we find solid poker principles.

Control is, indeed, an intriguing concept. It looms significantly over our everyday lives, particularly when we contemplate the degree to which we have (or don't have) control over events.

If we're the boss, we have control over our employees. If we're the underlings on the production line, we don't have a lot of it.

In some relationships all the control and power resides in one partner. In others it gets shared. Often money supports control. Money is power, power grants control, control garners money.In poker it's particularly messy. We can control the decisions but not the outcomes.

Generally, it feels good to have control over the events in our lives. It is satisfying to be the master of one's fate, the captain of one's personal ship. It also feels distinctly unpleasant when the tide is turned, when we sense that we have little or no control over things.

But the notion of control is, in reality, a lot more complex and a lot more interesting. And one reason, as we'll see, is that we often don't know where the real control, the real power, lies.

Here are a couple of questions I'd like you to ask yourself. If you don't like answering them from a personal point of view, that's okay. Just think of them in terms of how you've seen others act in a poker game.

Question 1: Have you ever changed seats because you just can't seem to catch a card?

Question 2: Have you ever groaned in despair when the guy who moved into the seat you abandoned got hit in the head with the deck?

Question 3: Have you ever asked for a new setup?

Question 4: Have you ever thought that a particular dealer was "lucky" or "unlucky" for you?

Question 5: Have you ever returned quickly to a table because your "lucky" dealer sat down, or refused to play for a full shift because the one who never deals you a winner just sat in the box?

Question 6: Do you have a "lucky" charm or "lucky" hand or "lucky" seat?

If recognizing yourself in any of these makes you feel a tad uncomfortable marked cards contact lenses, that's okay; a lot of regulars do these things on a semi-regular basis. They are "magical" gestures that give them a vague sense that they are, in fact, exerting some measure of control.

But, of course, all is illusion. New decks aren't going to be different than old ones, and dealers aren't lucky - they just distribute cards from a shuffled deck.If you really think that you would have got those big hands had you not changed seats, you just don't grasp the random nature of the game (hint: you would have played the hands differently, the dealer would have begun shuffling a few milliseconds earlier or later; nothing would have been the same).

So why engage in these empty rituals? Well, for one thing, it turns out to be tough to determine just when we do and do not have control over a situation.

And, for another, having or not having control turns out to be a lot less important than whether we believe we do.

There's a concept called "locus of control." It's a personality dimension that runs from an "internal" pole to an "external."

People at the "external" extreme believe the factors that control their lives are located in the external world, the world outside themselves. Those who lie at the other end believe that control comes from within; it is "internal."

High internalizers tend to take responsibility for their actions, accepting the blame for those that go awry and taking credit for those that go well. High externalizers tend to blame outside forces for the unhappy events in their lives and credit luck or circumstance for the good.

Perhaps not surprisingly, high internalizers tend to be more successful in life. They make more money, win more contests, live longer, have lower incidences of depression, alcoholism, drug abuse. You name it, they're better off than their externalizing cousins.This may seem straightforward but it's not because, as noted, real control takes a back seat to belief.

In studies of people playing fair, competitive games, "externalizers" who won because they made the right decisions often thought that they just got lucky. When "internalizers" won such games they tended to take credit for their play.

And here's the fun part: In studies where the games were fixed so that the players' decisions had little to do with the outcome, the same patterns appeared.

Whether they won or lost, whether the games were honest or rigged, internalizers typically thought that it was their decisions and choices that determined the outcomes.

Externalizers showed the opposite tendency, whether they won or lost or whether the games were fixed or honest. When control was controlled, belief crushed reality.

This is powerful stuff, and the lesson for poker should be obvious. If you take responsibility for the choices you make, accept the blame for poor decisions and the credit for the right ones, you're on your way toward becoming a solid internalizer.

And remember, they do better at just about everything - no matter where the real control lies.

And, finally, those questions? Well, internalizers practically never answer "yes" to any of them.

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I love titles that look like silly statements. Problems handling winning? Who would ever have that?

Isn't it like wondering whether one could deal with falling in love, hitting the lottery, finding a diamond under a bush on the lawn? How can there be problems here?

I got to thinking about this when a reader ("Andrew1") commented on my earlier article "Monsters Under the Bed." He wondered why no one seemed to worry about what they're doing when they're "running good."

Andrew1's point is well taken, and it shows that that first article was incomplete. I said that winning wasn't as interesting as losing because there was less variability among winners, that most of us act pretty much the same way when things are going good.

I was wrong. I am beginning to sense that there actually is a good deal of variability in how poker players react when they are winning marked cards.

And, as is so often the case, a topic that seemed so simple isn't.

In fact, the following discussion is still an oversimplification. A thorough analysis will need to separate "short-range" winning, which essentially covers everything from a single session to a couple of weeks running good, from "long-range" winning, which covers longer timeframes.

I'm focusing only on the former here.

Any good psychologist can tell you that there are problems with winning, with success, in fact with virtually all the good things that happen to people in life.

You don't even need a psychologist, just a writer of children's tales. All those wonderful stories about genies or mystical frogs who grant you three wishes and then cut your heart out while bestowing them were composed precisely because there is a deep truth here.

Success isn't always the joyous event it looks like it ought to be. There's a phenomenon called miswanting. It's an odd term coined by Dan Gilbert at Harvard.

It means pretty much what it implies: when people get what they want, they turn out not to like it nearly as much as they thought they would.

At a poker table the "want" is money - winning it and all the things that accompany it.

3. Leave if you've lost the urge to continue to play. The "post-rush letdown" is real. You feel oddly drained, tired and happy, and would like to just go sit in a comfy chair and relax.

You don't have to, of course, but if this feeling does sneak up on you, pay attention because continuing to play under these conditions is almost always a bad idea.

4. Never forget: the game will return to "normal." One of the difficulties of dealing with a winning streak is that you lose perspective. You start to feel as though you can play "any two," that you're invulnerable ("The Truth About Playing Rushes").

You convince yourself that either (a) K-J is a great hand to call a raise with 'cause of all that paint or worse, (b) you're so good you can outplay your opponents with it.

The first is certainly an illusion, the second likely one. Don't overplay your hands just because you've got some chips to burn.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Hope this helps you handle winning ... try to enjoy it.

Author Bio:

Arthur Reber has been a poker player and serious handicapper of thoroughbred horses for four decades. He is the author of The New Gambler's Bible and coauthor of Gambling for Dummies. Formerly a regular columnist for Poker Pro Magazine and Fun 'N' Games magazine, he has also contributed to Card Player (with Lou Krieger), Poker Digest, Casino Player, Strictly Slots and Titan Poker. He outlined a new framework for evaluating luminous contact lenses the ethical and moral issues that emerge in gambling for an invited address to the International Conference of Gaming and Risk Taking.

Until recently he was the Broeklundian Professor of Psychology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Among his various visiting professorships was a Fulbright fellowship at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Now semiretired, Reber is a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

There are three key points here.

1. Winning won't make you as happy as you think it will. One reason is a topic we discussed in two earlier columns on the value of money, What's Money Worth? and What's Money Worth Part 2.

Money won isn't as satisfying as a loss of an equivalent amount is unsatisfying. Most people don't know this, which is one reason why Gilbert's "miswanting" effect is so strong.

2. A lot of players don't know how to handle winning. You see this all the time. Guy goes on a rush, stacks chips like a new graduate from an architecture program, thinks he's invulnerable, a champ, a nascent professional ready for the circuit.

Come back a couple of hours later and he's picking felt out from between his front teeth.

3. A lot of players don't know how to maximize the gains that accompany a rush of cards or the generosity of the resident fish.

When the gods of the game smile upon you, you better be ready. You better know how to deal with winning, and you need to maximize your gains or you won't be able to cover your losses.

Now we can't do much to change the first of these. It's pretty much a given. The best advice is understand the principle and live with it.

Be as happy when winning as you can, but don't expect it to be quite the wonderful thing you think it will be when you first sit down.

But we can deal with the other two. Here are some ways. If you think of others, let me know. The better we understand this issue the better off we'll be (even if not as happy as we think).

1. Tighten up so as not to give back chips. There are a host of factors that contribute to a rush, and one of them is that you hit hands that are mathematically unlikely.

You get in for free from the BB with T-8o and flop the nuts. You limp with pocket sevens and flop set over set. These magical hands are seductive; they make you think they're worth playing for a full bet or out of position.

They're not. If you stacked a guy when you limped from the button with A-6 and hit two pair, don't for a second think you should play this hand UTG.

2. Loosen up to turn a pretty good day into a really good one. Yeah, I know, this looks like it contradicts the above. It doesn't really.

I'm not telling you to call an early raiser with T-8, just suggesting that with a big stack you can loosen up a little. You can use your chips to intimidate others. You can afford to tiptoe into some pots looking to felt someone.

Big stacks project power and skill. Use the image - no matter how far from reality it is.

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We chatted to the former Brookside star about his new-found love for poker

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The UK’s smartest glamour model and Celebrity Poker player
gets her chips out

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Phil Ivey has an unrivalled reputation as the most feared poker player on the planet

Perhaps the most illuminating fact about Phil Ivey is that, unlike many other high profile poker players, he requires no nickname. No added persona is needed to strike fear into his opponents – the man alone carries a presence that is enough to intimidate all but the most impassive of players. Ivey’s name is on everyone’s lips when you ask them which player they most respect and would least want to play poker lenses. But just what is it about him that causes even the strongest of player’s knees to crumble?

Perhaps the closest Ivey gets to being granted a nickname is when he is lazily referred to as the ‘Tiger Woods of poker’. But on closer inspection, the comparison between the two certainly holds weight. The poker great embodies many qualities similar to the legendary golfer: a mixture of constant and focused aggression, a cool and impassive demeanour and a fierce determination to win. Both men have also relentlessly ignored the media hype surrounding their respective achievements. Their business is winning – and they both do plenty of that.

According to his close friend and fellow Big Game player, Barry Greenstein, Ivey has an ‘unmatched raw talent’. In a hold’em obsessed world this is borne out by his ability to excel in all of poker’s different variants. He has won pot-limit Omaha and seven-card stud events, and most notably recorded a third-place finish in the inaugural $ 50,000 H.O.R.S.E. event at the 2006 World Series Of Poker.

Cash King

Ivey remains reluctant to accept the mantle of genius and instead puts much of his success down to sheer hard work. Similarly though, his rise as a poker celebrity has been dismissed by none other than Ivey himself, whose typical nonchalant response is that ‘I’m just a poker player’. But he’s more than just a poker player. He started out playing sixteen-hour days in low-limit stud games in Atlantic City on a fake ID – where he learned tirelessly from his own mistakes.

During his early days he had a voracious appetite for knowledge of all things poker, which he carries to this day. But this is hardly unique among poker players – so how has he managed, over the course of a decade, to do what only a few manage in an entire lifetime? He’s made final tables at six WPT events, won major tournaments at home and in Europe and has five WSOP bracelets. He’s also widely regarded by marked cards his peers as one of the most consistent players in the Big Game at the Bellagio. Indeed, cash games are where Ivey is at home the most, hidden away from prying eyes, playing free from distractions. But he’s no one-trick pony and performs equally adeptly in front of the full glare of the media that is so fascinated by his every move.

He arguably has the most impressive record in tournament poker since Stu Ungar, with three bracelets in three WSOPs from 2000-2002 and a relentless series of six and seven-figure results. The countless hours of thoughtful, considered play has soaked into his subconscious, giving him a ‘feel’ for where he is in a hand. He applies the same razor-sharp analysis to his own game and it’s rare you’ll see him making a mistake in a hand.

Despite his best game being seven-card stud, his celebrity status has arisen from his hold’em game. And even under the unflinching gaze of the TV cameras, what is clear from his performances is a level of attentiveness that few other players possess. Ivey spends his time at the table eyeing every movement an opponent makes, or lost in his own head calculating the odds of a dozen possible scenarios for a hand he is involved in. He is never rushed and, it would seem, is too absorbed in the moment to worry about table banter or showmanship from those around him. As his opponents attest, Ivey’s style of play is impossible to pin down, except for an aggressive streak that allows him to control the table without ever seeming to place him in extreme danger.

Peer Pressure

One hand in particular illustrates Ivey’s poise and tenacity at the table, even though it ended with him losing a lot of chips. Facing off with Andy Black at the WSOP main event in 2005, an incredible display of high-level thinking occurred when, with the blinds at $ 20,000/$ 40,000, Ivey made it $ 140,000 in late position with K-5 before Black re-raised to 420k. The viewers knew Black had A-2 – but Ivey didn’t. He wasn’t ready to relinquish the role of aggressor and re-reraised to 920k, after which Black thought for a while before pushing all-in. Ivey rolled his eyes and folded. On this occasion he had met his match in the only player ready to pass the test. But, the important factor was that Ivey was prepared to force Black to risk his tournament.

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Evelyn Ng paid her dues with ten years playing limit hold’em and is now one of the hottest players on the circuit There are much more accomplished tournament players than myself but I have been playing the game for 13 years, and I am comfortable with how I play poker. It has always been how I’ve made a living. Of course I want to win a big event, but all I can really ask for luminous contact lenses is to play my best. If I played like a donkey and took down a tournament I would settle for that, but I prefer to say I played my best. I’ve known Daniel Negreanu since we were both 16, and pool hall hustlers in our hometown of Toronto. What he has taught me is the mental attitude of a professional poker player. I owe my career to the WPT. The Ladies Night [where she finished second in 2003] was my introduction to no-limit hold’em tournament poker. At the time I was a cash game player, and I was at Foxwoods sweating Daniel. They came up to me and asked if I wanted to be interviewed for the show. I guess I made a good impression, because when they decided to make the Ladies Night show I got a phone call. Sexism in the poker world has given me a career so how could I fault it? If people focus on my looks or how I dress that is fine. I make a decent living, so I don’t care what anyone else thinks. I didn’t get into poker because I thought I would get on TV. Really, I’m just a poker player. I made my living playing limit hold’em for ten years. I’m probably a steadier winner at limit cash games, but playing more cash limit poker is not something I am too thrilled about doing. I feel like that part of my life is over for now. I try to keep my sanity marked cards by not burning myself out and only playing when it matters. When I don’t eat, sleep, drink poker every minute of the day I play better. I worked for my money for over a decade. Now I’m reaping the benefits of spending all that time being miserable, pessimistic and grinding it out. I knew as soon as I was introduced to the game that it was something I would do well at. I dealt for a year before I played – I just wanted to learn as much as I could.

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With nearly $6m won in live, and online poker, we talk to self-confessed sick gambler Erick Lindgren

Plenty of big-name pros were on board, the food and booze flowed prodigiously, and, all in all, it was an upbeat event. Nevertheless, by every indication, Lindgren seemed about ready to jump ship.

Never mind that in the previous year he won this very tournament (he has the giant cheque to prove it). And that in 2005 he made the money but just missed the final table. By the time we hooked up, Lindgren was already out of the action and antsy as hell.

Shifting from foot to foot, he resembled a public school kid who didn’t give a damn and was obviously bored out of his skull. He stood on the deck, looked up into a perfectly blue sky and told me, ‘Yesterday I would have paid a helicopter pilot $20,000 to get me off this boat. Today I’m at $15,000 and tomorrow, with the cruise about to wind down, it’ll be 10.’

The cash games on the boat were too small to interest Lindgren, and, with nothing to gamble at, he was bored out of his mind. Obviously, he’s not the kind of guy who’s going to enjoy wandering around tourist towns, taking in the culture and shopping for straw bags or snow globes. ‘Maybe,’ he grumbled, ‘next year I’ll just import a floor full of strippers and bring my own party onto the boat.’

At first I figured that Lindgren was showing off, that he’d never actually do anything so ballsy – though I had heard about him winning $10,000 playing online while driving from California to Las Vegas, which, in and of itself, is fairly impressive.

Of course, I now know that he absolutely would do that (or at least something like it), especially if he could shoehorn in a wager with someone who didn’t believe he’d be able to pull it off.

Action hero

Though I’m not sure about Lindgren’s true feelings for strippers, I know that he loves action. He’s not a degenerate casino gambler or the kind of poker pro who continually plays in games that his bankroll can’t fade (in fact, he assiduously avoids the Big Game; its stakes are too high, and he’s not yet suitably adept at all the mixed games), but he loves wagering on sports, loves making prop bets, loves to gamble it up on the golf course (he once dropped $50,000 to Phil Ivey after failing to par the ninth hole at Shadow Creek).

This mentality is what first opened Lindgren up to poker, and, initially at least, long before he racked up nearly $6m in tournament winnings, came damned close to breaking him. ‘I didn’t know that you could slow-pay bookies,’ he remembers, recounting a scary moment from his abbreviated college years. ‘I owed a guy money and maxed out my credit cards in order to pay him off.’

For Lindgren, the serious gambling began soon after his 18th birthday. He was still in school but drawn to the casinos of central California. Like everybody who wanders into a gambling den, Lindgren initially found himself risking money at the table games that players rarely manage to beat.

Then he and his friends discovered one of the amazing things about Californian casinos in the 1990s: due to a bit of weirdness in the state’s bylaws, individuals were allowed to back blackjack. In other words, anyone with a big enough bankroll to cover a round of blackjack was allowed to be the house (though they had to give the casino $5 per shoe for the privilege). Lindgren and his friends pooled together their money and played at an advantage.

‘Then I found the poker room,’ he remembers. ‘I left my friends out there to watch the blackjack while I played poker.’ He started out by buying into the $3/$6 limit Hold’em and had immediate success, which pushed him to progress up to the point where he was playing $15/$30 and turning a profit within a year. ‘I won a lot,’ he remembers, ‘but I gambled at blackjack (when he wasn’t banking the game) and had hardly any money. Plus, of course, I had a bookie and whatever was left over from poker I lost to the bookie.’

It could have been a life of degeneracy, of a rapidly ageing Lindgren flopping from one flunky job to the next, and working hard to support his bad habits. But then, at 21, he got a gig as a ‘prop’ (or ‘house’) player. It provided him with $160 per day just for being in the casino and helping to get the games going. That was pretty good, as far as it went.

Things got markedly better after a buddy from the casino told Lindgren about an opportunity that sounded too good to pass: a website called poker.com, on which he would get $50 in promotional chips simply for signing up. It was 1998, and the notion of poker on the internet was just beginning to gain traction.

Immediately, Lindgren took to the pace and idiosyncracies of playing online. ‘I ran it up to $12,000, found the other sites, and pretty soon I had three computers with eight games going at once,’ he remembers.

Lindgren continued to poker lenses play live games at the casino (he now possessed a bigger bankroll and had moved up to the no-limit game), but online quickly became his primary source of income. ‘I spent so much time in front of computer screens that I wouldn’t say I was having a great life. But it was nice to be making more money than I could blow.’

Counter strike

Facing light competition during those halcyon days of online gaming, Lindgren inadvertently morphed into one of poker’s prototypical whiz kids. He had perfected a flexible style of play, running counter to what his opponents were doing. If they played slow, he splashed virtual chips around the table and pushed others out of hands; if they were aggressive, he opted for a patient game that relied heavily on trapping.

He had plenty of time to perfect his approach. For three years Lindgren didn’t do much more than play online poker, camping out in a bedroom that was barely large enough to accommodate himself, his desk and his monitors. But it was worth it. Over that period of time, between 1998 and 2001, he never won less than $10,000 per month and sometimes took down as much as $40,000 in the same time period.

When the World Poker Tour kicked off, Lindgren was battle-hardened and ready for his close-up. In 2003 he final- tabled the WPT tournament at the Aviation Club in Paris and won in Aruba; a year later Lindgren reappeared on TV, narrowly outplaying Daniel Negreanu on the PartyPoker cruise ship (it was the season before my encounter with him). Upon beating his buddy he celebrated in style, running up a $22,000 bar tab for Negreanu and the rest of their card- playing entourage.

It was the start of the poker boom and Lindgren was well positioned to take advantage of it. He got involved as one of the primary movers on Full Tilt and fell in with a group of talented, young pros. As he climbed the poker ladder, Lindgren formed enduring friendships with Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey and Carlos Mortensen. His tournament winnings are impressive, and he has taken untold amounts out of the cash games.

In 2007 alone Lindgren’s tournament profits just crept over the $1m mark, and he didn’t even play that many events. Lindgren describes himself as being essentially lazy – but that’s really not true, he just doesn’t have very much financial incentive at the moment.

That said, I wonder how he manages to win as much as he does. ‘I find a way,’ Lindgren responds, sounding a little more cryptic than he intends. ‘Even if I’m not getting good cards, I find a way to keep my chip stack about even. I steal small pots, I play lots of hands. The idea is to slowly build my stack and find a way to get paid off when I have a good hand.

People see me with pocket Aces three times when I play a tournament and they think I got lucky. But, in fact, I gave myself an opportunity to be there by playing well in the stages leading up to that point. You give yourself a chance to win by not bluffing off your stack or taking a stand too soon. I try to stay in a tournament as long as I can with a decent amount of chips, and then I give myself a chance to get hot.’

Tough company

It’s an approach that paid off last January when he took down the AU$100,000 buy-in event during the Aussie Millions. It was a private tournament, consisting mostly of Full Tilt pros (goosed up by a smattering of well-heeled amateurs), with an AU$1m first prize (about US$800k).

Considering that he was going up against the likes of John Juanda, Phil Ivey and Patrik Antonius, it sounds like the kind of event that even a seasoned pro would have to enter with low expectations. ‘I don’t know if I had expectations going in,’ Lindgren admits, ‘but you certainly want to win when you put up that kind of money. I don’t think of it as a lot, but you can’t continually buy in for $80,000 and walk away a loser.’

Maybe not. But if he seriously intended to win the event, he certainly had his work cut out for him. Lindgren was at the table with a bunch of top-flight tournament pros, most of whom had seen him play before, and were well acquainted with his style. He’d have to do more than simply see cheap flops and mix it up on the later streets. ‘Normally I play a lot of a small-ball poker and limp a lot,’ he acknowledges. ‘So this time I did a little more bluffing than I normally would.

That seemed a little weird to them, but I tried to make it make sense. I played tighter and did more re-raising pre-flop. Whenever I thought I could take a pot with a raise I did it – knowing that these guys are good enough not to risk the tournament by forcing action – and didn’t care what I had. I just made the move. It worked pretty well. I increased my stack without getting many cards early on.’

By the time he got to heads-up with Erik Seidel, Lindgren was trailing badly. ‘He had a nice chip lead on me, but I managed to build my way up from 300,000 to 600,000 and picked up Kings when he had Jacks.’ Lindgren shrugs the shrug of a man who’s experienced his share of bad beats at the table. ‘If it had been reversed, he would have won the tournament. He had me covered and I flipped it on him. Then I ground Erik down a little and got him all-in with A-7 against K-J, and he bricked off. I thought he played really well.’

As well as Lindgren does on his own, he’s also had some success as a backer of others. He does it in live tournaments and through online play. Lindgren openly serves as the bank for Gavin Smith and, though he doesn’t discuss it with me, after Carlos Mortensen won nearly $4m at the WPT championship in April, Lindgren acknowledged that

Mortensen is one of his ‘boys’ and talked about going out in the Bellagio to celebrate his victory.

Though Smith is a profitable player, with whom Lindgren has clearly had good fortune, Lindgren acknowledges that the business of backing can be double-edged. ‘You lose, lose, lose, and then someone pops you off,’ he says. ‘When you have to travel to Foxwoods with $80,000, to put seven people and yourself in, it’s not fun. The cost adds up quickly when no one does well, but when they win, it feels like free money, even though it’s not.’

On the other hand, the people he backs tend to be his friends. It’s a way of assisting them and it also provides a hedge against running bad. ‘It helps close up the holes of anyone who needs a little help,’ says Lindgren – including, presumably himself. The problem, though, is that ‘the buy- ins are so heavy that most people don’t have the pain thresholds for backing other players. But I’m a little sick. I don’t worry about it. I know my guys will win.’

Plus, action seems to be as integral to his survival as oxygen. During the football season, Lindgren and fellow poker pro Bill Edler work hard to beat the college games (Lindgren has six monitors mounted on the wall of his living room so that he can keep track of the games in which he’s got a stake).

A little less seriously, Lindgren and his pals bet hard and heavy into the professional lines every Sunday; his fantasy football wagers will total half a million dollars in 2007, and he’s always willing to back up random opinions with his bankroll. ‘I had a cool bet at the WSOP Europe,’ Lindgren remembers of the event in which he finished 26th and snagged approximately $60,000 (‘I’ll take it,’ he says nonchalantly).

‘I saw a guy sitting nearby, he looked like a competent young kid, and I said to the people at my table, "I’ll bet anyone $1,000 that this kid has won a million dollars online.” Nobody would take the bet. Then I saw Ted Forrest at the next table. He took it and I won.’

Extreme pain

While poker is clearly Lindgren’s primary source of income, he’s quick to point out that for sheer fun and excitement nothing beats watching football with the boys and playing golf with his pals. Of course, there’s always loads of money riding on both of those activities. As Lindgren puts it: ‘The next best thing to winning a big bet is losing a big bet.’

On a recent weekday afternoon in Las Vegas, I witness that philosophy in action. Lindgren, Daniel Negreanu, Gavin Smith and Shawn Sheikhan convene for some high stakes action at Canyon Gate Country Club (Sheikhan is a member and he’s hosting the round of golf).

There’s lot of gambling, of course, and just as much ribbing (the guys are all accusing each other of hustling and Sheikhan takes every opportunity to snake in and out of bets).

Nearing the final hole, Lindgren tells me, ‘If things go well, I’ll owe $40,000 to Negreanu and win $20,000 from Gavin and Sheiky.’ Then he smiles in a way that almost makes me believe I misheard him and that he will actually be up on the round. Without the slightest bit of irony, Lindgren says, ‘Losing $20,000 at golf? That’ll be a beautiful day for me. Just perfect.’

Of course, gamblers being what they are, a whole series of big bets get made on the final hole, pretty much guaranteeing that somebody’s going to win a lot of money and somebody’s going to lose a lot. Smith winds up the former, Negreanu is the latter, and Lindgren finishes $1,000 in the black.

Surely you’d think it’s better than losing, say, $20,000? As it turns out it pretty much turns the day into something of a waste. Lindgren’s of the school that in order for gambling to be interesting there has to be extreme pleasure or pain attached to it. And winning a thousand bucks, for him, is neither.

But that’s okay. Lindgren still has a long-term golf bet going with Phil Ivey (a $1m swing is possible) and the high stakes action on Full Tilt is rarely more than a mouse- click away.

His games of choice are $200/$400 pot-limit Omaha, $200/$400 no-limit Hold’em, and $1,000/$2,000 H.O.R.S.E. If you happen to come across Lindgren at one of those tables, don’t expect to catch him playing it safe. ‘Life would be easier if I hadn’t gambled through the years,’ he admits. ‘If I had no gamble, I’d have a steadier income and less stress. But it takes gamble to be a great poker player. You can be a really good poker player, but if you don’t have that gambling gear, you’re not one of the best players.’

And if you don’t believe Lindgren, no doubt he’d be happy to bet you on it.

ADVICE FROM ERICK

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