Have you ever found that sometimes you start tournaments well and in others you just can't get 'tuned in'? Sometimes you make finals but when the money counts you make mistakes and have difficulty focusing? What should you do about it?

We all know the expression fish by now: the fish, the sucker, your own personal ATM. I keep a word document on my PC, which serves as my fish list – a comprehensive list of all the very poor and very profitable players I have encountered, and who I want to meet again. I will type all the names into whichever site I am playing at the time before I start a cash game to see who is around, and join their table whenever possible.

Very few players succeed in both tournaments and cash games. Generally, you find players who are specialists. Maybe they travel the tournament trail around the country, playing the World Poker Tour and World Series of Poker Tournament Circuit events. Maybe they play sit-and-go tournaments on the Internet all of the time. Maybe they specialize in small-stakes no-limit hold'em cash games. Or, maybe they specialize in online multitable tournaments. Generally, most poker players are specialists.

Every month I divulge some of the strategies that I have learned about this game. This month, I would like to share a secret that most people don't know: I am the luckiest player in poker.

It's true. I can't believe how often I get lucky at the poker table. Just recently I was playing in a tournament against other members of my website, www.InternetTexasHoldem.com. The flop came Jh10h8c. A player bet about two-thirds of the pot and I moved all in with the KhQc. I was rather short-stacked and needed to make a move. The button called, and I instantly knew that I was in trouble. He showed the Ah9h. Not only did he have the best hand, but he also had the best draw. The turn was a 7, giving him a straight. But a 9 hit the river and I had the nuts. I have such great luck! I took that pot and went on to win the tournament.

Many players struggle to distinguish between the situations in which they should attempt to knock out an opponent and those in which they should merely try to accumulate more chips. I found myself in the middle of a scenario during event No. 44 at the World Series of Poker - $1,500 no-limit hold'em - in which several of my opponents thought I had completely lost it.

An interesting scenario arose for me in the $1,500 pot-limit hold'em event at the World Series of Poker. I took down 14th place and a $21,000 payday, but I won't bore you with how the ladies (pocket queens) let me down a couple of times toward the end. This column focuses on a key stage in the tournament when the time clock played an important role in determining my strategy.

There are always two key decisions you must make when taking the initiative in no-limit hold’em while playing a hand. Are you going to play, and if so, how much do you want to bet? The amount of your bet is always very important. If you bet too little with a good hand, you could be inviting your opponent to hit a long shot that might cost you your entire stack. If you bet too much, you might find yourself in a situation in which you are winning only small pots and losing large pots. A key part of the decision in determining how much to bet depends on the pot odds and implied pot odds.