I would recommend that everyone add heads-up sit and go’s to their repertoire of poker disciplines. You often hear the expression play the player, not the cards. We all know what that means, but do we all do it? No, we don't. That's why poker can be very profitable, because players can overvalue their cards and lose a lot of money with them. The heads-up SNG forces you to play the player, because oftentimes you get dealt complete garbage. If you wait for aces, then you are going to get blinded away into nothing.

My favorite game at the moment is the 6-handed sit-and-go they have on Poker Stars and Full Tilt, mainly because I am (here is a sure-fire way to tempt fate) crushing them at the moment. They are fundamentally different to full ring SNGs, but maybe not in the way you might think. It would be very easy to reel off another "AJ is more powerful at a 6-handed table" article, and if I run out of ideas that is next month’s in the bag. Instead I’m going to explore a little more about the table dynamics of a short-handed game in the SNG format.

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.

When I first started playing online, despite modest success playing live, I was a break-even player at best. Then I discovered a lovely little $8 sit-and-go on Pacific Poker. It was a 20-person SNG on two tables. You only got 800 chips to start with, and in no time at all you were down to the second table. In fact, it wasn't uncommon for two or three players to get busted before your first big blind was taken from you. I found that I could often get to a paid spot without having to play many hands at all. You just let the maniacs take care of each other and all of a sudden you were playing for 20 buy-ins worth of prizes. This SNG is what catapulted my profits and made me truly believe I could actually make money playing poker.

When in a confrontation, you always have two innate options available to you, which are as old as nature itself: fight or flight. You can choose to stand your ground, or you can retreat. When it comes to No-Limit Texas Holdem, you always have three options available to you: raise, fold, or call. Raising, I would argue, is the same as the aforementioned fighting option, while folding is your chance to retreat from the hand. Calling, on the other hand, does not correlate with either of the laws of the animal kingdom. And if I had a parallel to draw from nature, it would be that of burying your head in the sand.

Congratulations, you have made it to the final table.

Ahhh, I remember my first final table. It lasted all of one hand. I got pocket sevens, went all in under the gun, and got called by Aces. At the time, I was delighted at winning $60. Now, of course, such would not be good enough. Any tournament player should at least be looking towards the final table as their goal whenever they enter an MTT. Merely cashing in a tournament is not worth the time that has been invested in it. With usually about 60 percent of the buy-ins being shared at the final table, simply making it to the final nine will be a financially-rewarding experience. And every player eliminated from that point forward will be shouting “cha-ching!” in his or her head.

I’d like to start my ITH tenure with what will be a lesson in sucking eggs for many of you I am sure…but a nice, simple article to help you guys gets to know me. I heard a quote recently (no idea who said it so if anyone knows could they PM me?). It went something along the lines of: “Whoever invented poker was clever; whoever invented the chip was a genius.”