Those who have seen Phil Helmuth play will know that he loves to put someone on an exact hand, although experience shows that he usually puts you on a pair of eights. Is it possible though? Sure it is. Are we going to show you how? Sure we are (well we'll try to anyway).

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.

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.

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.

Poker in Las Vegas…I love it. The rooms are busy, the action is great (not quite as good as California, but close) and the money is flowing! I have been in and around the Las Vegas poker rooms intermittently for 10 years or so. I have seen the rooms close up during the down time and re-open with grandeur in the new “Moneymaker era”. Thanks to television, the Las Vegas card rooms are booming again. It is great to see.