by Russ Fox
 
 Yes, I’m alive. For those wondering why I haven’t penned more articles, I have been busy with a move from Southern California to Las Vegas.
 
 But in the middle of my move I found some time for watching the Bears lose while playing poker $2-$5 nolimit hold’em. It was a quiet game (sort of like the Bears offense), and I was either up a few dollars or down a few dollars. Then John sat down.
 
 It was an hour before noon, but John carried two open beers and smelled of alcohol. While at the table, he disposed of five more Coors Lights (my brother, a beer drinker, says that shows bad taste) and a couple of mixed drinks. We also got some poker in.
 

While in Las Vegas last month, I found some time to play in a pretty good $2-$5 hold’em game at the Venetian. This particular hand was one of the more interesting I played that day.
 
I was in the small blind with 9s-6c. I mentally prepared to fold; almost all of the hands at this table were raised pre-flop. Calling with 9s-6c for a raise from the small blind is a good way to separate your money from your wallet and that didn’t appeal to me.
 
However, five of the ten players at the table limped and I decided to toss in the additional $3. This wasn’t a great hand, but it would be easy to get away from if the flop missed me. The big blind checked his option, so seven of us saw the flop.
 

A few years ago my late friend Ken introduced me to his home game. The monthly game included a no-limit hold’em tournament along with cash games. This past month was my last time in the game (mainly because of the distance from my home).
 
Four of us were competing for three World Series of Poker seats. They weren’t $10,000 main event seats; rather, we’re low rollers who compete for $1,000 donkament seats. The tournament structure was super-fast. Any time a player was eliminated, or after each orbit the blinds increased. We also started with T5,000 in chips, so the blinds quickly became large.
 

Last week a client asked me whether it’s possible to get a refund when you are audited by the Internal Revenue Service. I told him that it can happen: In the twelve years I’ve been practicing, I’ve had three individuals obtain refunds in an audit.

The stated goal of the IRS in an audit is for the taxpayer to be in compliance with the tax laws. When you send a tax return to the IRS, it is accepted at face value. In an audit, you have to prove that the numbers on the return are what they should be.

I spent an hour commiserating with Aaron. To say he was annoyed would be an understatement; a few of the words he uttered were not expletives.

He was in a $2 - $5 blinds no-limit game, with a $500 maximum buy-in. His stack of $1,500 was typical for the game.

“It was the best game ever,” he began. I was wondering how much money he lost. “There were four drunken maniacs with bottomless wallets. I was up over a thousand. This hand was typical.

My good friend Aaron was playing in a great $2 - $5 no-limit hold’em game at the Venetian. Of his nine opponents, three were calling stations, two were maniacs who would only raise when they did not have anything, three were weak-tight, and one was a good player.

I was playing a $100 live “deep stack” tournament. The blinds began at T25-T50, and we all started with T7,875 chips. (If you’re asking why we started with such an odd number, I can’t help you; I’m still wondering about that myself.) I put deep stack in quotes because while the initial levels did feature true deep stack play, the blinds quickly escalated so that after two hours the play was anything but deep stacked. However, that’s irrelevant for the hands in question.
 

When I started to play no-limit hold’em, the standard raise was usually three times the big blind. Today, though, that’s definitely changed—especially in tournaments, and even more so online.
 
I was watching a friend of mine playing in a major online tournament. Many players were making minimum raises while others were raising just slightly more than that. Raises of three times the big blind were few and far between. I had to ask myself if this new practice makes sense.
 

I spent parts of four weeks in Las Vegas during the World Series of Poker and saw several items worthy of further discussion.
 
I believe it was Mike Matusow who said that one of the most important skills in tournament poker is table selection. Of course, you are supposed to have no control over that. I ran really bad in table selection this year. My first starting table had Joe Sebok and Marco Traniello; I then ran into Daniel Negreanu early in my next tournament. My last starting table had four internet pros.

I sometimes wonder how I can handle various poker situations and maintain my sanity. We all hope to hold big hands such as pocket aces; however, we hate to be put into a situation where the best results of a session are the hands we made good folds on.