"You have come to The House Of Cards," says Jenny, "because, for you, playing for money is not enough. Here the stakes are, literally, an arm and a leg. In the early rounds we will play Biblical Rules - the bets will be 'An Eye For An Eye.' We will then progress to Vampire Rules, Cannibal Rules, and finally, when we are down to the last two players, Shakespeare's Rules, when the bet will be 'A Pound of Flesh.'"

One by one The Small Man leads eliminated players away to the slaughter. Finally only Shemp and I remain. Only one of us will leave this room alive.

There are two certainties in this life. One is: we cannot live forever, as we know it. Two being: the odds say, that we MUST WIN SOMETIME. The latter statement is what I want to focus on right now. In determining the when are we going to win part, let us do the math. If the current losing streak is about to hit double digits in consecutive losses, do not panic. I repeat, now is not the time to panic. However, if the current losing cycle is approaching the high end of the double-digit spectrum, begin immediate unadulterated, unchecked, panicking.

Very often poker turns into a game of soccer. This happens when the player with the bigger kicker wins. When players learn their lessons from watching a tournament on TV, they see players coming in with one high card and a small unsuited card. Often players in these tournaments will play small suited cards. Of course, you and I know that the reasons these veteran players stay in with these "Soccer Hands" is due to the fact that they already have a ten thousand dollar ante and the blinds are as much as $50,000 and $100,000. So, the pot odds make it worth their chase.

One of the most common psychological mistakes that we make happens automatically within our minds. All of us naturally look for common patterns in nearly everything that we encounter. With that, we often mistake a simple correlation for a cause. I remember a comical example of this on a newscast last summer, when a reporter warned of a study that showed whenever ice cream sales increased, serious boating accidents were ten times more likely! He was clearly implying that ice cream consumption had something to do with the cause of boat wrecks.

Kathy Liebert frowns at tendencies to separate the sexes in discussions of poker skills.

Pul-leeeze, her tone seems to say. This IS the 22nd century.

It's a habit the news media has created and continues to perpetuate, she grumbles. " There's no question the top women players can hold their own anywhere. They are very competitive with the top male players."

Thinking about that for a moment. "The fact is," she adds, "the top women players are among the top players period."

Poker by the Bay, that's what you get at Casino San Pablo, just minutes from the Golden Gate Bridge. It's a popular spot for Bay Area card fisherman. "We're well stocked with a variety of Limit Hold'em," says Game Warden Doug Morgan. "And, if you want to try your luck in the No-Limit depths, we got that too," he adds. According to Captain Morgan, "All ya' gotta do is buy some chip-bait, sit 'n wait; it won't be long before you hook a hand. Then, just reel it in. But remember," He cautioned, "there are things lurking out there that can eat you."

The game can be played in a number of ways. It can be played limit or pot limit or high hand wins all the pot or HiLo split with an eight as the highest card permitted for the hand to win the low onehalf of the pot. Different rules may be used. Any rules that consenting adult poker players can think of can be used if agreed upon by all players in the game.

In a lively $4-8 Hold 'Em game in late fall at my local poker room, I had been playing long enough to assign styles tentatively to the four players new to me. In middle position I peeked at my hand and saw both red Tens. I called and waited for the others to act. Alex, one of the new-to-me players, raised. The Button called Alex's raise cold, the Big Blind and I just called. Four-handed we saw the dealer put As-Jh-4d on the table.

Some of the craziest and most outrageous things are said or happen in a game of poker. The following is a list of some of my favorites:

1. Amarillo Slim Preston has been quoted as sayingIf a woman ever wins the main event of the World Series of Poker, I'll cut my own throat." I approached him a few years back and asked him if he really said that. He claims he stated,If a woman ever wins the World Series, I'll eat my boot." As a female contender for this title, I hope to hand him a knife and folk on that fateful day.

I mentioned in a column a while back that I had started to play on line with some money sent my way by the generous folks at Party Poker (Hey, if you're the most successful on line poker site you can afford to be generous, no?). It was nice to play with funds that were, literally, House Money. I figured that, at worst, it would be interesting experiment in on-line play.

Well experiment I have - with low stakes Stud and Hold Em games, large tournaments and the one table variety called Sit and Gos. It's been fun and remunerative.