I just won two pots back to back, first by sucking out and then by victimizing my foe's insta-tilt.

With the enormous interest in poker these days the cardrooms are just overflowing with players. Many of these players, if not outright newbies, don't have the experience level of the regulars who have been playing for years and years. Of all the learning tools at a player's disposal, experience should never be underrated. Players may learn faster than in the past due to all of the available tools from expanded literature to televised analysis but having personally viewed over a half a million flops doesn't hurt either!

Aggressive play is one aspect that is essential in a poker player's arsenal of weapons. With aggressive play, I find that my emotions can sometimes come to the forefront and cloud my normally objective thinking. That can be bad or even ugly. Why does this occur? My medical background once again helped me to understand why.

Many casinos across the United States are offering live poker for the first time, or are reopening or expanding long-dormant poker rooms that, ten years ago, once gave way to slot machines. The state of Iowa is an excellent case in point.

One of the biggest reasons for the incredible surge in popularity of poker in the United States was the interest generated by the appearance of the World Poker Tour on the Travel Channel. Slick production values combined with the first use of hole card cameras on American television made this show a smash hit. Currently in its third season, the second season DVD set of this series is now available.

Many cardsmiths win huge amounts of money on a consistent basis, but they have some bad habits. They may bet the sports to excess, like the girls a little to much, go drinking too often, get into dope, or visit the craps table too frequently. Like the little Dutch boy who used his finger to plug the leak in the dam. Poker players must plug their personal leaks, curb their bad habits, if they are to be successful at playing poker.

"What are we doing tonight?" Hobby asked. We usually set aside Saturday nights for the ladies in our otherwise self-indulgent lives, but it so happened that both of them had other commitments.

"I'm always up for poker. How about you?"

"Suits me. Looking for some heavy action, Joe?"

In the NxNW Region (northern CA, northern NV, and the Northwest) there are some important new poker room additions. Now, besides McDonalds and WalMart, almost every community has a poker room for the floppy-minded.

In poker, as in life, things don't stay on an even keel. You have good times and then you have bad times. The good times are much easier to handle, of course. It's the bad times that have a tendency to cost us more than they should if we don't know how to handle them correctly.

Veteran Bicycle Casino host Yosh Nakano and his California partners think they have a great idea and they're bringing it to the Internet via a project known as Pokerblue.

One of the differentiating features at Pokerblue will be a whale or high limit room. The identity of players at the table will be known and there will be an "approval process" that Nakano is reluctant to talk about for the time being.