We hear this old cliche way too often: "You have to take it one step at a time." We've heard it so often we often dismiss its meaning and message. One step at a time has been my reality lately, not simply a cliche. You see, I was recently in a serious car accident which forced me to take on a new pace in life - slow, with each single step carefully measured. With injuries to my back and neck, my stiff walking strides probably resembled that of Frankenstein. It is frustrating to have to concentrate on taking each simple step up a flight of stairs or across the living room floor.

Imagine this scenario in a realworld cardroom: You make a river bet, get called, and turn over your hand. Your opponent mucks his cards without showing, but curiosity gets the best of you, so you reach into the muck and peek at his discards. How many times do you think you could do this before they threw your sorry, angle-shooting ass out of the casino? Yet online you can do it all day, every day, and if you're not aware of it you should be. Every online poker site has a handy little feature called instant hand histories.

As we continue our attempt to ferret out possible nuances of our game which can be improved upon, today let's delve into when it might be appropriate to entice several overcalls instead of raising with our very best hands. An overcall is when a player calls after a player in front of him has already called the initial bettor.

Experienced players realize that to overcall requires a better hand than just calling. Obviously, the difference is that you now need to beat more than one hand. The bettor could be bluffing but the caller in front of you sure isn't.

Do you remember the television commercial, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature"? This last week, it kept echoing through my mind as we experienced the wrath of Hurricane Katrina.

Returning from the WSOP Circuit Event in Tunica, we stopped for the weekend at the Pearl River Resort in Philadelphia, Mississippi, about 200 miles north of the Gulf Coast. We decided to stay and play in a World Poker Showdown satellite that Sunday for a December tournament and cruise package.

Poker is a contest in which justice is coincidence and fairness is folly. Interestingly, some of the foremost poker players in Washington D.C. have been members of the United States Supreme Court.

President Taft, the only President to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court after his years in the White House, considered the Court to be the higher honor.

As we continue to look at what makes for a successful strategy in low buy-in tournaments, always remember that if the blinds have not caught up to you yet, they soon will. For this reason, it is important that you understand how to bet effectively.

I learned the importance of betting your big hands properly in one of my early tournaments. There were six limpers who saw a flop of J-9-3. The player who initially limped under-thegun fired a big bet at the pot, was called by a middle position player, then the button minimum-raised.

I have been asked many times to teach poker players how to play poker and how to win poker tournaments. Well, I would like first to tell you folks that today I teach poker-a lot better than I play poker.

I have been playing poker for over 70 years and that's a long period of time to do most anything. In my long lifetime, I have done most everything, seen most everything, heard most everything, been most everywhere, had my foot caught in a lot of traps, got out of the traps and snares of life with a few scars of the battles...
...And have played in a lot of poker games.

World Series of Poker Champion Doyle Brunson's Online Poker and Charlie Shoten's No- Limit Life are new arrivals in poker literature and both have value for those who are serious about improving their game.

Gambling in Illinois has a long and infamous history.

Havana, Illinois was known as Little Reno because of Al Capone's development of floating casinos on the Illinois River. In the mid- 1930s, the Nitti gang ran casino games in Calumet City and Cicero, and this continued under Accardo and Ricca in the 1950s. In 1953, state troopers raided 14 casinos and taverns in Mason County, ending gambling in that area. Eventually the Mafia influence on gambling in the Chicago area decreased and legal lotteries and riverboat gambling sprung up.

Hobby was driving his Silver Cloud Rolls to Hollywood Park since valets there were likely to conviently leave it out front as a showpiece. It's a short drive from Marina Del Rey to the racetrack, hardly time for me to study the Daily Racing Form for the nags in the first race. Not fair to disparage them however, they were just unproven 3 year-old maidens. My late uncle Victor was good at selecting winners of all stripes, especially those who never made it into the money. For many years he sold his cards of Vic's Picks at southern California racetracks.