He's one of the most recognizable faces in the UK poker circuit and may also be reasonably well known in Vegas, considering he's visited there several times a year for most of the last two decades. In fact not long ago, Neil Channing estimated that he'd spent a total of two years of his life in Sin City.

Amarillo Slim Preston, among others, has been quoted as saying "Poker is a game of people," and to a lesser extent about cards.

If this is true, and poker players generally take this as an axiom, then we must conclude that the history of poker is much more about the people who played the game than the hands they played. Certainly, this is the approach taken by Des Wilson throughout his examination of the history of the game in his book, "Ghosts at the Table."

In Part 1 of this series, we discussed three styles of players whose talent was to follow the curse of the Greek stories of Sisyphus, Tantalus, or Hercules. That's because they only know how to create crises an t the poker table and will try harder, will tantalize themselves with how good they'd like to be, or will keep making the same mistakes. We called them:

1. The Try Harders.
2. The Double Bind players.
3. The Zero Sum players.

Here are at least four other types of players whose main skill is creating crises at the table. They are:

4. The Peddlers.
5. The Addicts.

I penned several columns some time ago describing my use of "Poker Posers" in coaching players who are aspiring to improved performance. A poker poser is simply a scenario that puts the student in a situation and then asks the question " what do you do now, and why would you do it?

One of my favorite sayings is that we act based on our perception of reality, not on reality itself. Take this hand played by David. He was in Seat No. 7 of a nine-handed, $1-$2 blinds, no-limit game. He had $200 in his stack, about the table average. Pre-flop, David raised to $12 and was called only by John in Seat No. 5 (he thought). John had limped prior to calling. What David hadn't noticed is that Linda in Seat No. 1 had, from the big blind, called David's raise.

When playing poker, I try to avoid lines of play that lead through minefields of tricky situations. But avoiding all tricky situations is impossible. One potentially tricky situation is playing decent-but not great-hands out of position (OOP) in no-limit hold'em.

A half a world away, in a land quite different from the world I live in, construction cranes soar to the sky amid a building pit unlike any I've seen before. With two of the largest casino projects in the world set to open in 2009 or 2010, legal gaming-and hopefully poker-will soon arrive in Singapore.

You are in the exact position you have been dreaming of. The final two tables of the big, live tournament have thinned to almost one. You know that a final table finish will do a ton for your confidence and, of course, assure sizable price money. With enough chips to coast to the final table in front of you, the images of a nice payday are already dancing in your head.

The big stack at the table limps from early position. You pause to consider the motivation of his move. Before you can gather your thoughts, the guy in front of you peeks at his cards and immediately acts with a bold raise.

In my opinion, after Nevada, California, and Oklahoma, Florida is now the fourth best state for low-limit poker. It has not always been so. In 1996 Florida legalized poker-sort of. They allowed games of minimal stakes, so small that the size of the entire pot could not get above $10. Players would bet 25 cents or 50 cents until the pot grew to $10; and then all betting would cease, with the dealer dealing out the remaining cards with no betting.

It was pretty silly, and the rake was an enormous percentage of the pot. Serious players stayed away.

Worth Reading More Than Once Russell Fox, co-author of two previously well-respected poker books, Mastering No-Limit Hold'em and Why You Lose at Poker-both with Scott Harker-has now teamed with Nick Christenson for a book that could be this year's blockbuster. It's Winning Strategies for No-Limit Hold'em, focusing on some advanced concepts that few books have yet covered in depth.