Read this issue to get the poker news of exactly 25 years ago. Read great columns with superb strategies, or just to take a trip down memory lane. It's a truly exciting issue! The biggest names in poker discuss ways to make your game even better, including: Mike Caro's bi-weekly tell, David Sklansky, Stu Jacobs, Bobby Baldwin, A Man Called Doc, Tex Sheahan, Rex Jones, M. Wiesenberg, and Doyle Brunson. Go to www.pokerplayernewspaper.com to read this issue in its entirety.

Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa's fourth annual Borgata Summer Poker Open concluded with Philadelphian Anthony Damato winning the $3,000 + $200 no-limit hold 'em championship, and taking home $356,319 for his efforts. The three-day championship offered a prize pool of $1,245,000.

Damato outlasted Newark, DE, resident Michael Walls along with a field of over 400 poker pros and amateurs to secure the title of Borgata Summer Poker Open Champion. Walls came in second, winning $192,975.

Since this is the 145th installment of Improving Performance, if you've been a regular reader then you would know my answer to the title's question, is tight really right? I've probably intoned over the last five years that in limit hold 'em, tight is right at least one hundred and forty five times!

Sometimes, events get billed as the greatest show on Earth-no disrespect to legendary showman and circus owner P.T. Barnum-but those lofty events often fail to live up to the hype and expectations. When the "durrrr Challenge" was announced in January, many folks in poker, myself included, thought that those heads-up matches between Tom "durrrr" Dwan and his challengers would become the greatest invention in the world since sliced bread. However, after several months of sporadic play, the "durrrr Challenge" was not as sexy as everyone thought, that was, until one night in the middle of June.

I know a lot of smart players. By "smart" I don't mean, necessarily "good." I mean "smart" as in book smart. They got good grades in school. Maybe that's you. If it is, this article may help you see some inherent weaknesses in your game. But even if that doesn't describe you-even if you weren't a good student-this article should strengthen your game by showing you some of the weaknesses in the game of smart players that you can exploit.

Most casino regulatory systems are either too new or too old.

When a system is new, regulators and lawmakers have freedom to play at being social engineers. New regulators are often inflexible about allowing rules to change to match real-world experience. This is how you end up with docked riverboats throwing all their patrons off the ships at the end of phantom cruises.

But if a system is too old, regulators become captives of the casinos they are supposed to police.

This mixture of skill and chance makes poker different from other games of skill such as chess and go, where chance plays no element. The skill in poker has to do with understanding the nature of random events and being able to devise winning strategies in an environment run by random processes. It's amazing that games played with a deck of only 52 cards can foster decision-making skills applicable to all areas of life. It's a shame that many, including policy makers at the highest levels of governments, seemingly don't understand this.

The Bicycle Casino's Deepstack Mini Series championship event drew 208 players, creating a prize pool in excess of $100,000, with first place taking home $33,500 plus a $10,000 seat into the World Poker Tour/Legends of Poker tournament next month.

Amir Ghazvinian, a structural engineer who has been playing poker for four yearsâ€"ever since he moved to the Los Angeles area from Floridaâ€"was the winner when a chip count deal was reached with three players remaining. Ghazvinian was the chip leader by approximately 100,000 chips at that point and was declared the winner.

I appreciate the reception that my article on when not to play poker has received. One of my points was never to play when you are in a slump. Actually, as some of you have said, it's impossible to avoid slumps if you play a lot of poker. So, as a follow-up I thought that instead of avoiding playing poker when in a slump, that it would be better to list some techniques for surviving the inevitable poker slumps.

It started with the usual rumblings. Several players wrote on poker forums that their withdrawal payments from Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars were invalid. Checks were bouncing and funds transfers were not completing. But the number of complaints grew at an unusually rapid pace until it became a full-blown concern. Then the truth came out: More than $30 million in funds were seized from major U.S. banks, all of which pertained to online poker companies, and it was ordered by the Southern District of New York.