Jia Liu, a 23 year old mechanic from Brooklyn, had his poker wrench working as he captured Event No. 1 of the 2009 US Poker Championship at the Trump Taj Mahal, a $300 + $40 buy-in no-limit hold 'em event that attracted 154 players and created a prize pool of $46,200. First place resulted in a payout of $15,708 to Jia, who said he would spend some of the money playing future live tournaments.

Gabriel Cook, a 32-year-old special education high school teacher from Terre Haute, Indiana plays only two or three tournaments a year and occasionally flies to Vegas for a shot at the World Series. This year he played one satellite, won a seat into the $5,000 main event, and won it after a very wild ride.

I'd been playing in a small tournament at Commerce, but I couldn't get my head into the game because my back was killing me. I made a couple self-destructive bets and was relieved to give up my remaining chips to head for the lounge. This wasn't the first time I'd had incredible pain in my back, hips, and legs. For relief I sat and bent forward from the waist, touching my toes; I couldn't do that at the poker table. I was doing these exercises when Hobby showed up.

"What's happening, Joe? I saw you leave the table a while ago. You look like hell. Are you sick?"

Here's a formula for counting the total number of possible starting Omaha hands. This chart shows how a mathematician would calculate the number of starting hands for any four-card combination where order does not matter. You'll find more than 204 times as many starting hands as you would in hold 'em, which has only 1,326.

While the World Series of Poker's main event moves concludes at the Rio in Las Vegas-and it's certainly the biggest and most significant single poker event of the year-it's not the only poker tournament we're covering this issue.

Wow! was my reaction while reading the Sept. 14 issue of Poker Player Newspaper. No wonder PPN is the most widely read poker publication. (This is proven by the fact that, of the many poker publications for which I have written over the years, the responses from readers to my columns in PPN far exceed all the others!)

Each column had important information that most poker players seek: How to be a better, more profitable player. Here's my comments on some of the columns that make the issue so WOW!!!

Over the last few weeks my good friend Aaron had been in a poker slump. Normally a big winner in any game he plays, his usual positive results have recently been lackluster at best. Yesterday he sat in a $2 - $5 blind no-limit hold 'em game that he described as "pretty good." In middle position, after two players limped, he raised to $35 with Jd-Jh. Earl, on the button, and the two limpers called. All the players started the hand with about $500.

Mike Caro claims the "Essential soul of poker is deception." When you are involved with skilled, observant players, applying deception and varying your play is necessary, otherwise they'll take advantage of your predictability. If your opponents are playing a lot of hands, then many of those are probably weak, so they're not applying good judgment.

A staggering $51,652,800 was up for grabs at PokerStars' 2009 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP). The annual event expanded to 45 tournaments in which 44,000 different players from 140 different countries competed. Americans dominated the field, winning 25 bracelets, with other champions hailing from the UK, Germany, Canada, Spain, Finland, Sweden, Brazil, France, Greece, Netherlands, and Slovakia. Yevgeniy "Jovial Gent" Timoshenko won the main event championship for a $1.7 million score.

Returning to raisin' 'n' chasin', in this column we examine your situation when you hit a pair. You will recall our previous column where we raised in late position with the 6d-5d and with three limpers. The Big Blind called, and the three limpers also called (as usual). Of course, with suited connectors you always hope to hit at least a 15-out flop. Dame Fortune doesn't smile so broadly very often: about 26 percent of the time you'll flop a measly pair.