Men Nguyen added another bracelet to his already impressive collection in this year’s World Series of Poker by besting the beastly 7-card stud field. This makes bracelet number seven for Men, and moves him into a sixth-place tie with Phil Ivey and Billy Baxter, and only a few back from uberlegends like Doyle Brunson and Phil Hellmuth.

The money Men picked up was undoubtedly of lesser importance than the history-making bracelet, but Nguyen’s $394,800 take-home is still nothing to sneeze at. As the final table shrunk, the crowd began to pay more attention to the Players Champion opponents of a week previous, Vladimir Schmelev and Michael Mizrachi. But in a rare break from his table poise, Men took on a little of Scotty’s air and began riling the crowd up with some banter.

It was a clean sweep for Men, handling the final table until he sat heads up with Brandon Adams. Men had the chip stack and refused to come off a hand. The cards were on his side for much of the match, and even when they weren’t, Men approached the game fearlessly and caught a five-outer on seventh street.

Men is known as “The Master” for a reason. Whether he’s schooling amateur donkeys on best online casinos or suiting up in the WSOP to take down fellow professionals, he’s forever a hard nut to crack.

There are still dozens of events left in the WSOP, including the Main Event. Men’s running hot at the moment, and has just increased his odds in the big one. The world should be on the lookout as Men appears hungry for bracelet number eight.

It was abut 2005, and the internet poker boom was in full swing, but poker was by no means in it’s infancy even then. I was playing mainly two and three table sng’s at 888 and I was doing very well and cashing out nice and regularly.

But sometimes, like most players, I would switch to a cash game just for the heck of it. (I like cash, it’s where I came from).

So one night I was sat at a half empty 10 seat low stakes cash games and not doing so good. It was a mid week night and so you would expect that it would be a bit slow. Slow nights at slow tables tend to make the regular players a bit chatty, so there was a nice feeling at the table, with a bit of friendly chat and banter.

The players hadn’t changed much in a few hours, one dropping in or out every now and again, when suddenly two new players sat down within seconds of each other. It was habit back then, not so much now, to say hi to new players at a certain type of table, to keep the friendliness alive. So one of the seated players said ‘hi’ but got no answer.

Fair enough, not every one want s to chat, or even speaks English, so nothing unusual there.

After a few minutes, and a hand or two had passed, one of the players said ‘You ready?’ – just like that, didn’t make too much sense in the context of no conversation at the table. It does happen that a player that was multi-tabling would type into the wrong chat box by mistake. So nothing too unusual really, just a bit odd.

The the other new player said ‘OK’. That was it, nothing else. No one had spoken, so that too was out of context.

After the next few hands it became clear what was going on. These two geniuses had figured that by selecting the ‘ignore chat’ option on all the players that we wouldn’t be able to see what they were typing to each other.

And so they proceeded to tell each other what cards they were holding. In every hand.

That was some of the easiest money that I ever made at the poker table.

Having put your money in the pot, it can be very very difficult to throw your cards in, even when you know you probably should.

The ability to lay down cards that have lost their value will be one of the biggest earning traits of a good poker player. More so than most other advice, the advice to stop chasing will save you more cash than any of the other poker tips you will ever get.

Like I said in an earlier post about paying attention, when you have a premium hand like pocket aces, and you bet it out properly and are up against one or two remaining players, and the flop comes all wrong, with they suited cards or the bones of a high end straight, or trip kings, or any of a number of horrible set ups, the lay down here will save you – and saving is earning – the most money. And of course if you can not lay your hand down, simply because “I’m in now so I have to stay in”, then it will cost you the most money.

You do have to be careful of being bluffed off of a good hand because of a horrible flop, but if you have bet your hand correctly and read the table properly from the beginning then you should know when you are beat, and act accordingly.

It happens again and again, when a new player of a certain type gets involved in the online poker world. I’m not too sure what that type is. It would not be fair to say ‘criminal’ when it is more likely the notion that there is no accountability that is the driving thought behind trying to cheat at poker.

It is probably part of the whole ‘the internet is anonymous’ thinking – thinking that leads to perfectly ordinary people behaving in a disgusting and vulgar way when on a public forum. I’m sure you know what I am talking about.

Well, anyway, when a certain type of player stumbles upon online poker, they soon start to see the angles. One of the first such angle is that they think if they had a buddy at the table then they would have a serious advantage over the other players. So, using instant messenger, or simply having another computer in their house, they set out to collude at the poker table and get rich, and quick.

Yes, it does happen, and probably every day. But the internet is not a new place any more. There are billion dollar companies operating out there on the net, and many of those billion dollar companies are online gaming companies, such as poker rooms.

These companies have a valuable product, and one big part of that product is it’s perception – that is, if it is not seen as safe and secure, it will not last very long.

So these online poker sites spend a lot of money investing in technology and skills to make sure that their product is safe and secure. That means that they are able to detect cheating in all it’s forms, and not just collusion. But certainly detecting collusion is one of their primary concerns.

And they are very good at it. When a billion-dollar product is at stake, you can bet that you either get very good at protecting it, or you go under.

So yes, it happens every day. And yes, those that try it not only get caught and banned, but they also lose whatever money they had in their poker account when they got banned. And they get blacklisted. So, good luck with that.

The rooms in question include PlayerOnly Poker, and SportsBook poker.

I couldn’t really say what this will mean for the Cake network, though losing those skins and their players surely can’t be a good thing. And that is exactly what it is for the Merge Network. Not only is it good news, it’s great news.

The Merge software is outstanding in my opinion. The biggest drawback about this network has always been the low player numbers, and the attendant difficulty in getting a game at your preferred stakes.

But with the influx of players from the newly added skins, the traffic numbers should explode. So ok it won’t be as big as Poker Stars just yet, but it will make getting a game a whole lot easier. And this should make Merge a serious competitor and top ten network real quick.

The biggest room on the Merge network is Carbon Poker which is one of the original rooms from before it became a big network. While I never really liked the name too much, Carbon is by far the best room on the network in terms of promotions.

Sure it looks good, on TV or in the movies, when you bluff the bad guy off of a massive pot and then you turn over your rags and everyone admires you as a hero and an all round good guy. And you get the girl (or boy).

But bluffing in real poker is not like that at all. In fact, though this is just my personal opinion, bluffing is not about the cards at all, it is about you at the table.

When you sit at a table you are making one big bluff. You are representing yourself as a player. Play for long enough and play solidly and you will be seen as a player. Represent yourself all the time. Whatever image you have chosen – that is your bluff.

Playing solid poker and getting a reputation for that will win you more money with poor cards than any showy big-pot bluff will ever do.

If yo can’t buy that advice, then just take it that it is a mis-conception that poker is all about the bluff. Poker is all about the money. Whatever puts the money into your stack is what is important.

Even the best players will have a run of bad luck, the deck will be cold and nothing they do can change that.

But what they, and you, can change when luck turns against you, is how much damage this does to your bankroll, and your poker playing future.

By playing within your limits and practicing good bankroll management, you can plan to out-run or out-play your unlucky streak, and still have enough funds in your bank to be able to stage a comeback once the bad times are over.

Another very good reason for playing at limits that you are comfortable with is that there won’t be any extra pressure on you. When you play with money that you can not afford to lose you will find it very difficult to be comfortable at the table. The stress of knowing that you will be screwed if you lose will make winning all the harder.

Of course, you may want to play at limits that make you sweat. That may be your thing; if so, you most likely have a problem somewhere in your life.

Play within your limits. Move up only when you have doubled your bankroll. Move down when the cards turn against you. Doing this will put you on a path to being a winning player.

Wake up and pay attention.

Many many players think that the cards they have in their hand are the most important element of a game of poker, and those many many players are very very wrong.

The cards that you are dealt are one of the least important aspects of your poker game. What is far more important is the cards that the other players have been dealt.

You may say that it is impossible to know what cards have been dealt to the other players, and you would of course be wrong.

By paying attention to what is happening at the table, what the other players are doing, and, just as important, what the other players are not doing, you can get a good idea of who has what.

Just because you are not in a hand does not mean that you can drift off, check out a forum, read a blog post, check your email, anyone of the millions of things that you do online. When you are not involved in a hand is a perfect time to watch the other players and see exactly how they behave on whatever hand it is that they are holding.

Look around you. Watch what is happening all the time. It will not only make you more money, but you will enjoy the game a lot more, and more importantly, you will learn an awful lot.

I want to stress the importance of looking beyond what cards are in your hand. You will often see that a player who has been dealt a premium hand, such as pocket aces, will ignore a threatening flop and go to the river with cards that became unplayable – and un-winnable, long before the river card was dealt.

Pocket aces are no good when a flush or straight draw has developed on the board and someone is betting hard. Watch everything, all the time.

That means don’t play angry, but also when sad, depressed, annoyed, confused, or any other emotional state where your emotions are in charge of you, instead of you being in charge of your emotions.

So if you have had a bad day at work, got called out by the boss, or have just had a row with your significant other, playing some online poker to blow off steam is probably not the wisest decision that you could make.

Assuming that you can have enough self control to recognize when you are not in a fit emotional state to play poker and you can make the adult decision to not play right now, that still leaves the situation where you are in a balanced state of mind when you start playing, but something happens at the tables that causes you to lose your self control.

In other words, you start tilting. For whatever reason, a bad draw, an unlucky river card, some donkey sucks out on a runner runner straight, your pocket aces get cracked for the third time, whatever.

It doesn’t matter what caused you to tilt, now you have to be the grown up and take control of this situation. Playing on tilt can be seriously damaging to your bankroll. And only you can stop it.

Not only is it dangerous to your stack, but the other, more savvy players at the table will recognize that you are on tilt, and some of them will start to push your buttons a bit more in order to get you to donk off your chips to them.

When this happens you have got to walk away. Take a break for a few minutes. Even better, take a break for the nigh. There will always be another day to play – if you can keep your bankroll intact til that day comes, of course.

So this is the best advice you will ever get for managing your tilting; whatever caused you to lose your cool, it happens to everyone. At some time, those bad beats that you just experienced, they happened to other players. And they will happen again, and in all likelihood they will happen again to YOU at some time in the future.

This stuff happens in online poker. The difference between winners and losers is that winners realize that this stuff happens and they are ready to deal with it. Losers play through the tilt. Which do you want to be?

#2. Don’t Play when drunk.

Drunk includes any form of inebriation, but it also includes any other thing that can affect your mental or emotional state.

Trying to play good poker after having had an enormous row with your wife or girlfriend, boyfriend or all of them, can be detrimental to your bankroll just as much as if you have had too much to drink.

Having said that, a lot of poker players like to have a drink while they play, especially online.

If that is your thing, then by all means have a drink or two while playing.  There is a big difference between having a couple of drinks to relax and being drunk. Generally, the best advice here is to be sure that your current mental state is suited to playing your best game of poker.

One of the most important reasons for being in control of your mental state when playing relates to our poker tip #1 Playing less and winning more.  Even though you may be playing less hands they still have to be reasonably good hands, or you need to be a reasonably good card player, in order for this advice to help you to win more at online poker.

As an online poker player you must always be aware that you need to protect your online bankroll.  Doing anything that might put that needlessly in jeopardy is to be avoided, and that certainly includes not playing while drunk, but also includes anything that can have a bad affect on your ability to judge what is happening at the table, and how it relates to you and your cards.

If you are already drunk, and must absolutely play poker or you don´t know what will happen, you could always consider playing at the play money tables that most, if not all, online card rooms have available.

I realize that advice probably won’t suit most cash game players though, so my next best suggestion for protecting your bankroll while playing when drunk is to limit your games to only multi-table tournaments, and keep the buy ins reasonably low.  Low enough so that losing a few of them won’t cripple your online poker life, but not so low as you won’t take the game seriously.

If you don’t think that either of those tips will be of any help to you, then my last suggestion is that if you know that you will be drunk, and will be unable to resist the temptation to start playing at some point, then before all this happens I suggest that you log in to your poker account and withdraw most of your bankroll, only leaving whatever amount you would be comfortable with losing.