Every year, I look forward to the most prestigious, most meaningful, and most important tournament of the year: the World Series of Poker. Here in Vegas, at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino, it's that time of the year! The Amazon Room at the Rio is filled with poker tables, roughly 200 of them in nice even rows, and four other rooms also are dedicated to the WSOP this year. Trust me, they need the space, because the fields in 2008 have been immense.

Your opponent -- perhaps sensing weakness or perhaps taking leave of his senses -- pushes out a huge bet and dares you to call. If he has the hand he's supposed to have, you're crushed. But you think something is amiss and decide that this is it. You're going to take a stand. Just after you say, "Call," your opponent shakes his head and says, "You win," as he tosses his cards into the muck.

Most of the time, a new student of mine will err on both sides of correct play, sometimes being too bold and other times too cautious. However, the fellow who gave me this hand to analyze does not fall into that mold. Rather, he has the constant problem of being overly pessimistic. As a result, he wins less money than he should, even though on a given hand he may get a better result than someone who has a rosier outlook. Here is a hand he sent me, with my comments inserted at various points. (Our correspondence is slightly edited for better clarity.)

For many years, poker authors have advocated aggression as one of the key elements for success in tournament poker. The correctness of this advice was proven by the fact that aggressive players won more than their fair share of tournaments, mostly at the expense of the more conservative players, who were unwilling to gamble and held on to the old adage, "When in doubt, fold." While most of these poker authors have emphasized selective aggression, many successful players nowadays employ a very loose-aggressive approach that is close to what we used to call "maniacal." This seems to be particularly true of young Internet players, who tend to play an awful lot of hands, three-bet very liberally, and use the all-in shove on a rather frequent basis.

No-limit hold'em players are well aware of the strong influence that stack size has on betting. Any problem posed in regard to your decision of how to play a hand needs to specify your stack size and your opponent's. Most bets and raises in no-limit approximate the pot size. Let's...

For the past hour, seat 9 had been running over our $5-$10 no-limit hold'em game. He had dark shades and a mean-looking goatee, and combined with his calm and controlled manner, he created a pretty intimidating presence. His massive chip stack certainly helped. He had more than $3,000 in front of him, while no one else had more than $2,000.

The sheer size of the drawing hands in Omaha has a dramatic effect on the dynamics of the game. In no-limit hold'em, a player with an open-end straight draw may be reluctant to bet into a field out of fear of getting raised an amount that he can't call. But in pot-limit Omaha (PLO), the combination of the size of the draws and the restrictions of the pot-limit betting structure means that it is virtually impossible to price you out of the pot, and thus you can bet the 13-card nut-straight draws and bigger without fearing a raise.

When was the last time you three-barrel bluffed? Was it months ago? Years? Never? Let me back up a bit. A three-barrel bluff is when you make a bluff bet on all three of the post-flop streets. You bet the flop and get called. You bet the turn and get called. And then you make another bluff on the river.

As I drove my rental car along the beautifully scenic coastal road, Route 90, toward Biloxi, I was happy to see that Hurricane Katrina had not devastated the 15 miles of pristine sand beaches and the picturesque little offshore islands with palm trees -- set in the azure Gulf waters. Some of us consider that Mississippi coastline even more beautiful than the drive along the French Riviera.