Twenty bucks can get you a lot of things: two movie tickets, a good meal, a DVD, a half-full gas tank … you get the idea. Well, Card Player is about to offer something a bit more exciting for that same 20 bucks - access to its new membership poker community that provides opportunities to participate in freeroll tournaments, find new poker friends, earn badges of achievement, and get free content. Oh, and we're also giving away more than $100,000 every month. You read that right. We're not very good with exchange rates.

Bobby Hoff, known as "The Wizard" for his ability to make his opponents' chips disappear, has been playing poker for almost 50 years. The old-school gambler is a fixture in Southern California cardrooms and his game of choice is no-limit hold'em. Hoff is held in the highest regard by his fellow cash-game players due to his consistent results. Dan Harrington's highly anticipated book Harrington on Cash Games: Volume I, due out in early 2008, contains an extensive interview with Hoff, the man Harrington respects as poker's best cash-game player.

Tunica, Mississippi, has been a staple location of the World Poker Tour since it first started six seasons ago. While the annual stop has featured some of the most exciting final tables in televised poker history, recently, an oversaturation of tournaments and Tunica's rural location have caused a significant drop in attendance. In fact, ever since season three's record number of 512 players, Tunica has continued to regress into one of the more unadorned venues on tour. This year's field consisted of just 259 players, marking the third year in a row that the event failed to boast a first-place prize of at least $1 million.

As the 1944 election approached, the cardiologist treating FDR for congestive heart failure believed the crippled president had less than a year to live. While the prognosis remained a closely guarded secret, ordinary citizens could see the darkness beneath Roosevelt's eyes and how badly his hands shook, though with the war very much undecided, a majority still hoped to retain their commander in chief.

This past month has been a busy one in regard to poker milestones. First, on Feb. 1, Gavin Griffin scored one of the most impressive achievements in recent poker history. By winning his first World Poker Tour title (the 2008 Borgata Winter Open), he became the first player to win poker's triple crown: a WPT title, a World Series of Poker gold bracelet (2004 pot-limit hold'em), and a European Poker Tour title. The EPT has seen tremendous growth over the past two years, thanks to PokerStars and other online sites sending tons of players to the events, and Griffin, who won the 2007 Grand Final championship event and $2.4 million, is the reigning champ. Congratulations, Gavin!

While shooting the finale of a new reality show, the Best Damn Poker Show, featuring Annie Duke and me, my friend Carl Westcott went crazy! First of all, a word about the new show. It airs on FSN (Fox Sports Net), and features 36 players, six of whom are sent home on the first show. That is followed by a draft of nine players for "Team Hellmuth" and nine players for "Team Duke," followed by a series of "three vs. three" playoffs, and then a "three vs. three" finale. There are seven episodes in all. Annie and I see all of the holecards, we coach before, during, and after each match, and we have some pretty juicy fights along the way.

This column could easily turn into a four-part series if I went through all of the big hands I mucked in this tournament. Inasmuch as I have a lot to write about, I'm going to skip the three times I laid down pocket jacks preflop and go on to the three times I passed on pocket queens.

I am asked all the time for advice about poker as a life and as a business. I recommend that most people considering poker as a career not take it up. For one thing, as a general rule, people who consider abandoning what else they have in life for poker tend to be relatively new players who have in fact been outperforming their expectations. They are typically running well, with the deck and lineup situations favoring them, and are in for something of a rude awakening when the cards break even. Also, many have developed expectations based on a game environment and economy that were much juicier during the Internet/TV/economic boom of 2002-2005 than the long-term situation is likely to be.

When working with novices, I assure them that they can still make money even though they are novice players. At the lower limits, choosing the right games and the right starting hands is enough to get you in the black. But I tell them that to obtain true long-term success, and to move past the "beginner" level, one of the most important skills they need to acquire is what I refer to as double vision.