1. Barry Greenstein is very successful in tournaments, and is one of the kings of the Texas Holdem cash games. He donates all his tournament winnings, so one can just imagine what he makes in cash games.

2. Daniel Negreanu is the one of the best cash game and tournament Texas Holdem players. He is probably the best all-around Texas holdem player in Vegas.

3. Phil Ivey has won many tournaments and plays in the biggest cash games in Vegas. He started in Atlantic City, but you’re more likely to see him in Vegas these days.

4. Gus Hansen has been dominant both in cash games and in the tournament environment. His game has really evolved recently and he’s more dangerous than ever.

5. Phil Hellmuth is the best Texas Holdem tournament player in Vegas today, but not cash games. His 11 bracelets make him the No. 1 tournament player.

Most poker players know the best poker room in Vegas is at the Bellagio. They spread the widest selection of games there, but sometimes it can be hard to get on a Holdem table. Some players think that if you’re looking for Holdem action, the Wynn poker room might be a better option.

The new poker room at the Wynn has limit Holdem games starting at $4/8 and going to $100/200 and above. They also offer no-limit Texas Holdem starting at $1/3. They have 26 tables with most of them dedicated to holdem games. You can buy into a $1/3 no-limit game for $100 minimum, or $200 will get you a seat at $2/5 no-limit.

If you’re staying in the Wynn Hotel there is a poker perk. You can put your name on the waiting list and watch the queue on the in-house poker channel right in your room.

It’s been a mystery why the most popular form of poker has not been available in the new gaming hotbed of Macau. The resort has been growing by leaps and bounds, but until recently poker was not on the menu. But good action has a way of finding avid gamers, and holdem has landed in China. This past week the Chinese government authorized local casinos to offer Texas Holdem action, so it’s game on in Asia.

The first casino that will offer Texas Holdem is the Grand Lisboa, the flagship casino of Sociedade de Jogos de Macau. They will start with four tables and will see how local players respond. The other Vegas-based companies in Macau are fully expected to follow suit, and Texas Holdem should soon be available throughout the resort. This could be the first step towards another poker boom in the massive Asia gaming market.

Learning to play Texas Holdem is only educational to a degree. You can read books and follow strategies that other professionals write about, and most of this information is good. But playing poker the way someone else tells you to will only take you so far. To become an elite player you have to develop your own style and a skill-set that fits your own persona. Originality is a powerful weapon if you have the intellect to develop some at the tables.

The best poker players are able to make decisions based on more than just their cards and what mathematics and strategy may dictate. A good poker player is factoring every piece of information available during a game, and playing at a level above cards and bets. Learn what’s successful for you and play your game. Following your instincts will add an important factor to your game, on top of the strategy.

1. Learn patience – learn to play calm and not through emotion. You have to learn to face adversity and bad luck and still continue to play to the best of your abilities.

2. Learn to trap – read and practice the skill of trapping aggressive opponents into dumping chips to you. Slow play big hands and let over-aggressive players bet large sums into you.

3. Learn which game is best for you – learn the appropriate size of game your bankroll can support, and when you’re at a game that’s hard to beat. Be diligent about finding a beatable game.

4. Learn positional play – learn how to use position to your advantage, and to help you make decisions about opponent’s actions.

5. Learn to put opponents on hands – practice the skill of guessing your opponent’s hands through betting patterns and physical gestures. Remember how players play certain hands so you can recognize it later.

For no-limit limit holdem the most important skills a player can have are patience and hand-reading abilities. Having patience includes good starting-hand selection, as well as waiting for trapping situations and the nut hand. It also includes having the sense to fold second-best hand when certain players make large bets. A patient player always plays in the proper-sized game for their bankroll, and they don’t tilt out when they experience a run of bad luck.

Having the ability to read hands includes using betting patterns and memory to guesstimate what an opponent might be holding. It means that certain actions from certain players will point to them holding certain cards. This ability comes with experience and continues to improve the longer one plays the game.

If you can train your abilities in those two skills, you should have success in today’s over-aggressive no-limit holdem tables.

Showing your cards is not something that I would recommend very often. Showing your opponents a bluff is an ever rarer situation. I can only think of two situations where I would show a bluff.

1. If I’m on the short stack and I want some action. If the table was a little too tight for my liking I would make a raise or two pre-flop with junk, and show them if everyone kept folding. I would do this to induce some action and make it appear that I’m a bit reckless.

2. To play a mind game on a particular opponent. If I’m in a hand with an emotional guy that thinks long and hard, only to muck out of fear, I might show him the bluff if I think it would throw him off in future hands. Some players will let a poor decision eat away at them and put them on tilt.

Read more about bluffing in Bodog’s Guide to Playing Poker: When to Bluff at an Online Poker Table

The first WSOP Europe begins this week on September 6th at the LCI Leicester Casino. The events will be played at three different venues; the LCI Leicester Square, The Sportsman Casino and the Fifty.

The WSOP at LCI Leicester Casino consists of a three-day 2500-pound H.O.R.S.E tournament. They’ll also host some of the $10,000 main event players until the number shrinks down to a number the Fifty can handle for the later stages of the tournament.

The WSOP at the Sportsman Casino has the 5000-pound Pot Limit Omaha Championship. They will also share in the main event action until numbers reduce. The Fifty hosts the main event including the final table starting on September 10th.

Many top pros have pre-registered and the industry is looking to expand successfully into the fast-growing European poker market. Notable competitors include Phil Ivey, Allen Cunningham, Howard Lederer, Jennifer Harman, Gus Hanson, Doyle Brunson, Eric Seidel and Phil Hellmuth.

There aren’t really a lot of tells that a person gets from more than one player. Tells are not about eating Oreo cookies when you have the nuts. It’s tough to apply that to every opponent.

It’s more about watching how an opponent plays for awhile, and then recognizing when they’re making a bluff or if they have the goods.

The size of the bet made is the most common tell as to what an opponent may have. If an opponent makes a bet that’s out of character, it’s usually a bluff of some type. Oversize bets are the loose player’s way to steal a pot, and only top-level opponents will bet like this when they have a monster.

You have to take mental notes of how a player acts in a certain situation, and then take advantage of the next time they repeat that behavior in a similar one.

After a successful event in Stockholm, Sweden last summer, the World Poker Congress is coming together again in 2007. The 2007 World Poker Congress meetings were announced last week to be held at the Westin Dragonara Resort at St. Julian’s, Malta, from November 29-30.

For the second straight year the keynote speakers for the event will be WPT founder Steve Lipscomb and World Series of Poker commissioner Jeffrey Pollack. The World Poker Congress is described as a coming together of both the online and live poker industry to examine ways both worlds can work together to produce growth. With the changes in the landscape of poker both online and around the world in the last year, they should have plenty to talk about.

Some of the notable topics on the agenda at this year’s World Poker Congress include rakes, running tournaments, fraud, and one of the most important to both sides – ways to expand product range in today’s financial climate.

When it comes to the discussions on running tournaments, Jeffrey Pollack might want to take a few notes on ways to improve next year’s WSOP. The 2007 WSOP wasn’t run horribly, but when things went wrong they really went wrong. The bad cards fiasco and the idiotic poker tent idea were just a few of the problems that presented themselves at this year’s WSOP. If the player numbers begin growing again and even more people end up at the 2008 WSOP, there will need to be some big changes made in order to make things smoother for players, dealers and spectators.

The No. 1 thing on most attendees’ minds at the World Poker Congress will likely be how to expand their business. More business equals more money, which is of course what business is all about. Anyone who plays poker should be highly interested in what goes on at those talks. For poker to truly succeed and have a chance at getting fully into the U.S. market on sound legal ground, the best minds in poker need to devise plans and strategies and this looks like the best platform on which to do it.