Poker can be great fun played with play money or even with a few cents at www.pokerstars.com. However, if you want to have a better game and be a better player, you have to play for higher stakes, maybe a "Cash Game" with blinds at 2 and 5 cents or a "Sit and Go Mini Tournament" for a dollar or two.

There's lots of advice by pros on how to play the game properly. Personally, I like the commentators who do Pokerstar's "Big Game". On each hand, there is commentary of the choices that each player could make. Afterwords, they go behind big hands and get the reasoning from the pros on doing this or that. This is on the job learning without risking anything.

For the last two years, I've been a losing poker player. I learned a great deal about the game from the internet and TV, but I had certain bad habits that were doing me in.

1. When I had a bad beat, I started taken risky chances to get back in the game. I would steam from one game to another trying to break even. The game was controlling me. Now, I'll play one or two games in the evening and win or lose, that's it, no more for the day.
2. I would play a higher stake game in order to win back money that I lost at a lower stake game. Sometimes it would work, but often I just continued to lose. Now, I treat myself to a higher stake game when my bankroll is reasonably high.
3. I continued to learn more about clever/aggressive poker and my win percentage increased.
4. I've learned to be patient with games that can go on for hours. I play to win right to the bitter end or badbeat.
5. The only consistent thing about luck is that it will change. The player who's lucky at the beginning of the game, probably will be unlucky at the end. I like to go after a player who relies on unbelievable luck to win.
6. There's certain hands like QJ or K10 that you have to be careful with and medium size pairs like 88 that can do you in. Be willing to fold on a reraise if you a suspect a powerful hand like QQ,KK,AA.
7. If your chips go down quite a bit, you have to take bigger chances. After all, the name of the game is "Play To Win".

For the last three months, I've been playing with other pokerplayers money at Full Tilt and Pokerstars. I'm not trying to win a lot. I'm trying to play my best game each time out.

Poker pros like Tommy G and Barry Greenstein give much of their winnings to charity. I'd love to be in a postion to do something like that.