Welcome to our latest issue. This one is packed with articles you’ll want to spend some serious time with – and your game will thank you for it. 

Besides the latest tournament reports from the WPT Borgata and World Poker Open, the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure and even the European Poker Tour, there are numerous articles from experts and pros that can take your game to the next level. Even if you discover just one profit-making idea you had never thought of before, then that article was worth reading.  

In fact, if you only gain one glimmer of insight from reading the entire issue – and believe me, there are a lot of glimmers here – then it was time well spent. Poker skills are built on a foundation of just such insights – a few fresh ideas that while simple, could have eluded you for years. Sometimes it only takes a few changes to take your game from a money-losing pastime to a very profitable one. 

Check out the article on $1-$2 no-limit cash games for tips on how to avoid traps (page 68), and on page 70 sit-n-go expert Collin Moshman tells you how to use special software to rev up your single-table tournament game. The Online Fox reveals the importance of thinking ahead during a hand, and Tony Guerrera steps up with solid concepts on short-handed NL cash games. Antonio “The Magician” Esfandiari discusses a big hand he played against Danny Negreanu – a hand he played right, but still lost.

There is definitely a lesson there!  There is one important thing top pros like Esfandiari have that you probably don’t, besides their world-class skills: They are sponsored.  

Sponsorship is the holy grail for today’s tournament players, and while the wearing of logos like some race-car driver seems anything but cool to old-school backroom players such as myself, in today’s high-priced tournament scene – where a year’s worth of buy-ins and expenses can run hundreds of thousands of dollars – sponsorship can be the difference between lighting your cigars with Benjamins and being stone-cold broke. Sponsorship allows you to play with other people’s money and that, to me, has always been Priority 1 in poker.  

Fortunately, today you no longer have to be a big-name pro to be sponsored. Read our in-depth piece on sponsorship on page 24 and find out how to do it.

John “Johnny Quads” Wenzel

Editor-in-Chief