The World Series of Poker is in full swing. The U.S. Government is still harassing poker players. And Phil Ivey is still better than you or me. Another big week in poker. There's way too much to cover, but here's my quick take on the most notable poker news from the past week.

World Series of Poker Action

It's Phil Ivey's world. Ivey won his sixth WSOP bracelet last week, taking down the no-limit deuce-to-seven lowball event. Widely regarded as one of the most feared high-stakes cash-game players in the world, Ivey has also won WSOP championships in seven-card stud, pot-limit Omaha, SHOE, and seven-card stud high-low split. So let's summarize: Ivey is one of the scariest no-limit hold'em players of all time, and can also crush anyone at stud, Omaha, lowball, or any mix of poker games. He plays regularly against the world's smartest, toughest, and richest opponents in cash games and wins. Ivey, contrary to the lame, quasi-racist moniker some have given him, isn't the "Tiger Woods of Poker," he's the Superman of poker… or the Zeus of poker… or maybe the Neo of poker... Pick your own comparison; just pick someone who isn't really from this planet.

Negreanu lives on Planet Ivey like the rest of us, but he's pretty good, too. Despite his recent High Stakes Poker meltdowns, he's been rolling in the 2009 WSOP. He's cashed in four of five events he's entered, and came close to winning his fifth bracelet in the six-handed limit hold 'em event, finishing second out of 367 players, then again in the Omaha Hi/Lo 8-or-better event, where he finished 4th.

More breaking WSOP News. Wicked Chops Poker broke this exclusive story last week: a hot woman in a bikini watched poker at the Rio. The Wicked Chops reporting staff was all over this shocking development. And just like that, another WSOP legend was born.

Live Final Tables > ESPN's edited, abridged Final Tables. As I noted last week, you can watch many of the WSOP final tables live on the web this year. I watched Negreanu's limit hold'em final table and heads-up battle on bluffmagazine.com. Not only was it cool to watch a final table, unedited and uninterrupted, but it was interesting to see it all without the "hole card cam" to let you know what players had. It put you in the same shoes as the players, trying to figure out what cards players held and what their bets meant. Why was Daniel frowning? Did he really miss that river? Or was he trying to trick Brock into a raise? Fascinating stuff. Also, the commentary is much more sedate and calm; less cutesy, personality-fueled banter. Between now and the end of the weekend, you can watch five WSOP final tables online. Not that you had anything better to do...

General Poker tidbits

Didn't we vote for Change? The New York Times, Associated Press, and PocketFives report that "the federal government has frozen more than $30 million in the accounts of payment processors that handle the winnings of thousands of online poker players." Just when we thought the UIGEA was almost dead, it comes back screeching like Glenn Close at the end of Fatal Attraction. Hopefully Barney Frank and the Democratic Congress can finally undo this ridiculous piece of George Bush's legacy.

More anti-poker idiocy. Wait, it gets worse. Last week, police in Buxton, Maine raided a charity poker tournament for a community food co-op and seized the money being raised to help the needy:

State police seized cards, poker chips and $500 in cash -- money the food co-op desperately needed.

A member of the co-op, Joann Groder, said she is very, very sad about what happened.

"We've had a lot of people who come here -- people who are out of work, people who have cancer. We have a lot of people," said Groder.

Yeah, Ms. Groder, but your rogue, sinister organization was running a poker game without a permit! Anarchy would ripple across New England if people were allowed to enjoy themselves and play cards without government approval...

Just to be clear: it's legal to purchase a bunch of semi-automatic rifles in Maine without a permit, but you need a special government license to put together a friendly poker tournament to raise money for the poor? Can someone, anyone, please explain this to me?

Oh, right... that's why I don't play much limit hold'em. Like many players, I first got introduced to hold'em playing limit poker, before shifting into no-limit and tournament play. Limit poker at a casino can be fun: it's a more friendly, social game than no-limit. You square off against a mix of tourists, salty retirees, and drunk blackjack table refugees. You're still playing to win, but the stakes and pressure don't weigh on you. You can sit at a limit table for hours, drinking, relaxing, playing cards, chatting with other players, and it's often just a happy place to be. For kicks the other night, I logging into a small-stakes limit table on Poker Stars. I immediately started losing chips like a bag of cool ranch Doritos at a Grateful Dead show. No bet or raise could chase players off long-shot draws. And then I lost three big pots when opponents hit, respectively, a six-outer, a four-outer, and a three-outer to crack my hands. I love poker. But beyond the bad beats, it was just dull poker. Online limit hold'em lacks the thrills of no-limit or tournament play, as well as the engaging human element of a live limit table. It was both boring and impersonal: the worst of both worlds.

Two of the best paragraphs written about poker. My recent ugly foray into limit poker prompted me to flip through my old, weathered copy of Small Stakes Hold'em: Winning Big With Expert Play" by Ed Miller, David Sklansky, and Mason Malmuth. It's among the best books on low-stakes limit hold'em, and one of the best poker books in general. I always loved this bit from the introduction ("Where the Money Comes From"), which talks about why winning poker is counter-intuitive:

The immediate results in poker are often divorced from your actions. Sometimes you flop a big hand, bet and raise to build a huge pot, and get drawn out on buy a miracle river card. You acted correctly, but your result was terrible. Other times, you may make a loose call and be the recipient of a miracle river card. You acted incorrectly, but your result was terrific. These common, backwards results fool your brain's natural learning process. The random nature of poker fundamentally frustrates most people; their learning processes get so confused that they just give up. from that point forward, they do not improve; they play their same game, full of terrible mistakes, forever. This is one reason that so many people play so poorly.

The correct way to learn poker is to understand it theoretically, and make sure that you made the correct play, regardless of the results. Do not start chasing wild draws because you hit one once. Do not stop protecting your good hands with raises simply because someone just called anyway and hit a long shot. This is a particularly common vice among small stakes players. They get so frustrated by people making poor calls and laying "beats" on them that they stop playing aggressively. "I just call. hey always draw out anyway. At least this way it won't cost me as much." The beats do not cause you to lose in the long run. Playing passively does.

That's one beauty of poker: it's both predictable and unpredictable at the same time.

In any single hand of poker, there are almost always a few cards in the deck that can splatter your dreams into a messy pulp. But if you're focused, patient, and play good fundamental poker, in the long run, the luck will even out and you'll finish ahead. You have to step around that gory splatter now and then, keep going, stay aggressive, and things will be fine. The players who stop and stare at the carnage — mourning or swearing vengeance — are the ones who can't figure out why they keep losing.