It was an honor to be asked to write a regular column for Bluff, and I was even happier when they asked to write about my favorite topic, online poker.

I've never said I'm the best online player, or the authority on online poker, but I've had consistent and profitable results over the past few years. One of the most effective ways I can share some of my success, and relay that to other players, is to describe what I think has most helped me improve my game over the years. And that's exactly what I want to do in this regular column.

Making the adjustment to online play, in comparison with playing live, takes some time. First and foremost is the speed of online play: without the dealer taking time in between hands to shuffle the cards, the speed can be up to three times faster. Therefore, it goes without saying that any leaks that you have in your game will be magnified online because you're seeing many more hands over a shorter space of time. Some tables deal out at 80 hands per hour, in comparison with an average of about 27 per hour live. And if you get proficient at playing online and start playing multiple tables at once, the number of hands that you see per hour will increase exponentially. Playing three tables simultaneously, you could be seeing as many as 240 hands per hour - that's nearly ten times the number of hands you would see in a casino! You will take more bad beats, see more weird draws hit, and witness far more quads and straight flushes than you would in live play, all of which can lead you to conclude that online poker is crazy poker.

The reality is, however, that if you view online poker in a positive way, you can use it to improve many areas of your game in a much shorter period of time than you would by strictly playing live.

Once I realized the mistakes I was making online, I worked hard to tackle them and become a better player. I found different games that I thought could help me improve different facets of my play, and I played as many of those games as I could in a day, working hard on areas where I felt I was weak.

One of the first things I realized early on was that I was pretty good at playing tournaments. I could consistently make it deep into my tournaments, occasionally cashing, and making final tables through solid play; but I would find myself getting eaten alive by superior players at those final tables. Soon, I started playing the sit'n'gos and I realized that I had found my little pot of gold. Not only could I make money on these single table tournaments, but I could also practice an area of my game where I felt I was weak - final table play. The sit'n'gos afforded me the opportunity to get valuable final table experience in order to finish off tournaments better, without wreaking havoc on my bankroll. I could play single table sit'n'- gos for as little as $5.25 (in those days) and experiment with ideas that I would never have dared try out at the $100 plus level. I could play twenty $5.25 sit'n'gos in a row without worrying about the financial impact. Even if I lost every match, which was rarely the case, I'd consider the money spent an investment into my poker future. Today, you can play for as little as a dollar.

By tinkering with different aspects of my play, I started to understand the psychology of the game as the table became short-handed. There were ten-handed sit'n'gos, six-handed sit'n'gos and heads-up sit'n'gos, all of which allowed me to start my "final table" full-table or short-handed, depending on the aspect of my game that I felt I needed to improve at the time.

Sometimes I would cover my screen in heads-up matches and play my hands blind. I would try to read betting patterns of my opponents and learn how to react to them. I would play the player's style only, and try to represent the different flops, rather than my actual holdings. What this did for my game was to leapfrog my ability to read certain situations. Investing time in expanding my comfort zone and reading-ability of situations started to pay off when I made final tables. So rather than being eaten alive by the more experienced players, I started becoming a force to be reckoned with.

I still play sit'n'gos daily online. I play the bigger ones seriously to make money, but will still jump into the smaller matches to practice new things. It's not uncommon to find me in a $5 dollar game. I'll blow off 80% of my chips in the first couple of hands for no other reason than to practice short-stack play. I believe that repetition is key to improving your game and the beauty of online play is that it gives you that opportunity every day, seven days a week. Online play gives the serious player the chance to improve different areas of his or her game in months, rather than in the years it would take in a brick and mortar casino. So jump into the sit'n'gos, not just for the moneymaking opportunities, but also for the priceless experience you can gain from them for tournament play. I would say with confidence that the sit'n'gos have been the biggest factor in the improvement of my tournament play. Hop in, try new things and expand your comfort zone. Some people play poker for 30 years and never change their games. Don't get caught in that rut - there is always room for improvement.

Knock 'em dead, James "KrazyKanuck" Worth