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Most people who have played poker for a reasonable amount of time know that successful players have a devastating combination of aggression and confidence.

However, people often forget that confidence is not a constant and it will be susceptible to fairly large swings over the course of a poker career or even an individual session. When players have their confidence pounded, their aggression can become hugely misplaced and that is when you can exploit their vulnerability.

There are as many different ways to dent confidence as there are playing styles but this piece is going to concentrate on an aspect a lot of players don’t gauge very well: showing cards when you don’t have to.

Conventional card-playing wisdom states that in …

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X-Factor is back for much the same as last year, and the year before that.  Tomorrow we can look forward to the mentally ill, care in the community types, much folding of arms and not at all scripted sighs and putdowns from Simon Cowell, tales of backstage bitching, Dannii Minogue and Cheryl Cole giving each other daggers and the Irish dwarf sat at the end not doing much.

Oh and let’s not forget the obligatory sob stories and this year the producers really have pulled out all the stops for the ultimate cringe factor. Cue the 16 year old hopeful from Bridgend sent by the tourist board to do “something positive for the town” her words not ours. Then we have …

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The opening day of the Premier League season is riddled with uncertainty for punters but we´ve unearthed some tidy bets to get the Beat UK off to flier at the start of the 2008/9 campaign.

I´ve had to make myself another bacon sandwich. I dropped the first one when I saw that Middlesbrough are an astonishing 11/5 to win at home against Tottenham.

The bookies are keen on Spurs after a summer of heavy spending - but you cannot just throw a load of new signings together and expect them to gel straight away.

Boro have a far more settled side and let´s not forget that Gareth Southgate´s men humped Man City 8-1 on their last Riverside outing. Respective 5-0 and 6-1 pre-season …

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