1. Although it’s tempting to limp with A-K to disguise your hand, it is usually correct to open-raise to create a tasty pot, especially if someone calls with A-10, A-J, A-Q or K-Q. If there’s already been a limper you should make your raise a little bigger than if you’re first into the pot – maybe five times the big blind.

2. When you hit top pair you need to make sure you get paid off and protect your hand at the same time. If your pot-sized bets are just flat- called on the flop and turn, without any hint of a check-raise, you can often put your foe on a marginal calling hand, in this case a smaller Ace or an underpair.

3. If you now face a river bet you have to ask yourself if it’s a value bet or a blocker bet. A blocker bet is put out by an opponent who thinks they may be ahead, but who doesn’t want to call off a huge amount of chips, and therefore stakes an amount they’d be happy calling. Blocking bets are usually chunkier than value bets, so whenever a half- pot bet is made you need to replay the hand in your head and figure out if their story adds up. If you’re getting 3/1 on your call ($25 into a $75 pot) you don’t need to be much more than 25 percent sure that you’re ahead to make the call, which, in this case, I was.