In the next few months there aren't a lot of tournaments left for me. Just two actually: the event that stole my heart the minute I set foot in Vegas, Festa al Lago, and the Five Diamond - both at Bellagio.

Festa al Lago (Italian for Party at the Lake) will be held Oct. 1-25 - check the Bellagio Web site for the complete schedule.

In Season 5 of the World Poker Tour, I managed to win the No-Limit Hold'em $5,000 buy-in event, and two weeks later I finished runner-up behind Andreas Walnum in the main event.

I tend to do well in tournaments held at Bellagio for some reason. I guess I just feel at home there (can you really blame me for that? :-) ).

I really could use a nice result by now. I was very disappointed by my performance at this year's WSOP, so maybe the Festa al Lago's main event has my name on it.

Last year they skipped it because the room was under construction, so I am really looking forward to it.

King of Bellagio due for another deep run on "home" turf?

But the main thing I want to talk about is the following: since there are not a whole lot of tournaments left for me, I want to start focusing on online poker a little bit more again.

You probably know that in the past I played a lot of online poker tournaments with decent results. My biggest achievement online was being on top of the tournament leaderboard on PokerStars three weeks in a row (without a Sunday main event win).

I also did it a few weeks before that, so Teecoy and I are still tied with a record four leaderboard wins each. So, reason enough to start taking up my old game.

I also enjoy the fact that online poker can be played from my comfortable seat at home, so a few weeks back I started playing some little tournaments to get back into the groove.

I started with a few low-buy-in rebuy tournaments, and the first thing that got my attention was that all the "rebuy monsters" were gone.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term "rebuy monster," I will explain: it's someone who does double rebuys and during the rebuy period is all-in virtually every hand. They keep pushing and shoving until they have around $25k in chips.

I asked around and it turns out that when I was away from the virtual felt, the "whiz kids" basically made their life miserable by continuously whining and complaining. They (the monsters) were just fed up with it and tightened up their game.

That is just bad business. And that's what I want to talk about: Don't be the table professor. Don't be the judge of other people's play. Maybe they are playing a whole different game than you.

Maybe they are just plain stupid and it would be foolish to scare away the fish, wouldn't it?

There is actually a nice little story about this: I read it in a book written by Doyle Brunson (can't remember the title). He once played in a game where there was a very bad player (a doctor) at the table, as well as a few seasoned pros.

After a big pot in which the doctor made several big mistakes, one of the pros started needling him and calling him a fool for his play (the pro actually won the pot, so there was no need to kick the doctor when he was down).

Minutes after that happened, that same pro fell from his seat, yelling and screaming "I'm having a heart attack!" over and over again. The doctor calmly got up from his seat and helped the man.

Later it turned out that the pro didn't have a heart attack at all - just heartburn. The doctor could have said, "Who's the fool now? You can't even tell heartburn from a heart attack," of course, but he didn't.

And neither should you. Just let everybody play his own game and respect every single player at the table. As long as they (the bad players) have money, it is in your best interest to keep them at the table.

And if they suck out on you, just remember: that's why they still want to play against better opponents. They might suck out.

But in the long run, you will grind them down.

Take care for now,

--Steve Wong

More blogs from Steve Wong:

• Automated Tables: Huge Upside for Players
• The End of My World Series: Nothing but Early Exits
• My 2008 Series So Far
• Egg-Shaped Losers Driving Women from Poker