Mark Seif was a practicing attorney before becoming a professional poker player. He believes that some of the same capacities that served him well as a lawyer serve him well at the green felt table.

"As an attorney, I had to be looking at the jury and at the judge in order to get a feeling for what they were doing, where they were going - what they were holding in their hands, so to speak," he says, adding that what he does in poker is similar.

"I am constantly assessing, for example, if the other person is bluffing. It was the same when I was negotiating contracts: the other person would invariably say, 'This is all we can afford to pay; this is all we can do.' I had to assess whether or not they were serious. I had to decide if I should call their bluff and continue the game."

Seif is known as one of poker's greatest bluffers. He was, in fact, quite precocious with this skill. When he was six years old, he was playing poker one night with his family, having recently learned the game. Mark bluffed his father out of a big pot.

"He made me show him my hand, which I didn't have to do because he didn't call." His father, nonetheless, saw the bluff when Mark turned over his hole cards. "He was mad - really mad. He sent me to my room. He made me give back all my winnings, and I was banished from playing poker for the rest of my childhood."

Not that it hurt his game much. Mark placed first in four competitive events in 2003 alone. "I've turned out more huge bluffs than probably anybody else in poker right now," he says.

Seif believes that a correct read of the circumstances is essential to getting away with a bluff. "You almost have to be in your opponent's realm of being. You have to become your opponent for a moment - be in his mind and exploit the weakness of his hand when you find it." Mark has a clever analogy to describe the sensitive nature of bluffing. He says, "Bluffing is like using a sledge hammer to crack open an egg. You can do it if you land the hammer on the egg just right, but you risk demolishing the whole thing."

Seif is thankful for poker's new image. "Televised poker tournaments have helped a lot. They show us as pretty decent individuals. We've gone from the idea of poker as being something that happens in the smoke-filled back rooms of pool halls to the mainstream. The public watches and goes 'wow!'"