Years ago I was once talked into writing a column that offered advice about which players to play with and which ones to avoid. You know, really hilarious illustrations, such as, “Try to play against plumbers because they have leaks in their game,” or, “Avoid stunt pilots because they like to slow-roll you.” These were so painful to read that I was ashamed of myself — but not too ashamed to then do a second column when my fans sent in additional examples.

These grade-school level attempts at humor were so revoltingly stupid that they made my zaniest Big Denny yarns by comparison seem as urbane and sophisticated as anything appearing in New Yorker or Town and Country magazine. So, I gave my solemn promise that I would never again inflict such nonsense on my readers.

Unfortunately, some of my fans continued to provide me with more ideas, and I hate to reject any material that’s given to me free of charge. More important, even I have to sometimes scrape the bottom of the barrel to come up with column ideas every two weeks. Anyway, I recently came across some scraps of paper on which I had jotted down some poker-related occupation ideas that had been submitted to me and that I had hidden away and promptly forgotten about. I’m not sure now which of my fans submitted which ideas, but I know that a faithful fan of mine by the name of Don Bosh dreamed up some of them, which resulted in my blocking any more e-mails from him. Anyway, with apologies in advance, here goes.

My first “Dumb and Dumber” occupational caution is to be leery of playing Bola88 with anyone who is a baseball outfielder by profession. Why? Because baseball outfielders are extremely good at catching. See what I mean? This isn’t even grade school, this is kindergarten humor. Well, I don’t know how many readers I’ve lost at this point, but let’s plow on.

Try not to play with draftsmen. That’s because they’re good at making straight draws. Even …