(continued from Part 1)

Stay Healthy

I'm not exactly sure of the perfect model for living a clean and healthy life, but I've gotten a lot better over the years as I've learned how important it is to keep your body healthy in order to keep your brain fucntioning at a high level. If you have followed my advice in Part 1, you can actually take your baseline test and see how well you do on days when you haven't gotten enough sleep, have had too much to drink the night before, or are under stress. You'll almost certainly find that these things hurt your scores, which probably translates to lower win rates at the tables.

Studies have shown that a sedentary lifestyle impairs brain function. Excessive weight, improper diet, excessive drug and alcohol intake, smoking, almost anything that's bad for you is also bad for your brain. This doesn't mean you can't have apiece of cheesecake on Thursday and have a few beers or Saturday night, but don't overdo it, and make sure your drug and/or alcohol intake is far removed from time you will spend at the tables or you'll lose a significant edge.

I actually find that my baseline scores on mental acuity tests are hurt more by hunger than anything else. If I have an apple my tests scores improve significantly within 20 minutes, but when I haven't eaten in the morning (again, after noon) my test scores drop like a rock. I also find that taking my scores from average up to the top of my range is easy to achieve with a little exercise. 20 minutes fo playing with the dog in the backyard or a brief jog of jsut a few blocks and my test scores improve significantly for a few hours.
This anecdotal evidence for exercise is backed up by studies that show 20 minutes of moderate exercise will increase your mental facilities by a significant margin on most tests for a period of 3 to 4 hours. As a primarily cash player I am able to sit out after a few hours and go get a little exercise and some protein to eat before I come back refreshed. Tournament players who are typically playing multiple tables for hours at a time are advised to get some exercise before they start playing and take advantage of synchronized breaks to get their heart pumping a little bit.

Caffeine is one of my occasional vices, so believe me when I say that I understand the desire for a pot of coffee in the morning, but it's not only bad for you, it's not effective. At least not when compared to better ways of waking up and making sure you're sharp. If you really need to wake up, a strong mint or piece of gum, splashing water on your face, eating an apple, or taking some deep breaths are all proven to work faster and be more effective than drinking a cup of coffee and they don't steal energy away from the rest of your day.

I also keep a small bottle of mint oil on my desk for times when I am a little tired or starting to fade and have a good reason to continue playing. This would be especially important for tournament players on a long grind. I don't know what the oil was originally for, some hippy relative probably gave it to me years ago as a cure for some ailment and I stashed it away until finding it one day when I was tired. A good whiff of it woke me right up and cleared my nasal passages up a little too, so I keep it on my desk to use as a wake up call when I really need it.

Keep yourself awake, alert, and fresh, and you'll be a step ahead of your opponents who just stumbled out of bed with a hangover and sat down to join your table. When they have already busted out a couple of times, you'll be ready to quit a winner for the day while they curse their terrible luck and blame it on bad cards. You'll know better because you will be seeing clearly.

Putting it all together

So far, we've talked about some ways to keep yourself sharp, test your mental acuity, and make sure that you are at your best whenever you are at the tables. I'll finish up the article with a few words about how to maintain a regimen, how to make sure you stay sharp, and how to avoid playing when you aren't at your best.

I don't remember to do things on a daily basis very well at all unless I have a reminder. I've noticed that a lot of poker players share this trait with me, very bright but scatterbrained and likely to forget names and places while remembering hands they played years ago in perfect detail. Without a few things set up to help me maintain my regimen every day, the whole regimen would fade away and be forgotten within a few weeks.

I start by keeping the pills I mentioned in Part 1 right on my desk, where I will see them and remember to take them every day. Then I use taking the pills as a reminder to get up and get some exercise before I sit down to play poker right away. If I'm moving very slowly, I may answer a few emails before I get up and get moving, but my rule is that I don't play poker until I have a few minutes of exercise.

I make rules like this for myself because things like tilt, being tired or hungry, or just generally playing at less than your best are very tough to detect on your own. My favorite example of how important it is to make rules for yourself involves drunk driving. I've never driven drunk, and the only reason I am certain of this is that I have a set of rules that I follow explicitly. I love to go out and see live music at bars, and when I don't have someone driving for me I can't take the risk of driving after one too many drinks. Drunk driving is such a good example for this, because just like being on tilt, being a little irritated or tired, or not playing well for any other reason, it is sometimes very tough to detect when you are in bad shape.

The very act of having a few drinks makes it tough to tell whether you are okay to drive, like the fact that you just woke up might make it tougher to tell whether you are too tired to play well. Since the thing that impairs your ability to play also impairs your ability to judge how well you are playing.

When it comes to driving, I have a rule that I can have one beer if I'm going to be at the bar a few hours, and otherwise I don't get to drink at all. If I have two beers I know I have to take a cab home and find a way to get my car in the morning and it's just not worth the trouble so I don't do it. With poker we have the same problem and a similar set of rules.

My first rule with poker is that I can not start playing poker until I've taken my smart pills, gotten at least ten minutes of exercise, and been awake for at least thirty minutes. I also must have eaten within the last three hours and be feeling good. part of these rules require me to quit if I am down 4 buy-ins in a big bet game or 50 big bets in a fixed-limit game in order to help control tilt, but that is for an entirely different article on tilt control. The important point is that you make a set of rules and stick to them.

If you combine all of the things you want to do in your regimen into a routine, and make it a hard and fast rule that you do all of those things before you start playing every day, you can be assured that you will always be in good shape to play before you get started. This gives you a leg up on your opponents, and will help to ensure that you have more consistency, better results and that you learn faster while you're at the tables.

I'll see you at the final table,
Chris Fox Wallace

P.S. Check out my new site at pokerwhip.com

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