How long poker session

Everyone can win. But to lose as little as possible and not spew is what makes you money in poker. If you play under stress, you will start tilting a lot sooner. You will spew and get upset by even the most common things that happen in poker regularly. Before you start a long session, make sure that you are in a relaxed state of mind. It is no secret. There has been plenty of research that, with regular exercise, you can maintain your focus for longer.

Exercise is good to maintain your focus, and so is meditation. One thing that meditation is beneficial for is to play without stress. Even basic meditation for 5 minutes before the session will help you play longer. Try it out; you will be surprised how good it is. If you start your session hungry, then you will be tempted to finish it rather sooner than later. Overeating will make you tired before you even begin.

For some time, you will get away with eating unhealthy, I also did. I was eating ready to eat microwave meals while grinding tournaments the whole day.

On top of that, I started my day with a nice big sandwich , a quarter of white bread with salami and bacon, with some cheese and chocolate milk. I did that for a month until I realized that I became tired fast, and it started to show on my poker results.

Have enough vegetables, together with protein and healthy carbs. Everyone in my family wears glasses except for me. I guess I am a bit lucky. But even I had problems with staring into the screen for 8 hours in a row. There are a few things I tested , and the following has helped me :.

Maybe this one should be at the top as it is essential. The same holds for increasing the length of your poker session. It will take time before your body and brain get used to grinding long hours. Instead of going for a 5-hour long session straight out of the bat, when just yesterday you were doing minute sessions, you should maybe go for a minute long poker session.

In a single month, you should have no problem playing for 2 hours longer, if you increase your grind time just by 5 minutes each day. Then once you reach the desired length of a session, it is crucial you stick to it for a month or so. Then you will get fully used to it , and it will just feel normal. If you are increasing the length of your session daily and your focus drops off significantly towards the end of the session, then maybe you are moving too fast.

Then go and stay for the same length for a few days, and once your focus improves, add a few minutes again. With this tactic, I was able to get to the point where I would play I believe my record was around And that was at cash games.

Now, if you play live , then you can easily t ake a break for 5 minutes every hour. For those, I had no problem playing them 14 hours per day. I would quickly eat during the 5-minute break each hour and go to the toilet if needed and then continue the grind.

My favorite music songs helped me to pass the time faster. If you were out partying the previous day, then it will be tough to go for a long session the next day. Try to avoid playing when hangover at all costs. Not to mention, if you go and play when drunk, you will most likely lose money and spew a few buyins. If your table is full of excellent and tricky regulars, then your brain will be forced to think deeply about strategy during playing to paly optimally against them.

This requires a lot of energy , and it is tough to maintain for hours. A table full of soft weak players who play ABC is much easier to handle for hours straight. You must look for the softest tables if you have the chance. Lastly, playing well-rested is a recipe for a long session.

Get enough sleep, your brain and body need to rest if you are going for long sessions day after day. Well-rested, you will be able to maintain focus for much longer, thus unlocking the chance to go for a long session.

After 5 or 6 days of playing in a row, take a day off from poker and just relax, recharge the batteries and come back to the tables the next day. I have given you all the necessary steps to not only increase the duration of your poker sessions but also to go for a monster session if you wish so. Playing longer sessions is not rocket science, but you need to stick to all of the tips above.

But if you do your best to stick to all of them , then undoubtedly you will be able to go for a long poker session in the future. If you run extremely bad on any day, then remember, it is okay to take a break. You can still take one or 2-hour break and then return , nothing wrong with that.

Your bankroll will even be grateful if you do. The vast majority of the time, it ended in me losing a few buyins more than I already have. I had 8. I managed to lose in the next hands all the profit that I made that day and a little more. Preflop Postflop. You need to follow a few steps to increase the length of your poker sessions.

Good news? Everyone can do it. Table of Contents. Poker session should last as long as you can maintain your max focus. It can be anywhere from one hour to 6hours or even more.

But to be focused for so long you will have to train your body and mind. The best time to play online is when other regular poker pros are still asleep. This leads us to our next factor — are we winning or are we losing?

Most of us have learnt over time that bad beats are part and parcel of poker. Sometimes your Aces get cracked, sometimes your opponent hits that miracle gut-shot. We deal with it and we move on. When Lady Luck turns against us and a bad beat is followed by another and another, it can be hard to keep playing at your best.

As they say, money saved is as good as money earned. That said, the opposite is also true. Often when you run well, you play well. The positive mindset you gain from watching your stack grow skywards can make a big difference to your decision making and often this is a great opportunity to stick around longer than you were planning in order to take advantage of the situation. When you are running bad your opponents tend to move in for the kill and play better against you. When everything is going your way, your opponents tend to fear you and become timid, making more mistakes when they get involved in hands with you.

If you recognize you have a big edge in ability over the majority of players at the table, perhaps you should consider extending your session just a little bit longer. There will always be good days and bad ones too.

The stock market jumps points one day and slips the next. Orders are up on Monday and down on Tuesday. Business booms in the summer but slows down in the winter. But you don't run about like some kind of nut trying to make a profit every day. You take a long view.

Is the market up over a month period? Did I turn a profit in the last quarter, or the fiscal year? This is how you should approach poker. You want to know if you're up or down; not today, not this week, but over the course of at least several months and, ideally, your life! View it in the larger context. Are you ahead or behind that game for the month? The past three months? The year?

So there's no reason to start steaming in order to get even. You already are! Same logic applies when you're ahead.

In fact, forget the chips-per-stack gimmick. Stick your chips in the rack in uneven stacks and let the cashier count it out. There is rarely a losing poker session in which you aren't at least ahead a few chips at some point in the night. And, after booking a big loss in a session, we all have the same thought: "I should have left when Knowing when to quit a poker game is just as important a skill as knowing when to play.

It's the large-scale version of knowing when to fold. Don't worry, I'm not going to tell you to cash out when you've made x amount of profit in relation to your bankroll or something equally as dumb. But there are many scenarios and situations that should be the session kill switch when encountered. It's up to you to recognize when you're in these situations and pull yourself away. All of the following scenarios are as relevant for online poker as they are in a live game.

Phil Ivey once said that if he's winning he'll stay at the table until he has every chip or is too exhausted to continue playing. No matter how great or poor your session is going it's not possible to play optimal poker while exhausted. Mental fatigue affects your basic brain functions and diminishes thought rate and clarity.

One of the most common symptoms of mental fatigue is significant loss of attention. You may find it difficult to tell if exhaustion has begun to set in - much like how a drunk will misjudge his own sobriety. One of the simplest ways to keep track of where you are mentally is to keep an eye on your watch. A standard session is thought of as 8 hours of poker. Your personal timeframe will vary greatly depending on personal factors along with the type of poker being played.

A player can sit at an easy, casual live game much longer than she could playing 12 short-handed tables online. Tough games take more concentration, thus lowering the maximum time you're truly in your best state of mind.

Those personal factors include everything from age, lifestyle and health to your activities in the past day or so. Did you party until the waning hours of the night? Have you eaten properly? Overexerted yourself physically? Under exerted yourself physically? Taking all these factors into consideration, keep a close eye on yourself. If you find yourself starting to slump, prop your head up in your hands or miss details such as four to a flush on board, it's time to shut'er down for the night.

As difficult as it is to play poker while exhausted, playing on tilt is even more difficult. Slow, distracted thoughts are preferable to a lack of thoughts altogether. When a person starts to steam, all logic and reason is suppressed in favor of pure emotional response. In all aspects of life, every person has seen or done things in a fit of rage they have later come to regret.

A person in a rage is prone to commit irrational, often aggressive, acts with no regard to consequences or outcomes. For some players stepping away from the table to take a little break is sufficient to calm down and regroup. Unfortunately, mostly due to adrenaline and endorphins, the majority of people are unable to truly shake off all the rage without an extended break. Until the rage-induced chemicals have run their course, returning your brain to its previous state, it's not possible to completely reset.

Some people can function just fine in states such as this; most only think they can. Even after coming off of tilt putting your body through extreme emotions and adrenaline highs is taxing and exhausting. After successfully coming off of tilt you should expect debilitating exhaustion to creep up on you far sooner than you would otherwise have expected. No matter how clear, precise and quick your thought process is at the moment, it means nothing if you can't focus any of your concentration on the game.

I've often seen great players in a good state of mind completely engrossed in a sporting event on TV. If you obviously would rather watch the game than play poker, that's exactly what you should do. I've seen people out on dates in the poker room. This is a bad idea, considering the most likely outcomes:. One of these is a waste of time for the other half of the date; the other is one of the lamest and most expensive dates you could have taken someone out on.

Playing poker online allows for countless distractions at the tips of your fingers. With the Internet in your hand, games, instant messengers, blogs, movies, music, Facebook, e-mail and porn are all lying in wait to steal your brain power. Some players seem capable of multitasking, such as playing a few tables of poker while watching a movie. Even this, though, is an exaggeration. It's not possible to watch a movie and concentrate on another task at the same time.

You can listen and follow along with a movie and play poker or you can autopilot the poker and watch the movie. If you don't believe me, wait until your movie gets to an exciting action scene at the same time as you're dealt pocket aces.

See if you have to pause the movie or rewind it when you've finished the hand. Either you're going to be able to play high-quality winning poker or, more likely, the lack of enjoyment will cause you to play poorly and cost you possibly a lot of money. Even if you're playing well and turning a decent profit you have to ask yourself if it's worth it.

No matter what your talents are if you don't enjoy what you're doing you should find something else to do. It's always better to be a useless hockey player having the time of your life than a miserable baseball MVP. In an ideal world what you're good at will always align with what you enjoy and are passionate about. In the real world, most people aren't so lucky. For most players who aren't enjoying the game the reality is they will have little to no chance of making money on the session.

If you're miserable, typically you don't care about your actions or results in the moment. The only way you will make money is to fall ass backwards into a setup hand.

All players will experience this: no matter how much you love the game you'll find yourself at a table or two making yourself miserable.

It could be the game, the players, the room or other aspects of your personal life leaking out at the table. Whatever the reason, when you're not having fun, it's time to find something else to do. No bleeding is harder to get under control than when you have an artery wide open. With each marginal hand dealt another spurt of chips bleeds into someone else's stack. When you're bleeding your chips you're making mistakes left right and center; maximizing your losses, losing hands you should have won, getting involved in pots you have no reason to be in.