What do players need for a comfortable poker play

Comfortable atmosphere will lead you to the most effective and productive work. There were many researches in management and other sciences about the connection between the productivity with other factors, which are distant at first glance. Although we shouldn’t extrapolate the conclusions of these researches to our poker game, but we decided to think what makes poker player game the most comfortable.

Correct lightening

The problem of good lightening is met everywhere. Sometimes there is not enough light or it is too deem and you strain your eyesight. On the other hand, sometimes there is too much light. This is especially true in the summertime when sun shines whole day and some poor fellows don’t even see a thing on their screen. If you recognize yourself in this, it's worth thinking about a few things.

First, you probably need good curtains for the especially sunny days. Secondly, don’t place your monitor in front of the windows, just near them. In such a manner your attention won’t be deflected away from action, and the light won’t make your eyes tired so fast.

These small changes can sufficiently effect your game, if you were the one who coped with these “little” issues.

Comfortable chair and table

Tired back and neck are the nice indicators your game level will decrease soon. Those “common” painful feelings will lead to stress, which will continue to accumulate if you remain at your chair with bad ergonomics.

Certainly, not everyone will be happy to spend some extra money for purchasing a chair. This purchase will be compensated by the absence of pain in your waist and other body parts and will help you keep your posture straight. Actually, at this time you can find a comfortable chair at a reasonable price - you don’t need some buffalo leathered chair, do you?

Set-up monitor

We’ve just discussed that too much or too little light doesn’t very positively affect on your stress level because of your eyes get tired. This part can be optimized further by setting up your screen or buying special protective glasses.

We should highlight f.lux application, which is able to change screen color specter according to the time of day. Glasses are required to decrease glares, which hitting your eyes.

Take care of your vision, save strength and energy you can spend on your game instead.

Proper food for breaks

It is important to eat the healthy food, most of us know that. However, chasing the money, many poker players keep forgetting of this aspect, they gladly order pizza, sushi, or some other stuff. There is nothing terrible in this food, but you shouldn’t eat too much of it. This is not about healthy nutrition in general, we are talking of snacks here.

You can't underestimate the importance of keeping energy for your body, and you shouldn’t do that with only coffee. Coffee gives your brain a healthy dose of energy, but it can’t replace food, despite what they write in the glamorous magazines.

Plan in advance what you are going to eat in 5-minute breaks of the tournaments or during the breaks in cash games.

Make minimum distraction from the game

To overload your brain with unnecessary action, not directly connected with major activity (poker play) is not the most reasonable option of spending mental energy. Every switch like that will make you change the context you’re in. Why do you need such complexity? To laugh a lot on FB memes, or receive a stream of useless info via Skype?

This point was so often discussed, so we won’t stop on it.

Keep the room clean

The cleanliness of the room is kind of self-respect, as you show that you’re willing to stay in clean room, not in the dumpster with tons of empty cans, chips packs and other stuff, which can also smell bad. Not all this mountains of rubbish will make you feel self-confident, on the opposite, you will feel yourself really awful if your game will become worse.

We’ve recently written about kaizen principles of work place equipment. Although the principles related not only with cleanliness, you definitely should read the material.

Have a good sleep

The lack of sleep leads to many negative effects, such as worsen memory and concentration, impaired ability to cope with stress, degraded creativity, and reduced optimism. It is obvious, with the lack of sleep, your results of sessions will be worse and worse, until you will fall asleep for 12 hours, being too tired.

Healthy sleep is 8-9 hours, no longer. The goal to have 8 hours of sleep - it’s a good idea! You’d better sleep during the night hours as melatonin develops at this time.