|
I’m in training for the World Series of Poker. I am not playing long hours to sharpen up my poker skills. I am not playing every tournament I can find to fine-tune my tournament game. I am not pacing my poker play in an attempt to synchronize my peaking powers with the Main Event. I am not rereading the great poker books as a refresher course in preparation for the biggest tournament of the year. And yet I am in training. Serious training. And you should be in training, too.
Poker is a surprisingly physical form of competition. No. No images of grizzled, tracksuited men, black streaks of grease paint under their eyes, wrestling each other to determine the winner of each hand – men with nothing on but gold chains and boxing trunks, sweaty with exertion [Steady on, Annie – Ed.], trying to deliver the knockout blow to their opponents, sending them down for the count and out of the tournament – I like to imagine poker players with their clothes on, for one thing.
Instead, think on this: to win the World Series Main Event you are going to have to endure 14-hour days. Eight of them. You are going to have to stay mentally sharp on little sleep, keeping your concentration at its highest level, hour upon endless hour. Even for someone in the best physical condition, intense concentration for 14 hours straight is exhausting.
Physical conditioning is probably the most overlooked asset a poker player can develop. When doling out the poker advice, I hear a lot of admonitions about playing tight; lots of pontificating about the advantages of aggressive play; lots of instruction on how to calculate pot odds and hand odds – I have delivered a lot of that advice myself – but I almost never hear anyone tell students to “Go to the gym!”
Stamina is one of the killers in a tournament. We all get tired. And we all make worse decisions when we are exhausted. In a tournament, poor stamina can spell disaster when exhaustion breaks through, resulting in one really poor decision or a series of poor decisions that send you packing. You hear it all the time from players. When you ask what happened in a tournament they say, “I got tired. I played bad. It was my own damn fault.”
Stamina. If you have it, it’s your secret weapon. If you don’t, it’s your opponent’s. Make it yours. I am.
I’m planning to play the vast majority of the events at this year’s World Series of Poker. That means that, going into the Main Event, I will have already endured a grueling month of what I hope will be very long poker days. In preparation, I have been stepping up my workouts. On top of the Pilates I always do four to six days a week, I have added five spin classes a week, a four-mile hike and run in a canyon near my house four days a week, and a few classes here and there at my gym. That means I have gone from working out for an hour four times a week to almost two hours a day, six days a week.
And I’m not going to stop during the World Series. I am renting a house in Vegas, as I do every year, and am signing up for a month membership at a nearby gym so I can do a spin class each morning before the tournaments start. I’m eating healthier and am committed to keeping that up during the tournament, too. No fries or burgers for me during breaks. I have a cooler filled with healthy food, to bring down to the venue with me.
I feel better. I have more energy. I am happier. And it makes complete sense that that can only help my game.
The better my physical condition going into the Series, the better my mental condition. True in life. Even more true in poker. Erik Seidel believes it. Phil Ivey believes it. And I know I’d like to be as mentally sharp as those guys. Wouldn’t you?
|
