Alcohol … Pot-Limit Hold'em - Part II

In Part I last issue, I gave you a little history of my teenage years, and how alcohol and poker just seemed to go hand in hand. As I got older, I realized how naïve that was, and decided to take the game of poker more seriously by committing to playing sober at all times.

While that was a great plan, it didn't last forever. As I got older and moved to Vegas, I became sloppy. My record books were not as efficiently kept as they were when I was a teenager in Toronto, and I no longer played a set number of hours. These are two things I always recommend to people when they E-mail me questions – keep good records and don't play long hours. OK, so I'm a hypocrite!

I'm not exactly sure what led me to become so nonchalant about my approach to the game, but I suppose it may have had something to do with playing on the tournament trail and being in a different city every month – from Foxwoods in Connecticut to the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, and back to Vegas for the Carnivale of Poker that used to be held in January, and on to L.A. in February to play the L.A. Poker Classic at Commerce Casino.

It was a pretty hectic schedule, but I'd made some friends on the tournament trail, which made things easier. Still, though, playing poker and doing little else can get boring pretty easily, especially when you are playing every day for four straight months. I needed a break, and wanted to have some fun every once in a while, too. But, what was there to do at the casino other than gamble in the pit, or have a few beers and play some live-action pot-limit hold'em?

Pot-limit hold'em was a game I could have fun playing, regardless of how bored of poker I was. Adding the beers just made it that much more fun for me. I'd always done well playing the game, but I noticed a strange phenomenon when I drank and played. I did even better!

It was a combination of a few things, I think:

1. My opponents played differently against me. They paid me off more often, and tried to bluff me less often. Thus, it made the game that much easier for me – that is, of course, if I didn't cross the line and drink too much.

2. I had no fear, and went with my instincts. How many times have you been in a poker game and know that you should have made a play on your opponent but just didn't have the guts to do it? Alcohol helps you lose your inhibitions and fear. The lack of fear is a valuable asset when playing big-bet poker. T.J. Cloutier once told me a story about the late Bill Smith. He said, "Bill was the best player in the world when he was a little drunk, but he was also the worst player in the world when he was totally drunk! When he was sober? He was the tightest player you'd ever seen!"

Anyway, even though I had set strict "no drinking while playing " rules for myself as a teenager, I found a new reason to break those rules, too. It was more of an excuse, really, because I didn't need to drink to win in the pot-limit games, and there was no reason to believe I wouldn't have done even better had I stayed sober. I think I just needed to have some fun, as the rigors of playing a full slate of tournaments was wearing on me. Still, though, knowing how many hours I might have to put into a tournament if I did well, I never drank while playing a tournament.

So, after playing a full slate of tournaments from late '97 through '99, I decided that I needed to take a break in 2000. I took up golf, no longer traveled the tournament circuit, and played only cash games on occasion at Bellagio.

I hate for this column to sound like an endorsement for drinking while you play poker – because it isn't. What I am sharing with you is a personal weakness, not a strength. In Part III next issue, you'll see what alcohol did to destroy everything I'd worked so hard to achieve. You'll read about exactly what happened on "my vacation" from tournament poker in the year of 2000, and what revelations I made about myself in the process.

You can find past Daniel Negreanu columns that you may have missed at www.fullcontactpoker.com.