Playing Poker in Your Stress Comfort Zone - Dealing with the stress of playing poker

I frequently am asked how I deal with the stress of playing poker professionally. The majority of the people I encounter seem horrified at the stakes of the games I play – tournaments with buy-ins of up to $25,000 and cash games that frequently have six-figure swings. Oftentimes I respond that at least I am only gambling with money, as opposed to many of them who gamble with their very lives every day while driving to and from work. I now consider the drive to the casino as more of a gamble than the cash game or tournament that I go there to play. The drive home from the casino can feel like a real gamble when it is 3 o'clock in the morning and I have been playing for 15 hours straight! I guess I have become very desensitized to money, which I think is natural with most professional poker players. Despite this, I still do experience stress while playing poker, and I have some tips for anyone else who does, too.

I believe that feeling a certain level of stress while playing poker is a key to winning, and that "certain level" varies by individual. To put it another way, to excel at poker, you must always play within your stress comfort zone. You should, of course, never gamble with money you can't afford to lose, as not only would this be incredibly stressful, but it would be very irresponsible. A bankroll of 200-300 big bets is considered standard for a limit ring game, but I find that I greatly reduce my playing stress by having at least 1,000 big bets for any game I play. However, you should not base what limit you play simply on your bankroll. You must be as emotionally ready to lose a certain amount of money as you are financially in order to justify playing in a particular game. If you are a millionaire but are not emotionally ready to lose more than $1,000 in a given session, stick to $10-$20 limits or smaller. Earlier in my poker career, I played in games in which I was fiscally prepared, but not emotionally prepared, and some of the big losses in those games were emotionally devastating and very stressful. Those lessons were very painful to learn, and I hope you heed my advice and stick to games in which you are emotionally prepared to lose at least 50 big bets, because it can and will happen frequently, even if you are a great player who rarely tilts.

On the flip side, if I am playing limits that are too small or in games in which I simply don't care much about whether I win or lose, I have great difficulty playing my best game for very long. What I love – and hate – about tournament poker is that one decision can make or break the entire tournament for you. These situations create a good amount of stress for me and generally keep me focused during a tournament, but they do not stress me out to the point where I avoid these confrontations and play with scared money. Take it from me, that old adage is true: There is nothing easier to accumulate than scared money, and you don't want to be the one putting the frightened chips into the pot!

The types of games that I find most stressful are no-limit hold'em cash games. Unlike tournaments, in which you put up a buy-in and have a finite amount that you can lose if you go broke, in no-limit cash games, you can go broke over and over again, provided that you have the funds and the courage (or stubbornness) to keep reloading. I occasionally play no-limit cash games, but they certainly test the upper boundaries of my stress comfort zone. I am more comfortable playing a heads-up limit game, in which the variance per hour may be 50 big bets, as opposed to a shorthanded no-limit game that has a variance of only 20 or 30 big bets. I prefer to try to grind my opponents down, outplaying them one hand at a time. Most no-limit sessions will come down to the results of a few big hands, in which you either make a good call or a good laydown or lay the perfect trap, and so on. Making a single mistake in no-limit can be much more disastrous than making many mistakes in limit, and I find that I can make up for any mistakes I may make in limit by outplaying my opponent over the long term. However, many players are more comfortable playing no-limit cash games; limit is just my personal preference. If you're feeling overly stressed in the particular game you're playing, I recommend trying some different variants of the game, whether it be limit, no-limit, tournaments, or any of the various sit-and-go games available. Also, experiment with playing both live and online, as they are such different experiences, and you may find one to be much more to your liking and much less stressful than the other.

Here's one last point: I find that my stress levels are significantly higher when I have been running bad for an extended period of time (breaking even or losing for more than 20 sessions). From what I have observed, this is fairly universal among poker players. They are more stressed when they have been on a losing streak, even if the losing is not seriously affecting their bankroll. In a recent column I discussed how to overcome a bad run, so I won't delve into that subject, but I would like to emphasize that you may have to adjust your game selection to compensate for the increased stress of running bad. I find that when I run bad, my stress comfort level shifts down. I get more stressed out when playing higher-limit games, but it's not all bad, since during these rough spells, I have found that I can play some very juicy smaller games that are generally too small to hold my focus when I am running well.

Finding and playing in a game that fits your stress comfort zone nicely (which will vary depending on how you've been running) will likely enable you to put in more hours playing your best game and will make you a lot more money in the long run.

Thomas "Thunder" Keller is a 24-year-old professional poker player and one of poker's young and rising stars. He can often be found playing at Ultimatebet.com under the name thunderkeller. To learn more about him, go to his website at http://www.thunderkeller.com/.