AMT's blog

Rough. The weekends are unequivocally softer in all respects for most all MTT fields, both high stakes and lower. It’s great because you can afford to add tables on/detract from your attention span a bit in the name of your hourly rate, and not feel like you’re giving up much playing against generally terrible competition. I gave myself the birthday gift of taking Friday off, and proceeded to put in a reasonably solid 20 hours over Saturday and Sunday. It felt good to put in a healthy weekend of work. Not so good to drop 5k in buy ins.

I can safely say here, as ‘official coaching advice’, that one of the most crucial aspects to recovering from rough MTT patches is sleep. We all talk about exercise, eating, and the aspects of actual strategy approaches that are of course crucial, but sleep is right up there at the top. No matter how awful I’ve felt at the end of a long, bad session, I’ve always felt infinitely better after a full nights rest. You need sleep to recuperate thought processes and organize new information within your brain. Your brain and your body need a certain amount of sleep to maximize efficiency the next day. And, without REM sleep , you’re as good as dead.

Further, your chemical levels are lowest at the end of a losing day. You’re tired, and you feel defeated. Testosterone and adrenaline are at their lowest and you’re also at your least-rested point of the day. I know people who have and continue to battle these bouts of tiredness during downswings, and even during upswings, through the use of drugs. I’m not going to share my thoughts on any specific drug use in poker here, but I will say that replacing sleep time with any drug is just not the way to go. You’re going to crash harder later, and any stimulation or involvement that you’re experiencing now will come to a halt in a matter of time.

You wouldn’t leave your tables and chip stacks so that a mindless drone could take over your seat and robot-off chips, would you? So, why would you leave yourself vulnerable to the same risks by playing in a sleep-deprived, drug induced stupor? Do yourself a favor and get your 6-8 hours. You’ll thank yourself later for it.