How to switch your brain off after poker

Do you have problems relaxing or sleeping after poker? Barry Carter has a few suggestions for putting poker to bed after playing.

We have an interesting discussion in our forums at the moment about how to chill out after a poker session. The original poster was having a problem where they still had poker in their mind after playing and would even snap at those around him if he had a tilty session.

I can relate to this because I have had two versions of this problem. I had the exact same problem with poker where I would still have the thoughts and emotions from playing swirling around my head for hours after. It was particularly problematic after live poker and I often would not be able to sleep as a result. 

I’ve also had this problem in my working life. I have been a workaholic at times in my life and when you work from home it is hard to relax, because you are always very near to your ‘office’ and can check email all day long.

I personally feel like I have fixed both problems in my life and the advice is largely the same, so I wanted to share it here, especially as it’s a new year and we are all in the frame of mind for self improvement. I should state from the outset that most of this advice is from my good friend the mental game coach Jared Tendler.

Write it down, get it out of your head

There are lots of valuable things you can do as part of a cool down after poker. Practically speaking reviewing key hands or at least bookmarking them to discuss later is the best way you can improve your game. However, to specifically deal with that problem of not turning poker off for the night, the best advice from Jared I ever got was to start journalling.

By journalling he simply means getting a pen and paper (or notepad on a PC) and start writing about whatever you are thinking about. This is pure free association brainstorming, there isn’t a right or wrong way to do it. You can jot down your thoughts on the hands you played, critique your play, vent about bad beats or even do in-depth hand analysis. You might even want to randomly write about something that distracted you during play. If you were trying to remember what the name of the dog who played the piano in the muppets was, as silly as it sounds, journal about that.

Journalling may provide some useful insights but that is not the reason to do it. The benefit of journalling is that it has the cathartic benefit of taking something out of your head and putting it on paper. It stops those thoughts swirling around your head. Anyone who has suffered from anxiety will know that articulating what you are worried about actually makes you feel less anxious and this is the same thing. If you are skeptical I don’t blame you, but I really suggest you just try it for a week and see for yourself.

Change channels

One of the other reasons why these problems manifest is because it is so hard to mentally switch off these days. Poker is a mentally demanding game and many of us invariably move onto something equally mentally taxing right after. Checking your emails, looking at Twitter, reading articles, talking about poker, studying and even playing video games are no way to relax after poker. They are all cognitively demanding tasks just like poker is. It is the equivalent of footballer trying to relax by playing tennis after a big match.

So the other great advice that solved these problems for me was forcing myself to switch off from mentally demanding tasks by doing something physical and/or passive. Going to the gym is obviously a great way to do this, I have a dog so walking him is a great way to have fun, exercise and clear my mind too. You might find listening to music, having a bath, meditating, hanging with friends or any number of other things have the same benefit. The important thing is to remove the things that are mentally demanding, for example I turn my phone off before I go to bed so I can’t get sucked into Twitter when I should be sleeping.

This instantly solved the bad sleep I was having after long poker sessions. Even though I would go to bed later, I would make a point of journalling, then having a beer (just one) and watching an episode of Family Guy to get my brain out of work mode and into a more passive, relaxed mode.

I doubt Tendler would suggest that drinking beer and watching Family Guy is optimal for mental performance (especially because it’s another screen to look at), but for me it did the job of switching my brain off for the night. There are probably a hundred things you can do better but the important thing is to take the strain off your mind, because right now there are so many traps you can fall into that do the exact opposite.

How do you relax after playing poker? Let us know in the comments: