Overcoming loneliness as a professional poker player
Playing online poker for a living can be an isolating experience. Here are some tips on how to deal with long hours working alone.
A few years ago I wrote a short ebook about how to cope with some of the pitfalls of working from home. Yes, there is a lot of freedom that comes with home working but it is also easy to become a workaholic because there is no separation between work life and home life. After that the biggest problem for me was loneliness, as obviously you rarely have colleagues with you at home and everyone else in your life is at a regular job.
I never thought to market the book to poker players and now I feel incredibly stupid because I just realised that professional online poker players must go through the exact same problem. In fact possibly worse if they (unlike me) do all their work at night and sleep during the day.
It was only a cheap book anyway, so don't buy it, below I have summarised some of the main tips from the book for overcoming the loneliness that comes with being a remote worker (and professional player).
Get a dog (maybe)
The first bit of advice is not very helpful, in that it really makes a difference to have a wife/husband/partner in your life to compensate for the problems during your day. When my wife gets home at about 6:30 pm I usually greet her at the door and unload a day’s worth of conversations I haven’t had on her, which I know she finds annoying because by comparison she has spent her whole day working with people and just wants to relax.
The second piece of advice is also not especially helpful because your circumstances may not warrant it, but the next big thing that has helped me is having a dog. I love dogs anyway and it is great to have the companionship in the house, but that’s not the best reason. The main reason my dog helps in this regard is that you are forced to take it for walks, and invariably you end up chatting with other dog walkers. So not only do you get breaks and exercise, you get human and doggy interaction too.
However, this is very important, you should not get a dog unless your lifestyle really suits one as they are a huge commitment.
Real world situations
With the useless advice out of the way, the next thing I would suggest is to force yourself into regular real world situations as part of a routine. I like to work from a coffee shop several times a week which both breaks up my week well and the simple fact of being around other people (usually working too) psychologically really helps. I know this is not easy if you play online poker, but I would suggest that maybe doing something like this is ideal for your study time away from the tables, where coffee shop wifi is not the difference between winning or losing a buy-in.
If you can’t get the dog then the next no brainer would be to join a gym. Again, it breaks your day up, has obvious health benefits and once again puts you around people. The gym for many people is a very social experience and it really pays for itself if you can get exercise and something else out of it.
Then the natural choice to curb the isolation of being an online poker player is to commit to more live poker. Even if it is not EV for you strictly speaking at the tables, consider it a loss leader that is going to benefit your mental health and overall game in the long term. It can be a lot of fun on the poker tour if you can draw yourself away from the tables 24/7.
It’s really important to do your interactions in person. It can be very tempting to tell yourself that because you have been chatting on Facebook and Skype with friends all day that you are getting your fill of social interactions. The reality is we are a social animal and while the technology has brought us closer together, we still have the internal hardware of when we were in hunter/gatherer tribes. We need to be around other people, we are hardwired for it.
Finally I’d just express how valuable it is to get away from the screen on a regular basis. I have software on my computer that turns the internet off completely at intervals for this very reason, so it forces me to get out of the house. It’s really easy to get addicted to the Internet, which only makes the loneliness problem more severe.
Do you work from home (poker player or not)? If so, how do you cope with the long time spent alone? Let us know in the comments:
