Poker News

John Vorhaus

A while back I spent a bunch of time playing poker flat on my back. Hip replacement surgery had confined me to bed, but not, thank God, to total boredom. Courtesy of my laptop and wireless internet access, I was able to while away my rehab hours playing poker online. I learned a couple of lessons through the experience, and I’d like to share themwith you. First, don’t imagine you’re well when you’re not. I thought that hip replacement surgery would affect only my hip, but it didn’t. It ended up, really, kicking my whole entire body in the ass, and that was not without impact on my play. Though I was physically able to play horizontal poker, the quality of poker I played was, well, flat. All the background noise in my body (they call it pain, folks) kept me from playing even close to my best.

Second, an altered state is an altered state, even if it’s medically approved. They gave me pain killers and I’ll say this for pain killers, they do their job. They kill that pain. But they also impair caution, judgment, perception, and a few dozen other qualities upon which quality poker relies. I often found myself jumping online just when the pain pills kicked in, because that’s when I felt physically best. Can you imagine that my results were not so good? Oh, I think you can.

Third, don’t mix apples and ducks. My doc told me that my job was just to lie there and heal. I interpreted that as, “Lie there and heal, and distract yourself with online poker, too.” I ended up working at cross purposes to myself. Not only did I play rat-part poker, I think the stress of play actually slowed my recovery. Sometimes, “Just lie there and do nothing” is best interpreted as, “Just lie there and do nothing.”

Fourth, good poker needs good rest. Though I spent all day in bed, and therefore should not have been tired, I was also not sleeping well at night, because pain steals sleep, so I became more and more exhausted with each passing day. Again, not conducive to clarity of mind when clarity of mind is called for — which it always is in poker.

It’s an object lesson, friends: I had looked forward to this post-op period as a chance to really binge out on internet poker. After a while, though, I just quit altogether, because if I can’t play the game well then I’d rather not play at all, and in this instance, the deck was stacked fully in favor of crap-like play.

Think about this the next time you’re fighting a cold, or feeling tired or grumpy, or otherwise not entirely on your game. It’s always hard to play poker 100% well, but it’s almost impossible when you’re not 100% well yourself.

Filed under: Poker News