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How to prepare to play poker |
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Carthac United States. Dec 15 2011 15:02. Posts 1343 | | |
Hey everybody, it has been a while  Since black Friday I have not played much poker. What I have been doing is focusing on school. In one of my classes, Psyc 360 Cog Processes, We had an assignment to complete on improving our test taking process. I figured now that finals are over, I would share a little bit of what I learned and apply it to playing poker.
-Before you are going to play, diet is very important. You want to be eating foods filled more with complex carbs and proteins. When you eat foods higher in fats and simple sugars, the stomach requires more blood and oxygen in the stomach to break it all down. This ultimately pulls blood and oxygen away from your brain and lowers thought performance. I can’t recommend a lot of various foods, but the obvious fruits, vegetables, and whole grain foods come to mind.
-Caffeine is a very touchy subject. Caffeine has been shown to have very few physiologically harmful effects when consumed in small doses, even over a long period of time. Studies have shown caffeine increases the speed of your thought process on material you know very well. This is why caffeine improves performance on various competitive video games, but caffeine has shown to degrade performance on tasks that require more complex and logical thinking. Thusly, if I were to recommend it, it would be to the tired 1-2 live player who does not have a lot of tough decisions, but would not recommend it for the online 1-2 player. However, if you have a normal level of caffeine consumption every day, do not deviate from that. It will degrade your performance more than if you were to have it.
-Have a normal wake cycle and routine of poker playing if you can. One study, which sadly I can’t find the citation for, found that test performance improved if students studied in the same environment at the same time in which they took their test. This means if you play online daily at the same time, your body will become accustomed to increasing performance at that certain time. If you are not accustomed to doing this, it typically takes about a week to establish a cycle. As a side note, those of you that have trouble with sleeping, this is the key to obtaining a normal sleep cycle. It is a little more info so I won’t write it all here, but if you would like to know, PM me or ask in a comment below.
-NO DISTRACTIONS. As much as humans want to think they are capable of multi-tasking, they are not. One study in particular exhibited this effect. Participants wore headphones and were played two audio tracks of people talking, one in each headphone. They were told to focus on one voice. After the test, subjects were asked what the other person was saying during the experiment. None of them could answer the question. However, almost none of them recognized the person was speaking a different language! The best performance you can exhibit while playing is 60% of what you would normally perform if you were focusing your attention solely on the task at hand. However, this %age goes up with familiarity. So I would recommend against listening to music, but if I had to, I would recommend music you are familiar with. However, no TV, no podcast, no AIM/MSN chat.
-Exercising is great for the body and mind, but it has small time-frame drawbacks. When you exercise and are going to do something cognitively demanding, leave yourself a buffer time in-between. I would recommend waiting at least 30 minutes before playing poker.
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| | Last edit: 15/12/2011 16:29 |
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That's fairly helpful.
I've learned from various law school friends regarding the cycle-thingy that if you study hungover you should take the test hung over too. And I don't say that as a joke.
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Carthac United States. Dec 15 2011 16:26. Posts 1343 | | |
| | On December 15 2011 14:52 DustySwedeDude wrote:
That's fairly helpful.
I've learned from various law school friends regarding the cycle-thingy that if you study hungover you should take the test hung over too. And I don't say that as a joke.
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Yeah, I remember reading that study. The data, if I am remembering correctly, the scores went:
-People who studied sober and took the test sober had the highest scores
-People who studied drunk and took the test drunk were the next highest scores
-People who studied sober and took the test drunk were the next highest scores
-People who studied drunk and took the test sober were the lowest scoring |
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Spicy United States. Dec 15 2011 16:38. Posts 1027 | | |
This is good stuff. People don't realize how important each of these details is until they actually try it. Even if you're just making better decisions here and there, they add up very quickly |
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I have studied this stuff and today I still failed to utilize certain test taking basics on my math final :O
guess I'd been out of school for too long.. well I'm reminded of the importance of all this stuff now at least ;( |
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YoMeR United States. Dec 15 2011 23:01. Posts 12435 | | |
| | On December 15 2011 15:26 Carthac wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 15 2011 14:52 DustySwedeDude wrote:
That's fairly helpful.
I've learned from various law school friends regarding the cycle-thingy that if you study hungover you should take the test hung over too. And I don't say that as a joke.
|
Yeah, I remember reading that study. The data, if I am remembering correctly, the scores went:
-People who studied sober and took the test sober had the highest scores
-People who studied drunk and took the test drunk were the next highest scores
-People who studied sober and took the test drunk were the next highest scores
-People who studied drunk and took the test sober were the lowest scoring
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man that cycle thingy makes me wanna really hammer out a solid schedule. Thx for the tips. anything to potentially give me a bigger edge over the competition nowadays is def worth looking into.
btw if people who studied sober and took test sober didn't test the best then my mind woulda been blown O_O
drunk to drunk being 2nd best is actually pretty fun ;D |
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Carthac United States. Dec 15 2011 23:11. Posts 1343 | | |
| | On December 15 2011 22:01 YoMeR wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 15 2011 15:26 Carthac wrote:
| | On December 15 2011 14:52 DustySwedeDude wrote:
That's fairly helpful.
I've learned from various law school friends regarding the cycle-thingy that if you study hungover you should take the test hung over too. And I don't say that as a joke.
|
Yeah, I remember reading that study. The data, if I am remembering correctly, the scores went:
-People who studied sober and took the test sober had the highest scores
-People who studied drunk and took the test drunk were the next highest scores
-People who studied sober and took the test drunk were the next highest scores
-People who studied drunk and took the test sober were the lowest scoring
|
man that cycle thingy makes me wanna really hammer out a solid schedule. Thx for the tips. anything to potentially give me a bigger edge over the competition nowadays is def worth looking into.
btw if people who studied sober and took test sober didn't test the best then my mind woulda been blown O_O
drunk to drunk being 2nd best is actually pretty fun ;D |
Pretty crazy huh
Another really interesting fact I learned was those who die of hard drug overdoses, such as heroin, tend to die because of the environment they are in rather than the amount. They were finding heroin addicts were dying to 60-70% then what they can normally handle if they were in an environment they had never been before.
Of course you can still die from taking too much, but it is typically assumed that is the only reason why users die from overdoses |
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