Problem with playing in my sleep

[Skip Brutale]

Hi guys, this isnt as much a gambling or poker problem as it is a chess one. When I was a younger man and played alot of Magic: The Gathering I'd often play whole matches in my sleep, when I moved to poker it was the same, but not as bad.

Lately Im playing alot of chess, and this has happened in the past when I've played alot, I play in my sleep. I cannot picture a whole chess board with the pieces dispersed around in my mind when Im awake. But when Im asleep I will play whole games in my mind, with alot of strategical thought.

I'll wake up at 4 in the morning from a dream where Im in some middle-game heavily weighting my options and I will feel stressed out and mentally drained. Worst of all it feels like I'm never totaly asleep, like a part of my mind is always awake, active, and analyzing chess situations when the rest of me is asleep.

I love chess and all, but I just want to sleep like normal, and not play heavily involved mentally demanding chess games throughout my sleep. Do you guys have any advice for how I can make this happen? Thanks.

don't play before you sleep, do something that takes no brain power, like watching tv or something.

Working it out in your dreams probably helps you become a better player /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[RiverTheNuts]

For a month or so I actually would dream about hold em alot... It wasnt me losing or winning alot, just normal, boring, top pair hands, which made sleeping very frustrating and annoying; it also made me stop enjoying poker for a while.

I dont really have a solution, as shortly thereafter I had a month long fling with a gal and was nailing her almost nightly, so that helped with the stupid poker dreaming.

Moral: Go get laid, itll solve alot of your problems /images/graemlins/smirk.gif

[jzpiano14]

Skip,

I've had a lot of trouble with this in the past as I am also a former MTG player, current chess and poker player. I found that because I was studying and playing chess for SEVERAL (5-6) hours a day at least I would be frequently playing in my sleep and the games were intense. I would wake up with the same problem as you not ever feeling rested and my mind was going 24/7. I cut back on my hours of chess in the last couple of years and since I cut back I haven't ever had a dream of chess, thank god...because as much as I love chess and poker, I hate dreaming about them because they stress me out. Hope this helps.

[smoore]

[ QUOTE ]


Moral: Go get laid, itll solve alot of your problems /images/graemlins/smirk.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

Indeed. Everyone has "work" dreams. I find mine are tied to sexual frustration. Ask Dr.Al though.

[Skip Brutale]

These are different from work dreams, they arent tied to sexual frustration, they continued to occur when I had a girlfriend.

Dont bother with stupid responses that are made more to brag that you claim you get laid all the time.

[Mr. Curious]

[ QUOTE ]
I love chess and all, but I just want to sleep like normal, and not play heavily involved mentally demanding chess games throughout my sleep. Do you guys have any advice for how I can make this happen? Thanks.

[/ QUOTE ]

Stop playing chess.

That is the first and only step that will give you a peaceful sleep.

Once you have given it up for a week, take a look at the pattern that has developed through your life in regards to these kinds of games. Magic, Poker, chess, if you started playing Backgammon, would your sleep be any different?

[Skip Brutale]

So I should switch to backgammon?

[jzpiano14]

don't do it.......

I did the exact same thing when I played magic. When I moved to chess, I did the same exact thing there. Now, I am at poker, and I also dream about that on occasion.

It is annoying, but I find there is really nothing that can be done about it. Sorry for being unhelpful, just wanted to let you know you are not alone.

[Bodhi]

When I was a philosophy student I would have dreams about logic and deduction with formal schemas, it was awful. I have also dreamed about chess, poker and other 'stressful' activities. It's just your brain continuing to work on these problems after you have turned off, and it will undoubtedly improve your middle-game. /images/graemlins/cool.gif

U probebly get dis kind of problem when u play a lot. Play lesser is the only choice.

Its normal do sleap is only a continum of the awaken time.

[Mr. Curious]

[ QUOTE ]
So I should switch to backgammon?

[/ QUOTE ]

Only if you would rather dream of backgammon instead of chess...

[vexvelour]

I always thought as a kid that whatever I thought about when I was falling asleep would have an outcome in what I dreamed about. (I could never remember my dreams so I'm not sure if it works.) Just think intently about anything BUT poker. It's worth a try.

[rory]

There is a bunch of experimental evidence now that animals replay some learned tasks in their mind during sleep. For example:

Louie, K. & Wilson, M. A. Temporally structured replay of awake hippocampal ensemble activity during rapid eye movement sleep. Neuron 29, 145-156 (2001).

There is also evidence that if the replay is disrupted via stimulation during sleep, the animals do not retain the learned task as well:

Wilson, M. A. Hippocampal memory formation, plasticity, and the role of sleep. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory 78, 565-569 (2002).

So instead of thinking of your dreams as being bad, think of it as your brain rehearsing what it has learned so that you will remember it better. It's good to dream about what you are working on or learning.

[ebaudry]

Anything you do during the day will be processed in your sleep. The best ways to minimize that is to have many different activities and brain uses during the day so that no particular topic sticks out in your attention while you are sleeping. Not playing right before sleep is helpful, something like a 1-2 hour break before bed is ideal, kind of like how you shouldn't eat anything around that time too in order that you body can fully relax and not "digest" anything, food or otherwise.

Taking up meditation would help a lot. Daily exercise would also be a good idea. Something to think about also, anything you do for more than a couple hours a day changes your emotional, physical, physiological, and energetic states. i.e. you are sending signals to your body and brain that say "I want to be a poker/chess/MTG/ signal processing system", and the body slowly adapts to that. The obvious effects would be on your posture, becoming shortsighted, developing wrist problems, thinking about poker "too often", wanting to talk about poker more than you do, and so on.

Just FYI, I have poker dreams almost every night when I play more than 5-6 hours/day, especially when its right before bed, which it often is. It can be very frustrating, although I can say hands down that it is preferable to the "Lemmings" dreams I had for a few weeks back in High School. The "Tetris" dreams were pretty annoying too...

make sure you stop playing about 1-2 hours before sleep. Turn on some music when you go to sleep, usually helped me (could try music you usually listen to or something like sounds of the ocean type cds)

[galahad_187]

Ya know, i wonder. I see my GF about 30 hours a week yet rarely if /ever/ dream about her. I wonder if my brain doesn't like her.

I used to play a text based game (MUD) several hours a day and would have text dream sequences. That, i believe, makes me an uber geek.

ps. the guy that said just be brain dead before you sleep is a bright cookie - that helped me. The daily show then sleep = fewer remembered dreams over the last 2 years.

I used to have this problem with chess as well.

Though--- it was actually a relief. I preferred it over dream-thinking about my engineering research, school, etc.

Since becoming a poker player (and putting chess aside), the chess-dreams stopped-- though I don't find myself dreaming of poker.