Late night poker and sleep

Has anyone else found that playing poker late at night interferes with your falling to sleep shortly after? Is there any science to this claim?

[theweatherman]

I got nothing to back it up, but it seems any form of metal activity shortly before bed would make it harder to fall alseep.

[Goodnews]

yes, but only if i had a losing session. the 'bad beats' keep me awake at night.

actually, its because neurons are still firing in response to heavy mental activity. Unlike a hard demanding exercise, like an intense basketball game, there is no release of endorphins to help you relax and feel good.

i myself implement sprinting after playing a long session regardless if i won or lost. it helps either helps me work the aggression and frustration out of a losing session, or increases release of endorphins in a winning session. Be careful not to be selective (ie only sprinting when losing session) because the release of endorphins may be associated with losing (which not good in an objective point of view, you shouldn't feel good when you lose) through classical conditioning.

I may be wrong about the previous post and am looknig forward to being corrected (even moreso if im not /images/graemlins/laugh.gif).

I have found it hard to sleep after both good and bad sessions. So ive started playing afternoon/early evening instead of late evening.

[RollingRockMike]

[ QUOTE ]
I have found it hard to sleep after both good and bad sessions. So ive started playing afternoon/early evening instead of late evening.

[/ QUOTE ]
You're almost certainly going to have trouble falling asleep if you get any sort of adrenaline from playing.

[ QUOTE ]
Has anyone else found that playing poker late at night interferes with your falling to sleep shortly after? Is there any science to this claim?

[/ QUOTE ]

I gave up online poker for this very reason. It takes me 2 hours to come down from playing at the b&m in order to get to sleep. I found I would play online 1/2 the night and then couldn't get any sleep at all.

[Kristian]

Only when I am emotionally involved in the game. For me that means playing above my limit or having made it far in a MTT with lots of $$$ at stake. After regular gaming, I sleep like a babe, win or lose.

[wall_st]

I have this problem as well. The worst is if you stay up late playing into a MTT, because if this happens it means I have generally won some money which in turn makes me even more excited.

[jskills]

A cup of melatonin tea takes care of this issue for me everytime.

[BillFranklin]

I have the same problem. (with good or bad sessions)
As a result i try not to play after 10pm.

[ebaudry]

It doesn't affect how long it takes me to go to sleep, but it does affect my dreams. A lot of times I wake up in the morning realizing that I have been playing 5-handed bubble-bully in my sleep /images/graemlins/frown.gif

Probably good for my game, and not so good for my psyche.

To calm down after anything, meditate. Best possible solution, period. A close second would be to rub one out.

[Noose]

Yeah, sometimes. Usually for me it's when I've played bigger pots than usual or just played badly. When I play well, it's easy to sleep, when I'm not... uhh.