Five Non-Poker Adjustments for Low & Mid Stakes Players to Make Poker Less Stressful

Maintain a Separate Budget

Playing only with money you can afford to lose is one of the fundamental principles of poker, extending far beyond the game itself. And if you apply it in your life, you’ll quickly notice a reduction in stress levels.

To make your life easier and poker less stressful, you should implement this idea into areas of your life outside of poker with a simple three-step change:

1. Determine how much money you need for life and how much you can afford to spend on poker.
2. Separate your budget into life and poker, and “lock” your poker money as something you will never use to fund your life.
3. Stick to your budget, don’t mix it with poker money.

It may seem difficult at first, especially if you’re not a professional poker player yet, but maintaining a strict relationship with your money is a skill that will serve you well in life.

However, this habit will only bring real benefits in the long run if you also follow the proper poker bankroll management. To calculate the required bankroll size for your game, use Poker Variance Calculator or Tournament Variance Calculator.

Keep an Additional Source of Income at Least for a While

Poker is a game of great variance that causes a lot of stress not only for players but for their loved ones as well. That’s why to minimize its volatility you should consider supporting yourself with another source of money.

It works wonders: when you don’t have to worry about the impact of a downswing on your financial well-being, the possibility of losing doesn’t exert the same pressure as when you are worried sick about losing.

So, investments, part-time or project jobs, coaching (but only if you have an interest in it), content creating, even needlework: the choice of how to provide yourself with additional money is entirely up to you.

However, choosing something not related to poker for this purpose can be the best decision for you because that’s how you also create and develop a skillset that can help you to make a living if for some reason poker stops being an option.

Isolate Workplace From Household

Even if you are used to working in noisy places, it doesn’t mean your brain can’t suffer from the overload of household distractions.

Stop for a moment and think: how many different things can break your focus during the session?

Dishwasher, household chattering and fussing, knocks and rustles of the building, there are only a few examples of daily noises that your brain endures all the time. And they actually increase your overall stress-level and decrease health significantly.

According to Harvard Medicine, regular exposure to noises can drive hearing loss, tinnitus and hypersensitivity to sound and worsen existing problems including mental issues such as sleep disturbances, attention deficits and memory impairment.

So, if you want to make poker and studying more stress-free or help yourself with focusing your attention on some important task, you should establish an isolated workplace comfortable for you.

You can begin with a simple step: buy-ing a construction headphones to wear for studying in silence. They are very good at soundproofing of ears and not as harmful for hearing as earplugs.

And if noise is not the only thing that distracts you from your work and causes you stress, choosing a different location as a private place for business may be the best solution if you have the resources to do so.

Get a Reliable Computer, Laptop or Smartphone

In the 2020s, high-tech devices are paramount in every person’s life and that’s exactly why when they aren’t working properly, it causes a lot of stress.

This advice may seem like a “Thanks, Captain Obvious” thing but in reality people do not always realize how much negative emotion they get from a lagging phone, slow loading applications on a computer, or an overheating laptop.

By building a solid PC or buy-ing a decent laptop or smartphone as well as maintaining your devices with great care and updating them regularly, you reduce a source of potential background stress and actually make your life easier.

However, it doesn’t mean you should spend your money far over what you can afford just to keep up with the newest devices in the store, it will have a directly opposite effect on your stress level.

Create a Clear Day-to-Day Schedule with a Regular Breaks

Your life isn’t a military environment but it actually needs to have a foundation of a good solid routine to be as stress-free as possible.

Through automation of everyday life on different scales, you can save a lot of energy, time and nerve cells but you should do it right to have the best results.

The best way to establish a routine is to make a plan for periods of different length and mark it on the calendar:

• Year: a plan in broad strokes including things you want to achieve without specific deadlines.
• Month: a plan for shopping, health checkups, utility bills, tax payments, and the like with clear dates.
• Week: a plan for regular repetitive weekly activity with clear days of the week, including workouts, mental health sessions, household duties, etc.
• Day: a plan for daily activities.

How to structure each plan is up to you. For example, you can divide your tasks for each plan into three categories: urgent, mandatory but not urgent, and optional. This model can help you not only decrease a level of stress by clarifying priorities and goals but also to structure your schedule and make time easier to manage.