[Fonzi]

Fatigue

One of the great enemies at the poker table is fatigue. I don't care if you're finishing a 20 hour session at the Bellagio, or you're deep in the money at a 3000 player online MTT. You WILL get tired, and you'll start to make mistakes. There are a lot of tricks that you can use at the table to stay awake. Sometimes you'll even project false tells because of them! Just understand that none of these tricks are a substitute for sleep, and a fatigued player is always worse than a fresh one.

NOTE: Messing with your sleep in any way, including the use of any of the following techniques, can be dangerous. When in doubt, consult a physician!

1) Ice Cold Water: This works better at home, when the restroom is seconds away and sitting out is very easy. But the most natural way to keep a body awake is to shock the system with freezing cold water, once in a while. Sip it slowly, slosh it around your mouth, even splash it on your face (don't get the cards or table wet though!). This is the double whammy: You're awake when the water goes in, and you're awake when it comes out!

2) Strip Down: No, not to your skivvies. But remove any excess layers, and roll up your sleeves. Casinos keep the room as cool as possible for a reason. They want you to stay awake. At home, turn off the heat, and open a window. The later it is, the cooler it is outside, so this is a natural balance that you can take advantage of.

3) Legal Drugs: Ephedrine or Caffeine pills are magical little wonders. But be warned, this is the most dangerous of options. Some people are known to get hooked on these things, and it can't be all that great for your body. Modafinil (or Provigil) is the prescription version of these bad boys, but you had better have a valid prescription for them unless you like felony jail time in the U.S.! They're much easier to get in the U.K. With prescriptions more common here.

4) Selected Energy and Soft Drinks: Use these ONLY towards the very tail end of your session, for the final push. If you use them too early, you'll crash out as the short term energy boost wears off. We're talking about Red Bull, Lift Off, Mountain Dew, Jolt, and iced coffee and tea products. They'll buy you an hour, maybe two. But the second can is never as effective as the first, and too much will do bad things to you.

Some of the side effects of forcing yourself to stay awake are shaking hands (the jitters), short term memory loss, and hyperactivity. And all of these are potential false tells! If your hand is shaking as you put down those pocket aces, but it is also shaking when you put down 4 5 suited, how can an opponent possibly know what you have? If you're twitching and fiddling, but you're doing it all the time, then it is very difficult to pick out a tell.

I believe it was Chris Karagulleyan, at the Bike playing in one of the first World Poker Tour events; he had all sorts of twitches and tics, but not a single one was a tell. You would have to wade through a ton of natural reactions to his environment to find any significant clue as to what he was thinking. In this way, the false tells that you have from being tired or artificially stimulating yourself can be used to mask any real tells that you might have. You might even throw in a few extra shakes and jitters for good measure.

A final tip: If you're in a cash game, don't use these tricks for too long, just pack it in. Cash games come and go. Being well rested and on top of your game beats out any short term advantage that you may have on a particular cash table. In the long run, it isn't worth your health or your sanity.

Bill Ricardi ? Internet Gaming Guru