Poker is a demanding game of skill. Winning at poker requires the ability to perform quick, precise wagering caculations, the knack of making fast evaluations of card strengths, and, also, because extended play can be boring, the sitzfleisch to sustain patient concentration.
Caffeine improves each of these specific abilities. It improves your ability to calculate and improves your visuo-spatial reasoning. It also speeds your thinking and your reaction time, enabling you to reason more fluidly and make decisions more quickly. What many don’t know is that caffeine, employing a pharmacological mechanism independent of its stimulating power, helps to reduce the boredom of repetitive tasks. This can be a big help in many work situations, for example, many programming jobs. But it is also extremely valuable in poker, because one of the hazards of extended play is the urge to take chances so that “something interesting” might happen. When you take caffeine, the painfulness of boredom is largely relieved, and, as a result, you can patiently wait until the right time to make your move.
By using caffeine, Bennett has turned a $1,000 play money stake in Poker Stars into over $300,000 in less than a week of occasional play. He ascribes his success to taking caffeine.
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