Back in November 2007 I wrote a little blog about intensity.  What I suggested at the time was that a poker player's success was "directly proportional to how intense their learning/play of the game, but that their longevity was a more loosely related inverse to that line.  Walking the fine intersection of those those two lines determine your ability to maintain and prosper through a long poker career."  I used the example of Stu Ungar, who was a brilliant, intense, and hugely successful player who burned out quickly unable to manage his demons.

Today, I was thinking of the question of intensity in poker in relation to muscle workouts.  If you do an intense, anaerobic workout (without sufficient oxygen), your muscles produce waste molecules that impair muscle contraction. You will tire quickly and require significant time to recover.  If you do a more measured aerobic exercise, the pace allows for more oxygen and energy to fuel your metabolism.  You are able to sustain your activity for a longer period.

There is no denying that the World Series of Poker is a workout. In the month since the 6 week long WSOP ended, I have seen more blogs, or actually less blogs because people have been blogging less but more as a percentage of overall blogs detailing the fatigue and hangover effect from that intense period.  The intensity of the series is unsustainable long term.  The temptations of Vegas, including friends and family, along with the 57 event poker series and assorted concurrent Vegas poker options, wear out most players. Afterwards, they drift home in a daze. They need time to recover from that period.  Many players will spend more time inside, doing non poker activity, being sick, or generally not in their usually peak productive selves.

For the vast majority of poker players, the WSOP has all the earmarks of an anaerobic workout.  Players are reluctant to miss out on any of the intensity of the experience, they push themselves to max out the experience.  Thus they inadvertently create physical and mental waste in their lives that impairs future action.  For a lot of players, it takes over a month to fully rest and recover, physically and mentally, from the expenditure before they return to their more natural productive selves.  Only those select few poker players who structure the series as an aerobic activity, pacing themselves both on the number of events they play and the level of entertainment outside of playing are able to maintain their activity without seeing a drop off in productivity.

The ultimate issue of how much intensity should you have in your poker life remains an important one.  Do you want to go full speed or learn to pace yourself.  Only you can decide that for yourself, but align your intensity with your goals and don't be surprised if either decision has a certain cost to itself.  

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