Sessions of eight, 10, or 15 hours are perfectly normal, even a routine part of the process for many players.

But an hour of poker? That’s just a couple orbits, barely enough time to get a feel for the table. But the mechanical repetition and the pacing of individual hands does work against your brain in a specific way, muting the portion of your subconscious that alerts you when you’ve spent a long time doing any one thing.Īn hour or two of blackjack is typically enough for most people to feel satiated. That’s not to say poker isn’t a fascinating game of strategy and nuance.

Poker players are especially susceptible to this time suck because of the nature of the game. These are the sorts of questions you should be asking yourself in order to preserve the poker equivalent of a healthy work-life balance. But what about poker? Are you spending more time playing poker than you should be? Do you play more often than you admit to your friends and family? Does poker keep you from fulfilling other commitments? What about your desires? Are you pursuing the goals and activities that you want to? Social media is one of the major culprits for many people, with Facebook and Twitter becoming their own sources of compulsion for a segment of the population. Time as an indicator of harmĪll of us have recreational activities that we willingly allow to suck up our time and our energy. So let’s discuss how the simple act of watching the clock can act as an early warning system for an underlying problem. And despite being one of the most visible symptoms to an observer, time mismanagement remains one of the hallmark indicators of gambling disorder. Like money, time is a finite asset that tends to lose its perceived worth as behaviors become more problematic. Time, however, is a key element that’s often overlooked. When people talk about the harm that gambling can cause, they’re most often talking about the direct personal and financial impacts. This is the first in a regular series of columns from Maris Catania, Safer Gambling Senior Consultant at SG:certified.

Poker why is calling the clock rude