Handling The Smoking Urge

I'm wondering if anyone has any advice on how to handle the urge to smoke during live games.

I'm a smoker and regularly find myself fighting (and sometimes losing the fight) to leave the table and go for a cigarette. I am sure that this is losing me money.

A good example is an event I played last week. Twice I had to leave the table and one of those times I missed playing my blinds. That set of blinds cost about 5% of my stack. I did finally make the final table after about 6 hours of play (80 entrants). From being the short-stack with 10 players left I came back to being about average stacked by the time we were down to the final five. By this time I was absolutely desperate for a cigarette and I knew my play was suffering because all I could think about was tobacco. I made a couple of atrocious calls that I would never normally make and got lucky. My two lucky/bad calls left us three handed and I found myself equal top stack with about 40% of the chips. At this point the equal top stack (he had 385k to my 380k) suggested a deal that would give us both slightly more than the 2nd place payout. Now normally I would say that this was a bad deal for me. I had played against both the others at earlier tables as well as the final table, and was confident that I had good reads on them. But I just HAD to accept the deal as I was desperate for my nicotine fix and couldn't be confident in my play under those conditions.

Obviously this isn't a problem with online play because I can (and do) smoke whenever I want, but any help in how to deal with live events would be much appreciated.

-Sammy Farha commonly sits at the poker table with an unlit cigarette in his mouth, this might help the urges or make them worse depending on your psyche.

-Chew nicotine gum.

-When not at the table, slowly build up your resistance by taking gradually longer periods between smokes.

-Give up smoking.

All I could think of.

quit smoking, pad br

in b4 spoon gets started on resisting all sorts of urges to make you a better poker player, such as scratching your nose when it itches

Don't scratch your ass when you have aces.

Seriously though, try to quit or use some sort of nicotine gum while at the table.

I still don't get the nose scratching thing. I thought Angelo's philosophy is supposed to be about relieving suffering, not prolonging it.

As for nicotine gum, you're not supposed to chew that stuff if you've smoked within 24 hours. Do live tourneys typically have breaks every hour? I read a WSOP trip report a few days ago where the guy would run outside, smoke, piss, and run back to his seat every break. If that is the case, and you're going nuts without having smoked in less than an hour, you might consider working on controlling those cravings. Chewing regular gum can be helpful.

Screw gums, patches, injections, laser and what not. Just use your hard head and stop. That's how I do it. Honestly, the hardest part is not to stop, it's not to start again after a few months, half drunk on a night out and going "oh, just one" and next thing you know there you are again. There is simply no such thing as "just one" when you have been a heavy smoker. Keep that in mind and be extra careful when you are out drinking.

Other hard part is not to pick up 20 pounds of body fat in the process. Gotta control the food cravings and do some exercise. This also helps when you stop smoking. Got a cigarette craving? Go for a walk or drink a glass of water. After the first few days, cravings are very short lived. After one week, they happen only once or twice a day, are very brief and they almost completely disappear after one month. Within a few weeks (or is it months?) your CO levels are back to normal, within six months you pretty much stop being short breathed and after a few years your risks of cardiovascular disease and cancer are reduced dramatically. Worth a shot.

This is the third time I stop, the first two times I failed at the 7 months mark for some reason. In my experience, one month and seven months are times where you have to be careful not to fall back. Never went past that, but I also got some friend who started again after two years. But I also know lots of people who never started again, so there is hope.

Now do it, and read spoon's post about willpower, not scratching your nose, and waiting in line.

yeah ive never been able to quit smoking, never even attempted actually. I seem to enjoy it too much, no real desire to quit etc.

As far as what the OP is discussing -- telling the dude to quit smoking is obviously drastic, like telling a beggar to get a full-time job and become a responsible member of society; yes, that would be the ideal solution, but here on planet earth.... -- I think the most useful reply you got was from Viscaro.

Chewing nicotine gum, practice taking extended breaks between cigarettes etc. seems to be the way to go. I've played in many live tournaments, and I never had trouble waiting until the break to light up. Never leave the table to have a smoke, jfc.

Smoking is seriously -EV in the game of life. LMAO @ lifedonks.

i prefer to chew my favorite flavored gum since it is candy that tends to last longer then 15 minutes.

also try some psychological conditioning by:
One more complex way is to think about cards every time the urge to smoke pops in your head.
This will keep you focused on the table and keep your math up to par for poker.
I like to consider and test myself on probabilities post flop, since they are more complex and can continuously change.

One simple way is to think about a happy moment in your life when everything was perfect if you have an urge to smoke, and then focus your mind back onto the table.

Once you ask yourself the question the topic should quickly help you alter your thought process.

Sincerely,

Righton

Originally Posted by manfredi

Smoking is seriously -EV in the game of life. LMAO @ lifedonks.

Do you ever have anything useful to say? Being a fucking idiot is seriously -EV in the game of life. Either shut the fuck up with your retarded comments already or get the fuck out.

Just imo.

E cigs.

Originally Posted by supahaole

E cigs.

Idiots complain about e-cigs so they're banned in some places like certain restaurants and airplanes. I don't know if this is the case in many (or any) casinos, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Thanks for the ideas. One or two of them are definitely worth trying. Not gum though. I hate ordinary gum and hate nicotine gum even more. I'm considering snuff. Has anyone tried snuff?

@grnydrowave2 who said, "Do live tourneys typically have breaks every hour?"
Not at my local casino. There there is one break after four hours and then we play to a finish.

Dip.

It's a ridiculously nasty thing to do, but it's nicotine you need to stay focused. Just take a dark bottle to spit into.

Or stop smoking.

Edit: I used to smoke, but I changed to dip. Now I only dip when I play poker, so it got me to quit smoking easily.

Interesting idea, but dip is illegal in the UK.

Originally Posted by Righton

One simple way is to think about a happy moment in your life when everything was perfect if you have an urge to smoke, and then focus your mind back onto the table.

Here we go with the psyco-babble bullshit, hmm.....if that ^^^ really worked then nicotine and cigarettes, specifically, wouldn't be so damned addictive.

As for snuff, yes. I've tried it and found that the new camel snuss works to eliminate the cravings, plus there's no need to spit.

Also, I want to appologize for telling you to try to quit in my previous post...it was really hypocritical of me since I've been smoking for almost 30 years.

Yuck. I think I would rather quit playing live poker altogether than resort to smokeless tobacco.

I smoke cigarettes, FWIW.