Bassy Saffari

In line with my constant need to improve bankroll management, I consider the things I do away from the poker table as important as those decisions I make at the felt.

To be profitable at online poker these days, you need to put in a lot of hours, especially if you're an MTT player. And if you manage to go deep in these MTT's then you're going to be up late at night.

And playing tournaments late at night when you're tired is one of the hardest things to do. The most crucial decisions you make are going to be towards the end of the sessions and the difference between KO'ing in 21st or banking a top three cash will often rest on your ability to adapt to the table dynamics, to cool your aggression and to deal with crippling beats.

Making this adjustment involves keen observation, mental agility and the ability to make disciplined decisions. Impatience can easily creep in when you're on the back of a 12 hour session made all the worse by a few too many drinks and a lack of sleep from the night before. 

This is why I have evolved my tournament lifestyle towards being sleep-orientated - meaning I'll play sessions based on the amount of 'quality' hours I've slept for. I also factor in any other activities I've done like playing sports, going to the gym or even brain sapping things like battering the Xbox (it's a tough life) and assess whether I'm rested enough to last the seven hours or more required.

By doing this I find I have the stamina that's required to have a good end game; an approach that can eradicate the reckless moves that put your tourney life at risk and kill your EV.

During the summer months I tend to play more cash games and sit n go's as the bright sunlight makes it difficult to sleep past 10am GMT - plus I feel obligated to leave the house.

Take PokerStars' WCOOPs for example. They run in September and require you to wake up at around 4pm if you're playing the 7.30pm starts - unless you're already awake in which case you'll have to have a nap beforehand.

I've heard US players saying the schedule is 'awesome' and that Europeans should be excited by it; but we're actually hugely disadvantaged by the start times.

I went deep-ish in the 6-max PLO, busting out at 5.30 am with 60 players still remaining. I thought this was outrageous in a game of this type as it's very difficult to maintain a strong and sharp six handed game having already been playing for ten hours.

And although the Americans have to play for the same amount of time, they have the luxury of having started the tournament at 2.30pm or earlier. So for me the WCOOPs represent a period where you have to reset your body clock to sleeping through the day if you're to have a good chance of success.

This is nowhere near as bad as grinding MTT's over the winter months however, where seeing daylight is the biggest perk in making a final table. The timing of these MTT's can really screw up your body clock, because even if you're doing ok results wise, it still feels really wrong waking at 9pm every day. So my routine during these was to go to the gym at 10am after my session, eat and then go to sleep from midday onwards.

It's a good job I'm not someone who suffers from seasonal depression otherwise I don't think I'd be able cope with some of the beats. I heard recently that 'nocturnal' people have a shorter lifespan than 'diurnal' people - but the late night prizepools are just too tempting...

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