How LONG???

I have heard that people play poker for a stretch of 13-15 hours non stop...
Some spend 18 hrs of a day playing poker....
But whats the ideal amount of hours in a day that one can give to poker...
I wonder how many hours the pro players might be playing in a day???

I play about 5-7 hours a day and I am beginning to worry why I am not getting a lot better. I am not losing as much as as used to so that is good. I figure I am a break even player at this pojnt maybe slightly ahead.

Time spent here has helped

Most play around that 8 hour mark i would say. It really depends for most people. Many play a lot less and only play cash games, but ones that play tournaments will usually have to play atleast 5 hours if they make it pretty deep into a tournament. You will get better, the more hours you play because you always learn. good luck to you

I say I play 1-5 hours depending on what games im playing and what day it is. Weekends are my busy time back at home from college so not much then. I try to play all CC Freerolls and the UB buy in game.

I play anywhere from 3-12 hrs daily, depending on whether I'm playing several tournaments in a row. I'm mainly trying to improve my game...as many here know, I have a very long way to go before I'm really good at it. Every day is generally better than the next & it helps to read the many posts & watch the videos here.
I'm not sure how long is too much or too little. I've played for over 36 hrs straight once...going from one long tourney to another. But I would advise you not to try it...my days & nights were completely messed up!

^^36 hrs! yes! high 5! i think i did 18 once...that was a lot of coca cola and coffee and beer and peeing

It's possible to play high quality poker for several days without rest. Just takes some building up to it.

Pros often play for ridiculous lengths of time. I recall seeing an interview of Phil Ivey where he was talking about how if he's losing he'll play 40 hours, when the interviewer remarked about this he shrugged it off and said he's happy to go a lot longer than that. Doyle Brunson is another example, in Super System he refers to having played a 5 day game without more than a 5 minute break (having meals delivered to him at the table).

Even the small time pros tend to put in long sessions. Most of the pros I've met tend to have no issues with playing for 24 hours.

Personally I'm by no means as skilled as a professional poker player is assumed to be but I do make a modest living off of it, and preffer to play 24-30 hour sessions simply because I don't like quitting when I'm losing (becoming determined to overcome bad beats), or quitting when I'm winning (if I'm making money so easily, I should stay at the table until the game becomes bad).
Long sessions also have the advantage of requiring fewer days per week of "work", which allow you to more days per week to spend on the rest of your life (at the cost of sleep deprivation.... ).

I really do believe that for the first 24 hours your play wont suffer if you just do as much as you're comfortable with, until you can easily do the 24 hours (it's more a question of dealing with the lack of sleep than anything else). The next 24 hours can get a bit ugly, but I think you could probably build up to that too if you wanted (although I question how healthy regular 48+ hour sessions would be... 48 hours will mess you up quite a bit).


Most people wont have any need to approach these session lengths because they're just playing for kicks instead of a pay check, in this case then as much hours as you can find for poker in which you'd like to play poker is enough. No alterations to that quantity need to be made.

It's all depend your bankroll then you can how long you want, I can play forever but don't have a bankroll for it so yea

Just a suggestion, but if your roll can't support one long session then it probably can't support many short sessions either.

The only difference between one long session and many short ones is that with short sessions you get to walk away from the table and think through your mistakes and fix up leaks. Long sessions will increase your bankroll fluctuations a bit but assuming you have no major leaks in your game the difference wont be all that much.

Your attention span is vital when trying to work out how long you can play for. Pros have not only trained and honed their mental strength but can also absorb and process much more information (or at least the same amount) for less effort. Playing is less straining for them mentally then it would be for a hobbyist.