Take a quick look at the ESPN coverage of the WSOP last year, and the year before, and you will see a lot of Starbucks coffee cups sitting in front of players, but not so many beer bottles. Part of this could be with the fact that many of the events start around noon, but also players may be looking for something to stimulate them rather than mellow them, an important distinction when you face marathon days of poker playing and you want to be at your best. Yet former WSOP champ Scotty Nguyen is always seen with a Corona in his hand, and fellow poker pro Johnny Hennigan is another example of a champion who enjoys a drink or three while playing - and winning. So the question is, should you drink at the World Series of Poker?
As in a lot of answers to questions dealing with poker, the right answer to this one is it depends. What is your tolerance level? Can you drink without it slowing down your thought process or - perhaps more importantly - your emotional response flexibility? Ask any poker player who has been in the game and run into a cooler deck once too many times if tilting is a danger in the game and you will get a 100% positive response rate. A fairly recent study has shown that players who are tired lose some of their emotional flexibility, meaning they are less able to choose the way they react when challenged emotionally - such as taking a bad beat well.
Perhaps in cases like Scotty and Johnny we are dealing with players who are SO good that it hardly matters how much they have had to drink, as they can read players, make decisions and essentially play on auto pilot. If you are not in that class, you might want to forego beer and stick with Starbucks for a few days and you can drink all you want to celebrate your victory after the event.
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