[jafeather]

The truth is a LOT of players (especially online) play while drinking and/or smoking. A very few can pace themselves while doing this and keep their play under control. By far most, though, play much worse when high or with as little as 2 drinks in them.

Myself, I've lost a LOT of money while trying to play intoxicated. But I've created a safehaven to get around this. I try to be a serious player, and when I play serious I play sober. However, like most, there's still some "I like to play poker recreationally" floating around in me. Recreationally (where you're mostly not playing to win, but just for the fun of the game) I see no problem with having a drink or smoke while playing if you choose to do so.

The problem lies in how to identify the difference between recreational and serious play. For me, I keep my larger bankrolls on the sites that "serious ja" finds to be the most profitable. I also have a couple sites that are my "recreational" sites (intoxicated or for whatever reason just having fun) that I keep a couple hundred on a piece. If I have had EVEN ONE drink, then I play those recreational sites, for that's the money I don't care about. I have decent enough self-control that I don't cross the two, but I'm sure that keeping the money on separate sites is the only reason. (If I played on all the same sites and just played lower stakes while drinking I'm pretty sure I'd cross the line....as a matter of fact it's happened....hence my multi-site philosophy.)