With the news that WCOOP is giving players Fridays off every week, is it a sign we are all exhausted from a summer of big online MTTs?
Last week PokerStars announced the 2020 World Championship of Online Poker. It was hotly anticipated because WCOOP is normally the biggest festival of the online year but this is not a usual year and we have already had a PowerFest, SCOOP, WSOP-C and online WSOP that in many ways have overshadowed it before it has even started.
In the end it was an $80 million guaranteed WCOOP and while bigger than any one before it, remained a relatively ‘standard’ series. However, one very small aspect this year that has had no attention, but I find very interesting, is that no WCOOP events take place on Fridays. PokerStars has said this is to give leaderboard chasers a day off, but I suspect it is for everyone.
The online tournaments have been so big this year and everyone has talked about how this must be unsustainable, many suggesting the poker economy is heading for a crash. There has been very little mentioned about how such a lengthy online schedule this year is unsustainable from a mental endurance perspective.
Many mental game issues are actually burnout
I really hope this Friday off was forward thinking from PokerStars, because I like it. It is not just about making sure the poker economy can afford such a long series of MTTs but whether they can mentally cope with one. I presume Fridays are usually the quietest relatively for WCOOPs in terms of numbers, as everyone gears up for big Sundays. I would personally have thought Mondays would have been the better days to have off, but most of these MTTs have Day 2s which involve a lot of players, so there would be people still playing from Sundays anyway.
I have worked with mental game coach Jared Tendler for more than a decade now and I have learned that poker players are terrible at taking time off. Even when they stop playing poker they are still browsing poker forums, playing equally mentally taxing video games and their work/life balance, diet and exercise all need work. In fact Jared often identifies that a lot of mental game issues players come to him with are actually burnout. Low motivation, for example, is usually a sign that a player needs a lot of rest, not a kick up the asss.
So I really hope these Fridays off is the first of several steps to help the poker community recover from an exhausting online year, mentally and financially. I hope after WCOOP we don’t see much in the way of big online festivals from any of the operators for a few months to give everyone a chance to regroup a little.
Of course, the problem with giving players Fridays off is that the shrewd among them will realise with no WCOOPs taking place, Friday would actually be the softest night of the week to play (and with Weekend Warriors to boot) and a lot would not take the day off anyway.
Are you burnt out from online poker? Let us know in the comments:
source https://casinonewsblogger.com/is-the-online-poker-community-burnt-out/
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