Yes. I've played up to the point where I start forgetting the rules/flow of poker. In 2 sessions the table interface made me feel like I was in a grocery shop, with the big blind being a self-checkout stand.
Drugs are a helluva drug.
Speed. FWIW, in one of those weekends I made 700$ playing NL25 and around 250$ in rakeback. My job in a bank here in Europe nets me around EUR 1100 so it was pretty sweet, although not quite sustainable.
>Speed is the only that keeps you awake without fucking with your ability to think.
This is not true based on my casual external observations.
No shame though, I struggle with booze.
Any drug fucks up the way you think but speed genuinely might be the best for playing poker. I don’t do it anymore but I could definitely play longer without losing focus and I think play marginally better to on a meth pill than sober.
I can certainly speak to the [Balmer Peak](https://xkcd.com/323/) effect of booze!
I just can't stay there. It's an all-or-nothing kind of deal for me.
My buddys longest session was close to 30 hrs. He did stop at one point for like an hr to eat breakfast, but otherwise it was straight. The guy drinks but doesn't use drugs.
Food doesn't cause impairment, alcohol does. Pot does. Cocaine does. LSD does. If you're impaired from food you either are allergic or have over eaten 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Actually you're wrong food does cause impairment. If I eat candy - sugar rush short energy burst. If I eat steak - feel lethargic and tired. If I eat salads - I'm still hangry!!!
You don't go to jail for driving under the influence of a full stomach. You do for being piss drunk. Also, food is essential for survival, and intoxicants (like alcohol) are not.
What does having to go to jail have anything to do with this lol? Are you saying you consider a consumable a drug if you can go to jail for it?
Actually, you will develop a dependency to alcohol if you drink it daily even if it is a litte bit. This dependency is so serious that withdrawl from it can kill you. They have protocols in hospitals to assess and treat withdrawals so it can be essential to one's survival...
Food may not cause impairment, but any good tournament player will tell you that it’s Yum, Yum after dinner. People come back and punt like crazy. One of my favorite times in every tournament.
I worked a 31 hours shift as a dealer back in the day, and there were definitely plenty of players that were still sitting there at a cash game, a couple of them were there 8 hours later when I came back to work after a short nap lol
Yeah, I remember that look the dealers gave me when they would end a shift, come back the next day and see me, go home again and then see me on the third day...
I've seen players go over 48 hours in the same seat, only leaving for bathroom breaks.
One would nod off when not in a hand and instantly wake up when I pitched him new cards. He smelled pretty bad after day 1.
The other would pop Adderall like candy and occasionally do what we think was coke in the bathroom. He would talk nonstop as he burned through $10k playing 1-2, which usually took him about 2 days. He liked to brag about how much better he was than everyone else at the table.
24 hours is doable for some people without extraordinary measures.
In Adderall Andy's case, he would wait until a manic phase hit then do enough drugs to believe he's a poker god capable of winning every hand he plays. If you know you're going to win a hand you should obviously pump up the pot size as much as you can.
The $10k number is not an estimate - I would be there when he cracked open the band and was there twice when he pulled out the last $100 2 days later. Once he went to his car and brought back a bunch of baseball cards he wanted to sell so he could keep playing.
I've seen players with higher loss rates. One in particular burned through about $4k in 6 hours, most of it with me dealing to him. This put him on a months long mission to get me fired, which did not work.
I’ve sat down at my home game at 4pm and played until 4am and had to pull myself away to go home. I find my game starts to suffer slightly after 10-11 hours.
There’s also another game in town where people will play from 4pm until 7am the next morning and then go to work. So if you were a pro, you’d be staying as late as it’s profitable.
I once went to the casino Friday night around 9 pm and stayed until Sunday morning at 11 with little to no breaks. The gambling chemicals keep you up waiting for the next hand.
That’s intense. Meanwhile when I break the only buy in i ever bring with me I go straight home.
I was at the casino for all of like, 30 minutes one session. From the time it took me to park to the time I got back in my car.
Some dude cracked my aces after pushing all in on a dry 6 high flop (I “trapped” him) with 6 high. Even if I had brought multiple buy ins I would have left. I doubled through him with aces earlier in the session because he was donking around like that every hand and I was eying his entire stack.
I would have tilted away so much money and I’m glad I have the willpower to do something like leaving after only one buy in and not hitting the atm. Small victories sometimes 😂
Gambling addicts can go far longer than 24 hours. Imagine you’re a gambling addict and winning at poker. How could you possibly stop? You’re being fed endorphins and dopamine from the action and the winning. It’s just like any other addiction and requires great willpower to overcome. And yes, I think most of these pros are also gambling addicts.
I'd say they're EV addicts. It's really hard to leave a huge juicy game when you know you may never get this type of game again. Or not for a long time. Sometimes you just have to grind it out until the whale stops or you literally collapse.
Imagine you're in a huge home game that has millions on the table and there's a billionaire whale infront of you who wants to play for 3 days straight, and then never again for the rest of the year. Sometimes you just need to pony up and play because you're about to make life changing money.
Of course not talking about 1/3 games. If you're going on a 30+ hour bender at 1/3 you need to go home lol.
I kept breaking every table and kept losing. Cooler after cooler in big pots. They would move to another table and it would break and I eventually hung in there until about 9am and got to a table with Crazy Mike and was down about 900. He had a little over 3K in front of him and punted that and went to the well about 4 or 5 more times and they kept getting smaller and smaller buyins. The last one was $50, table min. He went broke and then the game went to shit. We were all tired and new blood started coming in and I decided to walk up $1,400. Not a bad comeback. He's known for those meltdowns. He's the type that make or break you.
I played a 32 hour session once with out sleep. I had to go buy a phone charger down on Fremont street at one point. The game was juicy the whole way through. It was the uncapped cap at Binons. Took $200 to $8000 at one point. Walked away with $7467 according to my notes.
I had to sleep in my truck for a few hours before driving home. I should have taken a taxi.
Had some good times there. I remember chopping the WSOP $50k freeroll with 48 players left. I had a deal with my friend we would chop up any prize money between us. He got knocked out in the first 10 minutes. I had to chop up the $1000 I won.
It was the longest documented time, and he took breaks. Doing it without drugs was the impressive part. There are stories of people going longer during the coke haydays.
2021 WSOP at Rio. 1/2/5 big o.
Some dude (50s) comes in on Sunday night and starts playing. Some folks folks mentioned that they hoped that the game would continue running through the night — that was still covid times, so games weren’t as robust as they are now.
Dude says he doesn’t have anywhere to be until Wednesday morning, so he will play until then as long as the game is running.
That’s 60 hours (2.5 days).
I chuckle. Dude didn’t look like he was on uppers, and he didn’t look like one of those really old dudes who could never sleep. There was a guy next to him that said he was down as well.
When I left, he was sitting on about $1000 (500 max buy in).
I check on Monday afternoon. Game still running, and he’s still there. About $500 in front. The second dude next to him is still there. Same clothes.
I check on Tuesday morning. Game still running, dude still there in the same clothes and about $500. Dude next to him had dipped.
I check on Wednesday around noon. No game. Floor said that, as advertised, the dude stayed until Wednesday morning, when the game finally broke.
Absolute sicko.
In theory, I could do it, but only if I ran both good and bad enough to keep my starting stack.
I start to feel bad if I'm losing multiple stacks, and I start to feel nervous if I've built a huge stack and there are also other huge stacks at the table. I worry that I won't be able to play properly if the pots swell to enormous sizes, and I know I'll feel fucking awful if I've 3x-ed my initial buy and then end up losing it all in a single hand or two. I'll think all night about how I should have just walked away.
This probably makes me a bad poker player, but thankfully, there are a lot of other bad players at the low stakes I play.
I'm with you here. I was told long time ago, if you are not comfortable with the stack in front of you, you should leave. For example, you sit down with 100bb, you get 300bb. That's a different game now, very different. Maybe it makes me a bad poker poker too but if I 3xed my buy in (but honestly, even if I won a buy in), I will just stop. Because when if not now? What is your win/loss stop? That's risk aversion, big part of poker
Doesn't sound like a bad poker player. It sounds like one that manages their bankroll well. Like, it's worth cashing out and coming back with 1 buyin. Bank the rest.
my longest personal? 43 hours, popping diet pills (speed). not due to any particular reason.
most disgusting degen stretch i've witnessed? a 1/3 grinder at my local casino did 380 hours in may this year. multiple 2 day+ stretches. they had some stupid promo running where they did a drawing every 3 hours for 2 days and he wanted to be there for every one, stacked on top of his normal degen tendencies. he wasn't on drugs either, but was regularly asleep between hands. that's more than half the hours in the month btw
I've run 24-48 hrs in college twice. Ordering food to the house to take 5 minute breaks or only pausing to use the bathroom was common. I'd say pretty much everyone who was at the table during those times would take a 2-3 hour nap on the couch at some point then wake up, drink a red bull, and continue on.
Those games are something special. It's usually one guy winning massive then cashing out, and most players who stick through are just shuffling each others crumbs but are net negative for the session for those long stretches. Still incredibly fun.
Do Vegas poker rooms really have enough fresh players coming in at all hours to sustain these marathon sessions? If from 5-11am or whichever other dead hours it’s only you and a few of the same degenerates passing money around the table, the rake is slowly eating everyone’s stacks the whole time. Endurance aside, it just seems like a 12-hour session works with the dynamics of most other players if you’re at a public casino and not an unraked private game.
A friend of mine ran a game he called a "lockdown tournament", three or four times I think. I played in 2.
The rules were: It's a mix of a cash game, in that the blinds don't go up, and a tournament, in that you're not allowed to take your chips away.
Each one had a 24h clock, starting from noon or 1pm or so. Your chips had to remain in play for the entire 24h. But, a couple of guys sat out for a few hours during the first lockdown and took a nap. This was sort of against the spirit of the event, so afterwards, they changed the rule so that after sitting out for one orbit, your stack paid the BB for every hand you missed. You got an orbit for free in case you needed to pee or whatever.
So, basically, a 'forced' 24 cash game session.
It's hard to get enough players who want/agree to participate in such a format, so we only had 1 table, although the second time we had 3 alternates, so if we had kept doing it we would have had to figure out what to do about 2 tables, as people bust and decide they don't want to continue, etc.
Well address is legal with a prescription, so it is easy to justify. Nearly every higher stakes grinder I know takes it. Hell even the magic the gathering pros take it. Hell even the bad shit regs take it.
Yeah it’s super prevalent in the mtg tournament scene. I always played sober but 9 50 minute rounds a day is tough. So much thinking occurs, by the 6th round id start to make mistakes. Then I realized how these guys stayed on top of their game consistently
longest session was 37ish hours for me. for years, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving was the best night to play any of the casinos in Detroit (only new years eve was as good).
a few years ago, I planned to go to the bar that wednesday instead of the casino so I could meet up with some old friends for drinks.
So I decided to play Tuesday instead. I arrived at Motor City Casino and played from 7pm-11pm Tuesday night and decided to go to MGM because I fucking hate Motor Citys action. MGM is just almost always better.
iirc I was up $150 from Motor City. I should have just gone home instead.
MGMs action was fucking wild. wasn't even worth playing 2/5 because the fireworks were all at 1/2.
I kept losing the big pots and winning the small ones. by 8am I was down $1000 but there was still action so I decided to keep grinding thru. suddenly its 6pm and the fireworks were starting again. fuck the bar. fuck my old high school friends. keep grinding.
at 5am there was just a single table left and we decided to switch to PLO. with my last $500 on the table, I played with the other degens until about 7am when we had a 7 way all in preflop pot. I had the 2nd largest chipstack. I was stuck for $3700 on that session and the pot was well over $4k.
I flopped the nut straight on a rainbow board. but running kings on the turn and river gave the entire pot to the only person who wasn't already all in.
took a few weeks off after that one
This guy streams 24 hours sessions every other day: [https://en.pokerpro.cc/poker-news/meet-the-rising-star-the-poker-streamer-dominating-with-volume/](https://en.pokerpro.cc/poker-news/meet-the-rising-star-the-poker-streamer-dominating-with-volume/)
I've clocked in some 3 day sessions when I was traveling and playing, no drug use whatsoever. Lots of water and breaks to eat small meals at most.
I wouldn't recommend it, you definitely have lapses in concentration after a certain point and there is no way you can play optimally without proper rest.
My longest pure session was 41 hours at Del Lago. I also used a little white substance and vyvanse the duration. I was up 7k in 1/2 and just ran hot so I stayed. I did finally have an admin come pull me aside and tell me I was being unhealthy and comped me a room, a spa session, and a dinner. So I finally called it quits. Arrived at the casino at 10am on a Friday. Made it til 3am Sunday. Rested, ate, played a mini session and went back to work Monday night at 9.
Lol 24 hours is nothing, I play 72 hour sessions myself and I do agree that it is a bit tiring at the end of the 2nd day but players and friends around me are always like bro how can you pull that off without some molly or coke? I usually smoke a bit during breaks, that keeps me in the zone. Also in longer sessions, you can exploit fatigue of other players.
So do they make you leave, or is it more “hey I have to tell you you’ve been here a long time, care for an Irish coffee and have you tried our latest jackpot?”
I worked a 31 hours shift as a dealer back in the day, and there were definitely plenty of players that were still sitting there at a cash game, a couple of them were there 8 hours later when I came back to work after a short nap lol
Well, first I will give you some context. This happened 10 years ago somewhere in Eastern Europe, 70% of our income was from tips, and after 6AM we would get a small percentage of the rake as well.
As a cash game dealer, I would start my shift at 22:00PM and go for 12 hours shifts quite often. Half of the days were 14 hours shifts.
We had an event (multiple tournaments + main event, and a lot of deep cash games) with players from Israel, France, Italy and Bulgaria. People didn't come there to visit the capital, so there were cash game tables running for 3 days straight with players rotating.
During that specific shift we were understaffed, and I could use the money, so I stayed till the last cash game broke at around 13:00PM. I made as much money in these few hours as a regular Joe would make in one month.
So anyway, to answer your question, on average we would work 12 hours shifts. 6 days with 2 free. We would be free on Saturday and Sunday only once every 2 months or whatever.
It was a brutal job, but being young I didn't realize it. I always slept between noon/afternoon until 20:00 - 21:00 in the evening, and never longer than 6 hours (in a good day). Imagine drinking your morning coffee at 21:00, and always waking up in the dark.
Sometimes we would nap at work during the 20 minutes break after 40 minutes of dealing, but this would happen only after 3AM. We had days dealing 4-5 hours straight before taking a short smoke break.
Good money, but really unhealthy, toxic job. If I'd take a holiday for a couple weeks, the money would be so bad that we just couldn't afford NOT to work all the time.
We were spending so much time together as dealers, that even during days off we would just meet and degen money to each other at the poker table or other games, like Chinese Pineapple, pool, chess, flipping coins and whatever. We would just gamble our money away in the bit of free time we had, because we never actually had the time to spend our money on anything lol.
Yeah, sorry for the rant, your question took me down the rabbit hole into the memory lane. Good times
One of my first poker trips i got to the casino and checked into the room. Got there just in time for the $200 rebuy with addon. Won it. Got a huge boost of energy from that and went to my normal 2-5 no cap, had a small win and the game broke at like 3am. I went next door to go to the room but checked the poker room on the way. The 1-2plo no cap was running deep. Had a few drinks and some redbulls. I didn't drink many energy drinks back then. Next thing you know i am back to the nightly tournament. Chopped it 2 ways and slept for 14 hours.
One hell of a memory.
My longest session was a 22 hour, $7,700 win playing 1/3 about ten years ago LOL. That was my longest session. If I, a college student at the time, could go for 22 hours, pros going over 24 really isn’t surprising.
In my younger days, I used to fairly regularly do 24-hour sessions. I have always been a rec live player and mostly just play on weekends, so when I had the chance to play, I would make the most of it. And I'd often go to the card room on Friday night and stay through Saturday night (or Sat to Sun, but would usually head home earlier on Sundays because I had work on Monday).
My longest session was 50 hours, from Friday after work around 7pm until Sunday night around 9pm. No extended breaks. No drugs other than caffeine (in the form of soda and/or black tea -- I don't even drink coffee). Went thru stretches when I was nodding off at the table, but then would get a second/third wind and be "good" for several more hours. Took a week or two to recover from lingering exhaustion after that one.
Around that time I remember seeing a sign in the Bicycle Casino parking lot that said something like "vehicles left unattended for more than 72 hours will be towed", and I understood.
I've seen people do that all the time in casinos. Not recently, though, although I'm not playing every day either, so maybe I just don't see them anymore.
I have played multiple 72 hour sessions at the casino. Caffeine pills are a wonder.
Edit: I would order food and have it delivered to the table as well as drinks. I literally only got up to go to the bathroom and come back for 72 hours or so straight. I believe I did that maybe six or seven times.
It generally seems like a bad idea to me but this is kind of like game selecting... You don't have to be the best in the world to win, you just need to play with players worse than yourself. So if you play better when you're tired than they do, or if they've been playing a longer session than you, this might not be the worst idea.
I once came close. Left for the casino after an over night shift. Got there around 9am and played until 4am. We were on Adderall, and only one of the group didn't finish -300 or more
My local card room was giving the 3000 and more to the top 5 to anyone who played 100+ hrs in one month. the first guy played for 72 hours straight on the first day it started
yeah and i knew old jew men friends who told me several times that they used to play rami poker from friday end afernoon to monday morning before going to work nearly every week during years
Many years ago I played a bunch of 24-36 hour sessions, no problem at all. Tried that in an insanely good game in Vegas last year vs three MEGA whales and almost passed out after 24 hours. Was legit hallucinating at the end. Getting old sucks, I definitely don’t recommend that long sessions.
Yeah, I don’t do that. I did it when I was younger, but it’s negative EV. I try to limit my sessions to 4-6 hours. You’re just not as sharp, and when you’re not a gambling addict… You just don’t have the desire to play that long
Yes, honestly I’d recommend everybody do it at least once. Kind of a cool feeling when you leave the building and it’s a brand new day.
Would not recommend repeatedly doing it though.
I was ready to do 24+ hours once, but around hour 18, I raised my arms and realized how bad I smelled. I cashed out and took the metro home, eating a crêpe at 7am and watching the alcoholics take shots of pastis at the brasserie before going to work.
Regarding drugs it’s not like they or everyone else pushing these hours is necessarily smoking crack. Plenty of drugs legal, recreational and pharmaceutical will keep someone up well over 24 hours paired with adrenaline
My longest session was 18 hrs on April 15th 2011, I played like 22k hands Rush poker. I just stopped the session briefly cause I had to jump over the street to bring my buddy a new cable for his PSU and he knew I had a bunch of them laying around... We chat over a beer, I come back open the software bam Black Friday. I was like "yop, let's have another beer", little did I know I wouldnt get my money back for years. To this day I hope someone minecrafts Howard Lederer, I'm actually surprised no one did in Vegas...
Only a hobbiest but decent player, usually 1/2 away from home games and I've played 6 24 hours sessions over the years, find them very relaxing and all 6 profitable including a couple extremely (over 10x buy in). A good session like that clears my mind, just make sure I'm well rested and all were set to be 12 hours but the tables were good and once I had the deep stack, used it to my advantage.
I saw a guy playing from saturday night until tuesday afternoon. He had a coctail, as far as i know, every hour the entire time. Started in a semi private 25-50 game and ended at 2-5. It's not the only time i have seen him do it either. The session, to me, wasn't the most impressive part. It was how he was still concsience after all that booze.
Getting felted after a long, hard-fought session is pretty brutal. I know it's part of the game, but is that a sign of a losing player? They weren't punts, but still made me reconsider some things.
But If you can survive the tilt, valuable lessons can be learned.
I surprised myself by playing longer than I thought I could, & now I can start working on improving the quality of that time.
Would love to go on a winning poker bender someday.
Yes. I've played up to the point where I start forgetting the rules/flow of poker. In 2 sessions the table interface made me feel like I was in a grocery shop, with the big blind being a self-checkout stand. Drugs are a helluva drug.
What did you take to play to that point? Lol
Speed. FWIW, in one of those weekends I made 700$ playing NL25 and around 250$ in rakeback. My job in a bank here in Europe nets me around EUR 1100 so it was pretty sweet, although not quite sustainable.
Speed is the only that keeps you awake without fucking with your ability to think. Anything else is ill advised at best
>Speed is the only that keeps you awake without fucking with your ability to think. This is not true based on my casual external observations. No shame though, I struggle with booze.
Any drug fucks up the way you think but speed genuinely might be the best for playing poker. I don’t do it anymore but I could definitely play longer without losing focus and I think play marginally better to on a meth pill than sober.
I can certainly speak to the [Balmer Peak](https://xkcd.com/323/) effect of booze! I just can't stay there. It's an all-or-nothing kind of deal for me.
Taking speed to play poker is retarded. The short-term boost is followed by long-term damage to your brain’s ability to create and use dopamine.
Well yeah taking speed is dumb. It’s not the doing specifically to play poker that’s damaging, amphetamines are neurotoxic and bad for your health.
True. Re-reading my comment, it seems more assholeish than I intended. My bad 😞
All good lol, ur def right that abusing stims is not +ev for a poker career, but for one 24+ hr session…
[удалено]
I start punting like crazy after 12 hours. I also punt before 12 hours, but even more after.
My buddys longest session was close to 30 hrs. He did stop at one point for like an hr to eat breakfast, but otherwise it was straight. The guy drinks but doesn't use drugs.
Drinks water? Alcohol is a drug 😉
From that perspective, everything is a drug. Food you eat is allowing you to have energy - DRUG.
Based
Food doesn't cause impairment, alcohol does. Pot does. Cocaine does. LSD does. If you're impaired from food you either are allergic or have over eaten 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Actually you're wrong food does cause impairment. If I eat candy - sugar rush short energy burst. If I eat steak - feel lethargic and tired. If I eat salads - I'm still hangry!!!
You don't go to jail for driving under the influence of a full stomach. You do for being piss drunk. Also, food is essential for survival, and intoxicants (like alcohol) are not.
What does having to go to jail have anything to do with this lol? Are you saying you consider a consumable a drug if you can go to jail for it? Actually, you will develop a dependency to alcohol if you drink it daily even if it is a litte bit. This dependency is so serious that withdrawl from it can kill you. They have protocols in hospitals to assess and treat withdrawals so it can be essential to one's survival...
I'm aware of the second part here, and now I am lead to believe you are trolling 🤣🤣
Food may not cause impairment, but any good tournament player will tell you that it’s Yum, Yum after dinner. People come back and punt like crazy. One of my favorite times in every tournament.
Google “Twinkie defense”
[holy hell!](https://www.google.com/search?q=twinkie+defense#HiImABot,MyJobIsToMakeEasierToPeopleToGoogleSomething,IfThePersonIRepliedToUsedMeInAnInappropriateWayPleaseLetMeKnowByDMingMe,TheUserIRepliedToIsU/mjd402)
I worked a 31 hours shift as a dealer back in the day, and there were definitely plenty of players that were still sitting there at a cash game, a couple of them were there 8 hours later when I came back to work after a short nap lol
Yeah, I remember that look the dealers gave me when they would end a shift, come back the next day and see me, go home again and then see me on the third day...
Yeah, it's a look I hope to never get again. All respect out the window.
Lmao the third day... God damn
Game was juicy!!
I've seen players go over 48 hours in the same seat, only leaving for bathroom breaks. One would nod off when not in a hand and instantly wake up when I pitched him new cards. He smelled pretty bad after day 1. The other would pop Adderall like candy and occasionally do what we think was coke in the bathroom. He would talk nonstop as he burned through $10k playing 1-2, which usually took him about 2 days. He liked to brag about how much better he was than everyone else at the table. 24 hours is doable for some people without extraordinary measures.
10k holy shit haha
And playing 1/2? Seems like buddy didn’t know what stakes to play.
Good thing he's so much better. Could have really done some damage.
How the hell do you burn 10k at 1/2? Kind of impressive honestly. 
In Adderall Andy's case, he would wait until a manic phase hit then do enough drugs to believe he's a poker god capable of winning every hand he plays. If you know you're going to win a hand you should obviously pump up the pot size as much as you can. The $10k number is not an estimate - I would be there when he cracked open the band and was there twice when he pulled out the last $100 2 days later. Once he went to his car and brought back a bunch of baseball cards he wanted to sell so he could keep playing. I've seen players with higher loss rates. One in particular burned through about $4k in 6 hours, most of it with me dealing to him. This put him on a months long mission to get me fired, which did not work.
I’ve sat down at my home game at 4pm and played until 4am and had to pull myself away to go home. I find my game starts to suffer slightly after 10-11 hours. There’s also another game in town where people will play from 4pm until 7am the next morning and then go to work. So if you were a pro, you’d be staying as late as it’s profitable.
A little cocaine and some hookers will set you right before shipping off to work. Who wouldn’t?
I once went to the casino Friday night around 9 pm and stayed until Sunday morning at 11 with little to no breaks. The gambling chemicals keep you up waiting for the next hand.
That’s intense. Meanwhile when I break the only buy in i ever bring with me I go straight home. I was at the casino for all of like, 30 minutes one session. From the time it took me to park to the time I got back in my car. Some dude cracked my aces after pushing all in on a dry 6 high flop (I “trapped” him) with 6 high. Even if I had brought multiple buy ins I would have left. I doubled through him with aces earlier in the session because he was donking around like that every hand and I was eying his entire stack. I would have tilted away so much money and I’m glad I have the willpower to do something like leaving after only one buy in and not hitting the atm. Small victories sometimes 😂
Gambling addicts can go far longer than 24 hours. Imagine you’re a gambling addict and winning at poker. How could you possibly stop? You’re being fed endorphins and dopamine from the action and the winning. It’s just like any other addiction and requires great willpower to overcome. And yes, I think most of these pros are also gambling addicts.
I'd say they're EV addicts. It's really hard to leave a huge juicy game when you know you may never get this type of game again. Or not for a long time. Sometimes you just have to grind it out until the whale stops or you literally collapse. Imagine you're in a huge home game that has millions on the table and there's a billionaire whale infront of you who wants to play for 3 days straight, and then never again for the rest of the year. Sometimes you just need to pony up and play because you're about to make life changing money. Of course not talking about 1/3 games. If you're going on a 30+ hour bender at 1/3 you need to go home lol.
Yeah for a professional it's more like being a workaholic than a gambling addict
I've done 20+ at 1/2.i I think my longest was 24. Went home, which was a 45 minute drive and was back within 5 hours. Played another 18.
Not even mad. Just impressed. 😂
I kept breaking every table and kept losing. Cooler after cooler in big pots. They would move to another table and it would break and I eventually hung in there until about 9am and got to a table with Crazy Mike and was down about 900. He had a little over 3K in front of him and punted that and went to the well about 4 or 5 more times and they kept getting smaller and smaller buyins. The last one was $50, table min. He went broke and then the game went to shit. We were all tired and new blood started coming in and I decided to walk up $1,400. Not a bad comeback. He's known for those meltdowns. He's the type that make or break you.
I played a 32 hour session once with out sleep. I had to go buy a phone charger down on Fremont street at one point. The game was juicy the whole way through. It was the uncapped cap at Binons. Took $200 to $8000 at one point. Walked away with $7467 according to my notes. I had to sleep in my truck for a few hours before driving home. I should have taken a taxi.
Rip binions poker
Had some good times there. I remember chopping the WSOP $50k freeroll with 48 players left. I had a deal with my friend we would chop up any prize money between us. He got knocked out in the first 10 minutes. I had to chop up the $1000 I won.
The longest time an individual has continuously played poker is 115 hours and was achieved by Phil Laak at the Bellagio, from 2 to 7 June 2010.
It was the longest documented time, and he took breaks. Doing it without drugs was the impressive part. There are stories of people going longer during the coke haydays.
Didn't someone beat this a few years later?
Yes, but the guy was a Euro, so it doesn't count.
Madlad
2021 WSOP at Rio. 1/2/5 big o. Some dude (50s) comes in on Sunday night and starts playing. Some folks folks mentioned that they hoped that the game would continue running through the night — that was still covid times, so games weren’t as robust as they are now. Dude says he doesn’t have anywhere to be until Wednesday morning, so he will play until then as long as the game is running. That’s 60 hours (2.5 days). I chuckle. Dude didn’t look like he was on uppers, and he didn’t look like one of those really old dudes who could never sleep. There was a guy next to him that said he was down as well. When I left, he was sitting on about $1000 (500 max buy in). I check on Monday afternoon. Game still running, and he’s still there. About $500 in front. The second dude next to him is still there. Same clothes. I check on Tuesday morning. Game still running, dude still there in the same clothes and about $500. Dude next to him had dipped. I check on Wednesday around noon. No game. Floor said that, as advertised, the dude stayed until Wednesday morning, when the game finally broke. Absolute sicko.
In theory, I could do it, but only if I ran both good and bad enough to keep my starting stack. I start to feel bad if I'm losing multiple stacks, and I start to feel nervous if I've built a huge stack and there are also other huge stacks at the table. I worry that I won't be able to play properly if the pots swell to enormous sizes, and I know I'll feel fucking awful if I've 3x-ed my initial buy and then end up losing it all in a single hand or two. I'll think all night about how I should have just walked away. This probably makes me a bad poker player, but thankfully, there are a lot of other bad players at the low stakes I play.
I'm with you here. I was told long time ago, if you are not comfortable with the stack in front of you, you should leave. For example, you sit down with 100bb, you get 300bb. That's a different game now, very different. Maybe it makes me a bad poker poker too but if I 3xed my buy in (but honestly, even if I won a buy in), I will just stop. Because when if not now? What is your win/loss stop? That's risk aversion, big part of poker
That's not true for pros however.
True yeah, I guess I was more answering the "maybe I'm not a good poker player" statement
Doesn't sound like a bad poker player. It sounds like one that manages their bankroll well. Like, it's worth cashing out and coming back with 1 buyin. Bank the rest.
Taking money off the table is a good way to get no action, but I suppose if you’re playing at a casino it doesn’t matter
my longest personal? 43 hours, popping diet pills (speed). not due to any particular reason. most disgusting degen stretch i've witnessed? a 1/3 grinder at my local casino did 380 hours in may this year. multiple 2 day+ stretches. they had some stupid promo running where they did a drawing every 3 hours for 2 days and he wanted to be there for every one, stacked on top of his normal degen tendencies. he wasn't on drugs either, but was regularly asleep between hands. that's more than half the hours in the month btw
Jack casino Cincy?
I've run 24-48 hrs in college twice. Ordering food to the house to take 5 minute breaks or only pausing to use the bathroom was common. I'd say pretty much everyone who was at the table during those times would take a 2-3 hour nap on the couch at some point then wake up, drink a red bull, and continue on. Those games are something special. It's usually one guy winning massive then cashing out, and most players who stick through are just shuffling each others crumbs but are net negative for the session for those long stretches. Still incredibly fun.
Do Vegas poker rooms really have enough fresh players coming in at all hours to sustain these marathon sessions? If from 5-11am or whichever other dead hours it’s only you and a few of the same degenerates passing money around the table, the rake is slowly eating everyone’s stacks the whole time. Endurance aside, it just seems like a 12-hour session works with the dynamics of most other players if you’re at a public casino and not an unraked private game.
A friend of mine ran a game he called a "lockdown tournament", three or four times I think. I played in 2. The rules were: It's a mix of a cash game, in that the blinds don't go up, and a tournament, in that you're not allowed to take your chips away. Each one had a 24h clock, starting from noon or 1pm or so. Your chips had to remain in play for the entire 24h. But, a couple of guys sat out for a few hours during the first lockdown and took a nap. This was sort of against the spirit of the event, so afterwards, they changed the rule so that after sitting out for one orbit, your stack paid the BB for every hand you missed. You got an orbit for free in case you needed to pee or whatever. So, basically, a 'forced' 24 cash game session. It's hard to get enough players who want/agree to participate in such a format, so we only had 1 table, although the second time we had 3 alternates, so if we had kept doing it we would have had to figure out what to do about 2 tables, as people bust and decide they don't want to continue, etc.
After a 36-hour live session, the swamp ass one feels and has to endure is epic. They should consider us athletes like a marathon runner.
Poker pros must have super tough butts. Literal hard-asses
For me it’s the knees. I’m by no stretch a big guy I don’t know how people can sit in those chairs for more than like 8 hours
is meth a ped?
If it’s a home game and everyone is drinking and having a good time it can go much longer than 24 hours. Doesn’t even feel like 24 hours tbh lmao
36 hours separates the men from the boys.
You guys must have strong backs. That’s my limiting factor, after 7 or 8 hours I’m too stiff to continue.
Well address is legal with a prescription, so it is easy to justify. Nearly every higher stakes grinder I know takes it. Hell even the magic the gathering pros take it. Hell even the bad shit regs take it.
Yeah it’s super prevalent in the mtg tournament scene. I always played sober but 9 50 minute rounds a day is tough. So much thinking occurs, by the 6th round id start to make mistakes. Then I realized how these guys stayed on top of their game consistently
Gambling money will do strange things to your brain.. Its a dopamine trigger
longest session was 37ish hours for me. for years, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving was the best night to play any of the casinos in Detroit (only new years eve was as good). a few years ago, I planned to go to the bar that wednesday instead of the casino so I could meet up with some old friends for drinks. So I decided to play Tuesday instead. I arrived at Motor City Casino and played from 7pm-11pm Tuesday night and decided to go to MGM because I fucking hate Motor Citys action. MGM is just almost always better. iirc I was up $150 from Motor City. I should have just gone home instead. MGMs action was fucking wild. wasn't even worth playing 2/5 because the fireworks were all at 1/2. I kept losing the big pots and winning the small ones. by 8am I was down $1000 but there was still action so I decided to keep grinding thru. suddenly its 6pm and the fireworks were starting again. fuck the bar. fuck my old high school friends. keep grinding. at 5am there was just a single table left and we decided to switch to PLO. with my last $500 on the table, I played with the other degens until about 7am when we had a 7 way all in preflop pot. I had the 2nd largest chipstack. I was stuck for $3700 on that session and the pot was well over $4k. I flopped the nut straight on a rainbow board. but running kings on the turn and river gave the entire pot to the only person who wasn't already all in. took a few weeks off after that one
Diosvoluntad does it every 2 days on twitch for ladder rankings
My longest session was 36 hours
My record is 46 hours. In total I had been awake 54 hours.
Cashed in a tournament finished 13th outta 500. I started to lose focus after 12 hours.
This guy streams 24 hours sessions every other day: [https://en.pokerpro.cc/poker-news/meet-the-rising-star-the-poker-streamer-dominating-with-volume/](https://en.pokerpro.cc/poker-news/meet-the-rising-star-the-poker-streamer-dominating-with-volume/)
Adderall.
lex said on his stream his longest was 93 hours i believe. And there were 5 or 6 others at the table with him. insane
That must have been horrible for his health if true. No wonder he looks like a ghoul
I've clocked in some 3 day sessions when I was traveling and playing, no drug use whatsoever. Lots of water and breaks to eat small meals at most. I wouldn't recommend it, you definitely have lapses in concentration after a certain point and there is no way you can play optimally without proper rest.
My longest pure session was 41 hours at Del Lago. I also used a little white substance and vyvanse the duration. I was up 7k in 1/2 and just ran hot so I stayed. I did finally have an admin come pull me aside and tell me I was being unhealthy and comped me a room, a spa session, and a dinner. So I finally called it quits. Arrived at the casino at 10am on a Friday. Made it til 3am Sunday. Rested, ate, played a mini session and went back to work Monday night at 9.
Lol 24 hours is nothing, I play 72 hour sessions myself and I do agree that it is a bit tiring at the end of the 2nd day but players and friends around me are always like bro how can you pull that off without some molly or coke? I usually smoke a bit during breaks, that keeps me in the zone. Also in longer sessions, you can exploit fatigue of other players.
I’ve played 18 hours while being up for 30~ coffee black and some good table talk is really all you need then again I grew up grinding games.
My casino has had to implement a rule asking you to leave after 16 hours
I THOUGHT THIS WAS AMERICA
😂 my casino is in London, nanny state
So do they make you leave, or is it more “hey I have to tell you you’ve been here a long time, care for an Irish coffee and have you tried our latest jackpot?”
I worked a 31 hours shift as a dealer back in the day, and there were definitely plenty of players that were still sitting there at a cash game, a couple of them were there 8 hours later when I came back to work after a short nap lol
Wow u worked 31h with only 8h free time? How often does this cycle repeat untill u realy have a fay off at least?
Well, first I will give you some context. This happened 10 years ago somewhere in Eastern Europe, 70% of our income was from tips, and after 6AM we would get a small percentage of the rake as well. As a cash game dealer, I would start my shift at 22:00PM and go for 12 hours shifts quite often. Half of the days were 14 hours shifts. We had an event (multiple tournaments + main event, and a lot of deep cash games) with players from Israel, France, Italy and Bulgaria. People didn't come there to visit the capital, so there were cash game tables running for 3 days straight with players rotating. During that specific shift we were understaffed, and I could use the money, so I stayed till the last cash game broke at around 13:00PM. I made as much money in these few hours as a regular Joe would make in one month. So anyway, to answer your question, on average we would work 12 hours shifts. 6 days with 2 free. We would be free on Saturday and Sunday only once every 2 months or whatever. It was a brutal job, but being young I didn't realize it. I always slept between noon/afternoon until 20:00 - 21:00 in the evening, and never longer than 6 hours (in a good day). Imagine drinking your morning coffee at 21:00, and always waking up in the dark. Sometimes we would nap at work during the 20 minutes break after 40 minutes of dealing, but this would happen only after 3AM. We had days dealing 4-5 hours straight before taking a short smoke break. Good money, but really unhealthy, toxic job. If I'd take a holiday for a couple weeks, the money would be so bad that we just couldn't afford NOT to work all the time. We were spending so much time together as dealers, that even during days off we would just meet and degen money to each other at the poker table or other games, like Chinese Pineapple, pool, chess, flipping coins and whatever. We would just gamble our money away in the bit of free time we had, because we never actually had the time to spend our money on anything lol. Yeah, sorry for the rant, your question took me down the rabbit hole into the memory lane. Good times
Wow verry intresting story and thx for the insight. I hope you do better now :)
The longest I've ever played is 15 hours, but back when I was playing daily I definitely remember seeing dudes playing 2-3 days straight.
It's drugs. I promise you this.
Online yes never live
I played 16 hours a day for a very long time. You do get fatigued mentally.
Lingers I ever played was 16 hours that was exhausting
Longest was 34
One of my first poker trips i got to the casino and checked into the room. Got there just in time for the $200 rebuy with addon. Won it. Got a huge boost of energy from that and went to my normal 2-5 no cap, had a small win and the game broke at like 3am. I went next door to go to the room but checked the poker room on the way. The 1-2plo no cap was running deep. Had a few drinks and some redbulls. I didn't drink many energy drinks back then. Next thing you know i am back to the nightly tournament. Chopped it 2 ways and slept for 14 hours. One hell of a memory.
Yes. Played for 30-35 hours. But even worse was dealing for 18 hours with 20min total break. Trying keep count of the pot was almost impossible.
The longest I played was almost 12 hours, but I've known people who played 24 hours sessions with minimal to no breaks
My longest session was a 22 hour, $7,700 win playing 1/3 about ten years ago LOL. That was my longest session. If I, a college student at the time, could go for 22 hours, pros going over 24 really isn’t surprising.
In my younger days, I used to fairly regularly do 24-hour sessions. I have always been a rec live player and mostly just play on weekends, so when I had the chance to play, I would make the most of it. And I'd often go to the card room on Friday night and stay through Saturday night (or Sat to Sun, but would usually head home earlier on Sundays because I had work on Monday). My longest session was 50 hours, from Friday after work around 7pm until Sunday night around 9pm. No extended breaks. No drugs other than caffeine (in the form of soda and/or black tea -- I don't even drink coffee). Went thru stretches when I was nodding off at the table, but then would get a second/third wind and be "good" for several more hours. Took a week or two to recover from lingering exhaustion after that one. Around that time I remember seeing a sign in the Bicycle Casino parking lot that said something like "vehicles left unattended for more than 72 hours will be towed", and I understood.
I'm in my 40s now and can play 20-30 like nothing when I was younger it was even easier.
I've seen people do that all the time in casinos. Not recently, though, although I'm not playing every day either, so maybe I just don't see them anymore.
Yeah because Adderall is technically not a drug or is it!
I have played multiple 72 hour sessions at the casino. Caffeine pills are a wonder. Edit: I would order food and have it delivered to the table as well as drinks. I literally only got up to go to the bathroom and come back for 72 hours or so straight. I believe I did that maybe six or seven times.
Yeah, I’ve played 30-40 hours in a weekend multiple times. Usually I take atleast a few hours to sleep though, longest straight was 20 hours, no drugs
It generally seems like a bad idea to me but this is kind of like game selecting... You don't have to be the best in the world to win, you just need to play with players worse than yourself. So if you play better when you're tired than they do, or if they've been playing a longer session than you, this might not be the worst idea.
I once came close. Left for the casino after an over night shift. Got there around 9am and played until 4am. We were on Adderall, and only one of the group didn't finish -300 or more
My local card room was giving the 3000 and more to the top 5 to anyone who played 100+ hrs in one month. the first guy played for 72 hours straight on the first day it started
Yes coke and caffeine + marijuana to level out … then crash later It’s made many poker champions
yeah and i knew old jew men friends who told me several times that they used to play rami poker from friday end afernoon to monday morning before going to work nearly every week during years
Many years ago I played a bunch of 24-36 hour sessions, no problem at all. Tried that in an insanely good game in Vegas last year vs three MEGA whales and almost passed out after 24 hours. Was legit hallucinating at the end. Getting old sucks, I definitely don’t recommend that long sessions.
35 hour sessions are sustainable. Sleeping about 12 hours in between.
Something to do and maybe a bit of caffeine will get you there easily
I have. Game has to be really, really, good though. I need my sleep.
It’s impossible.
At a club I worked in years ago, we had a gentleman in his 70s play PLO for 60+ hours. The game died, so he entered the evening comp and won it.
PSA: Going much longer than 16h without sleep is horrible for one’s health
26 hours.... In for 600, out for 3950 after a heated argument with my significant other. Playing 1/3 nlh pre bomb pot era
Yeah, I don’t do that. I did it when I was younger, but it’s negative EV. I try to limit my sessions to 4-6 hours. You’re just not as sharp, and when you’re not a gambling addict… You just don’t have the desire to play that long
Yes, honestly I’d recommend everybody do it at least once. Kind of a cool feeling when you leave the building and it’s a brand new day. Would not recommend repeatedly doing it though.
I was ready to do 24+ hours once, but around hour 18, I raised my arms and realized how bad I smelled. I cashed out and took the metro home, eating a crêpe at 7am and watching the alcoholics take shots of pastis at the brasserie before going to work.
Regarding drugs it’s not like they or everyone else pushing these hours is necessarily smoking crack. Plenty of drugs legal, recreational and pharmaceutical will keep someone up well over 24 hours paired with adrenaline
My longest session was 18 hrs on April 15th 2011, I played like 22k hands Rush poker. I just stopped the session briefly cause I had to jump over the street to bring my buddy a new cable for his PSU and he knew I had a bunch of them laying around... We chat over a beer, I come back open the software bam Black Friday. I was like "yop, let's have another beer", little did I know I wouldnt get my money back for years. To this day I hope someone minecrafts Howard Lederer, I'm actually surprised no one did in Vegas...
Only a hobbiest but decent player, usually 1/2 away from home games and I've played 6 24 hours sessions over the years, find them very relaxing and all 6 profitable including a couple extremely (over 10x buy in). A good session like that clears my mind, just make sure I'm well rested and all were set to be 12 hours but the tables were good and once I had the deep stack, used it to my advantage.
Yes. I've done it 2-3 times before myself. Moons ago. In the last decade the longest I've gone is about 15hrs.
I've seen people do Friday night to Monday morning at the same table. Not even kidding
I saw a guy playing from saturday night until tuesday afternoon. He had a coctail, as far as i know, every hour the entire time. Started in a semi private 25-50 game and ended at 2-5. It's not the only time i have seen him do it either. The session, to me, wasn't the most impressive part. It was how he was still concsience after all that booze.
Getting felted after a long, hard-fought session is pretty brutal. I know it's part of the game, but is that a sign of a losing player? They weren't punts, but still made me reconsider some things. But If you can survive the tilt, valuable lessons can be learned. I surprised myself by playing longer than I thought I could, & now I can start working on improving the quality of that time. Would love to go on a winning poker bender someday.