Poker, heart to heart

Slot machines? Same thing.

Dave Scharf of Saskatoon has been playing poker "seriously or semi-professionally" for about 12 years and is the author of Winning at Poker: Essential Hints and Tips.

He said the poker players we see on TV — heavy, inert — are pretty typical.

"Gaming and the lifestyle of too much booze, high-fat food and no exercise — those two seem to have a hugely overlapping demographic," Scharf said during a visit to Halifax.

He describes poker as even worse for your health than regular slothfulness.

"The difference is that gaming . . . and poker have adrenalin involved, which isn’t present in watching TV, as a comparison.

"You may have seen heart rate monitors in poker on TV, and you’ll see guys sitting there with a heart rate of 180. That’s my max heart rate, in a full sprint around the track," Scharf said.

"I do know there are no health benefits if you drive your heart rate up based on adrenalin release, which is what gaming does for you. You don’t get the cardiovascular benefit of exercise. So you get all the bad side of raised heart rate, raised respiratory rate, without any of the benefits of exercise, which is too bad."

Over the years, Scharf has won about $400,000 playing poker, spending about $200,000 to do so. He’s played in the World Series of Poker main event the last six years, finishing as high as 94th, and he once won a 750-player tournament.

No matter how much money you have, he said, it’s tough to eat healthy food in a casino, where the choices are typically burgers or food that’s "beige and deep-fried."

Casinos, he said, do not care about the health of their customers.

"California ones have a table that’s specially built, extra high, so you can have your noodle bowl and never leave the table. It’s right at mouth level, so you can shovel it right in while you’re playing. They want to keep you at the table, that’s the bottom line."

"At the World Series of Poker, it’ll take 60 hours probably to win it. What amazes me is you’ll see a room filled with 2,700 guys and you play two hours at a stretch with no break. And I’ll bet you if you counted in that two hours, you’d see 15 guys in that room even get up and stretch. It’s utterly amazing how completely sedentary these guys are. ‘Bring me another Heineken and deep-fried dry ribs.’ "

Dr. Blair O’Neill, the head of the division of cardiology at the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre, said prolonged bouts of physical inactivity lead to predictable health problems.

"Sedentary behaviour means that you’re not burning enough calories every day, so you tend to put on weight and that accumulates over time. Eventually that leads to things like diabetes, heart disease and stroke, blood pressure tends to rise, all sorts of consequences to sedentary behaviour.

"There’s also some thinking that things like gambling, where people get stimulated . . . with adrenalin circulating, pumping your heart up, if you’re not ready for that, if you’re not fit because you’re too sedentary, then that’s what can lead to a plaque rupture . . . and you’re having a big heart attack."

O’Neill said winning at poker is no healthier than losing.

"You’re still going to have your heart rate up, you’re going to play that hand until the last card is played. Your heart is going to be racing no matter how good a bluffer you are."

O’Neill said anyone with a vulnerable plaque in an artery of the neck or the heart could suffer a heart attack or stroke with any sudden change in blood pressure, whether from shovelling snow or internalized stress.

By staying in shape, by walking 10,000 steps every day, you can strengthen those vulnerable plaques, O’Neill said.

"So your tolerance of sudden changes in heart rate, sudden changes in blood pressure, becomes much greater than the person who’s been sedentary. That’s why we always worry about the hockey weekend heroes who go out there and surge up their blood pressure.

"It’s kind of the same way with gambling. If you’re a weekend gambler, then you’re sedentary. You’re prone to these sudden changes and you’ve got a perfect setup for a heart attack."

Scharf said he knows people for whom poker is not at all stressful because they don’t play for money. However, those people aren’t really playing poker.

"You have to obviously play with money you can’t afford to lose. But if you’re going to play properly, you have to also play with money that hurts to lose because if there’s no pain associated with losing, then you’re not playing the game properly."

"My brothers-in-law like to play for kernels of corn. Well, it’s really hard to bluff when the other guy just has to call with 10 kernels of corn. So you have to play at a level at which losing is painful. Otherwise, it’s not really the game of poker. It has to be an emotional loss. It doesn’t have to hurt you financially, but you have to care about not losing."

Scharf said he thinks the situation has improved a bit in recent years because there are more young guys playing poker. But he is generally one of the more fit guys at the table. Scharf, whose wife is a doctor and his "conscience," put on weight when he quit smoking 10 years ago, and noticed that he felt better when he started exercising.

"I thought it started to improve my game because after playing poker for several hours in a long tournament, it’s all about mental acuity. If Tiger Woods has an edge at golf because he has a higher level of fitness, then it seems to me a fitter poker player has the same edge. After 12 hours, it’s going to be a mental-acuity game."