My Poker Jam List

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Do you like listening to music?" is one of the most popular rhetorical questions right after "Are you breathing air right now?" and "Will Phil Hellmuth ask for insurance in the middle of the hand?". Everyone enjoys some kind of music and we often use it to alleviate our anxiety or psych ourselves up. Many poker players can't imagine long grueling poker sessions without their favorite tunes playing in the background.

Enjoy the Silence

While science offers some contradicting answers to the problem of the effect that music has on our cognitive performance, and while the jury is still out on the issue, most of the studies seem to suggest that a silent environment is likely your best bet when it comes to maximizing mental performance. If you want to become the next Phil Ivey and you're willing to sacrifice anything and everything for the slightest bit of edge, saying goodbye to your poker jam list is the way to go.

That being said... how many times have you seen Phil Ivey wearing headphones? Music is amazing and very few people will be willing to give it up. Fortunately, most of the studies mentioned before seem to suggest that there is, in fact, a difference when it comes to the effect certain music genres have on our mental performance so some poker jam lists will definitely be better than the others.

If You Love it Let it Go

Turns out that listening to your favorite genre of music while playing poker is most likely not a great idea. According to one study (Smith and Morris 1977) participants listening to their favorite tunes performed much worse on a cognitive task than when listening to sedative music. Other studies seem to confirm that, suggesting that calm, soft instrumental tunes are better than the more stimulating ones containing lyrics.

This is largely due to the fact that every activity involving language (listening to the lyrics or singing along for example) consumes a lot of our mental resources. If you're an avid fan of rap music, metal, or even pop you might want to expand your musical taste and look into some alternative genres (more on that later).

Yerkes-Dodson Law, Extroverts and Warm Up Song

There's one place where your favorite stimulating tune might be very useful. You could use it like any other stimulant - to psych yourself up for the poker session. According to the Yerkes-Dodson law, being all mellow all the time is not exactly the way to go when it comes to performance. The law dictates that performance increases with physiological or mental arousal, but only up to a point. When levels of arousal become too high, performance decreases. If you're tired or stressed out it might be a good idea to start your otherwise calming, sedative jam list with a bang to help you get into the desired state of flow.

This will be especially beneficial for the players with a more extroverted personality type. A study conducted by Furnham and Bradley (1997) suggests that extroverts deal a lot better with stimulating music containing lyrics when performing a cognitive task. While poker is more introverted in nature, if you're one of those few extroverts playing at the tables, you're free to listen to anything you want be it angry rap music or even angrier metal tune.

Optimizing Your Jam List

Like we've already established sedating music containing the minimal amount of lyrics will be optimal to listen to for most people when playing poker. Here are some of the genres of music full of the songs fitting the description:

• Ambient
• Video Game/Movie Soundtracks
• Jazz
• Downtempo (chillout, trip hop etc.)
• Some sub-genres of House and Trance music.
• Classical Music.
• Fingerstyle Guitar.

My Poker Jam List

Here's a sample jam list based on the genres of music discussed above. It's designed for 60-70 minutes of cash game or sit and go play (building one for an 8-hour MTT session would be much more problematic). Everyone is different and everyone will have a different taste in music so you might find yourself hating some of the tunes listed below. If that is, in fact, the case, focus on the ones you end up enjoying and research them further to find similar songs and edit out the ones you don't like:

• Massive Attack - Paradise Circus (Gui Boratto Remix)
• Darren Korb - Slinger's Song
• Covet - Sea Dragon
• Hammock - Dust is the Devil's Snow
• Explosions in the Sky - Your Hand in Mine
• Hans Zimmer - Where We're Going
• Hans Zimmer - Time
• Mammal Hands - Spinning the Wheel
• GoGo Penguin - Murmuration
• Marcin Przybyłowicz - Kaer Morhen
• Antoine Dufour - Reality
• Wes Montgomery - In Your Own Sweet Way
• Miles Davis - Blue in Green

You can find all of those tunes on Spotify so you can test the jam list out during your next poker session!