Top 10 Medical Conditions You Don’t Want To Have At The Poker Table

If you thought playing poker was hard enough under normal conditions, try playing it while suffering from these ailments!

1. Carpel Tunnel
Symptoms include pain, numbness, and the inability to move your hand back and forth, all of which spell disaster for a long poker session. Maybe you’re a former Cirque Du Soleil reject and you can use your feet to play? Something tells us that this isn’t such a good idea. Either way, you’d still probably fare better than Guy Laliberte.

2. Auditory Hallucinations
Too little sleep can be a baaaad thing. When that happens, sometimes you hear things that nobody else can hear, like “raise” or “fold” or “all in.” If that starts happening, you need to start trusting your eyes instead of your ears. Then again, you could also be suffering from the third condition on this list.

3. Visual Hallucinations
What you thought was a spade flush turned out be three hearts, a club, and a diamond. Whoops. Oh, and that $5 chip you just casually threw into the middle of the pot? Yeah, that was a $1000 chip. Sorry about that. That LSD tab you popped earlier in the day was probably a bad investment.

4. Narcolepsy
We’ve all played those marathon, 24-hour sessions where your body eventually shuts down, but narcolepsy? Sudden, irresistible bouts of sleep that can strike any time are a definite no-no. At least in a live setting someone will (hopefully) wake you up, but in an online environment? Those Zs might as well be dollar signs floating away to your opponents.

5. Temporary Blindness
Amaurosis fugax, also known as fleeting blindness, could spell the end of your tournament life. Best-case scenario, it only lasts a few blind levels. Worst-case scenario, you can say goodbye to that WSOP bracelet. The good thing (if such an ailment can have a good thing) is that the effects are painless. Well, at least you won’t have to see your opponents scoop up your hard-earned money.

6. Muscle Spasms
Just imagine that you are trying to count out some chips for a call, and before you know it your arm twitches and you throw in half you stack. Or you spasm and muck your hand. Or you flip over your cards. Or you slap the guy beside you. The possibilities are endless. And ruthless. Maybe it’s time to call over one of those cute massage therapy girls…

7. Tourette’s Syndrome
Tourette’s Syndrome is typically categorized by a series of physical tics and at least one vocal tic. Off the top of our heads, we can think of several reasons why this would be disastrous for a poker player. Imagine shouting out “call” or “all in” in the middle of every hand. Or how about a series of obscenities? Yikes.

8. Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go. We don’t know about you, but suffering from bouts of IBS—cramping, abdominal pain, bloating, gas, diarrhea and constipation—is not something we want to deal with in the middle of a poker hand. Then again, we guess it depends.

9. Delusions of Grandeur
Don’t worry, we’ve all been there. The trick, however, is to ignore that insane voice in your head that is screaming at you to take your whole bankroll to 5/10 and “smash those donkeys.” It might feel good at first, but you know what feels even better? Being able to pay your rent on time. Take it slow, cowboy; Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Phil Ivey.

10. Temporary Trismum (Lockjaw)
It might make for a stellar poker face, but being unable to move your mouth (or talk) is not exactly an ideal state to be in to play poker. We suppose you could make hand signals to the dealer, but what if you get hungry in the middle of a marathon session?