To play weekdays I find that never relaxe when you get home before you play. This includes not sitting in front of the TV, read a book or anything that makes you slow down and then get tired. Instead, spend time with kids if you have any and play poker after they go to sleep.
If you have no kids, go workout after your work, then go home and cook dinner and then play.

When I play I sit in the kitchen, much better light then where my stationary computer is in the basement. Sure only one screen instead of two and a smaller as well since it's a laptop but it's easier to focus. Quicker to fix a snack in the breaks, get water, go to toilet etc.

If you despite this sit down and are extremely tired, go to bed really early one day and play on the evening the day after. This could help.

I actually find the kind of focus I use playing poker after work is meditatively relaxing. A little music. Find "the zone". Only myself to answer to for my decisions.

If I even feel a tinge of not being in the mood I'll try and do some studying (HH review, videos, I want to figure out how to bring up hands from stat reports in PT4 this week) or even just veg-out on some twitch or PokerStars.tv reruns (great via AppleTV, also found an app that provides Twitch if you don't care to type in chat). Honestly after about 15min watching someone else play I just want to play too. Sometimes I just single-table (even casually on my iPad) if I don't want to get fully engrossed in a session, but I'm doing this less and less these days since I have so much content still available to learn from.

I also have a 2.5-year-old so, aside from my obvious want to spend time with the family, I'm working on a schedule my wife supports because that is the one kind of pressure I can't play under...a disapproving wife. With her support I can't lose (except for bad-beats)!

Work is the main reason I don't play when I'm not on vacation. Time spent playing poker isn't just stressed-out time playing poker poorly. It's also time I'm not spending unwinding from the rest of my life. It's hard, but I use podcasts, Twitch, and TPE forums and videos to live vicariously between vacations.

I'm working a fulltime job myself, and I tend to get REALLY tired after work.. but I really want to play poker, but I tend to maybe play a bit poorly.. what's your thoughts and how do you cope with it?

Thanks 🙂