If you’ve never played in a huge poker event you probably don’t know how necessary listening to an iPod can be while playing poker. If you’ve ever played in a World Series of Poker event you know how insanely annoying it is when a 1,000 people in one room are riffling their chips. So if you are heading to the WSOP next year or get into a WPT main event, invest in an iPod beforehand.

Now that you’ve got your iPod to distract you from incessant chip noise and maybe even some annoying fellow players, what are you going to listen to? You could put together a mix of gambling-related songs like Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler”, and “Ace of Spades” by Motorhead. But going from Kenny to Motorhead is more than a little disjointed, and how geeky will you look with your super gambling music mix anyway.

When you’re loading up your iPod with poker tourney music, try and go as eclectic as you possibly can. Try and load up some different music for all the moods you might go through during the tourney. If you expect to last into the early hours, put in some tunes with some drive to them to help keep you awake. Something with some kick to it like old-school Metallica or AC/DC.

On the other hand, try and find something soothing and relaxing for those times when you suffer a bad beat and you need to quickly mellow out to avoid going on tilt. Even if you have to throw on some instrumental muzak that’s fine, as long as it does its job.

Also make sure you load on a bunch of tunes you actually like. Keep your spirits up and keep your confidence booming by listening to some tunes that really get you going. Whether it’s new pop, classic rock, punk, grunge, country or whatever, get some tunes that are easy to listen to, but also easy to drown out when you need to focus on the cards.

Whatever you end up putting on your iPod, just make sure you don’t start singing along.