So far, we’ve brought you three previous guides in our Poker Hacks series, with our bitesize guides to improving your poker diet, organising your sleep during poker events and even how to travel in an improved and more constructive way for your game.

This time around, we’re focusing on a subject that has thankfully come to the attention of the world in recent months a lot more, albeit at times for tragic reasons. Mental health is one of the most important factors you should consider when playing poker, and not just whether yours is great or not.

Poker can impact your mental health in many ways. It can make you tired, it can leave you feeling temporarily despondent or emotionally fatigued. The highs can be positively stratospheric while the lows closer to the ground than a lizard’s lower regions. Balancing your mental mood is a huge challenge and can have a massive effect on your bottom line, whether you’re a recreational player or one of the very best players in the world.

Here are five ways you can sharpen up your mental edge and protect yourself from tougher moments.

Tennis greats are never born, only made. While modern greats Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic have set new records in terms of Grand Slam victories, other legends came before them. We have already featured Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors in this series, three men who redefined the sporting focus tennis enjoyed.

Between those greats retiring and the current ‘Holy Trinity’ taking over the mantle as greats who would sweep all before them, however, there was a fantastic yet often overlooked period of tennis, dominated by three Americans – Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and Jim Courier. Between then, the trio won an incredible 18 Grand Slam titles. We start our look at the American sharpshooters with a look at the man known as ‘Pistol Pete’.

It’s hard to summarise Pete Sampras’s legendary success in tennis from the viewpoint of the present day. In terms of Grand Slams, ‘Pistol Pete’ – so named for the rapid-fire first serves that were constantly fired across the net – Pete Sampras won 14, a number by all of Djokovic (17), Nadal (19) and the current ‘greatest of all time’ Federer (20). Back in 2002, when he retired, however, Sampras was the man.

Blessed with the kind of serve that every other player of the age envied, Sampras burst onto the scene as a pro into 1988, having been born to a Greek father and a Jewish mother in Washington and played tennis since the age of three.  His first Grand Slam title came in 1990, however, when he won the U.S. Open, an event he would go on to win a record five times in the Open era.

Macau casinos reported gaming revenue falling nearly 90% in February after local authorities ordered a two-week shutdown of operations due to the coronavirus.

Figures released Sunday by Macau’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ) reported that local casinos had generated revenue of just MOP3.1b (US$386.6m) in February, a drop of 87.8% from the same month last year, the largest monthly decline on record. For the first two months of 2020, gaming revenue is down by nearly half to MOP24.9b.

The special administration of China ordered its casinos to shut their doors for 15 days starting February 4 as the COVID-19 outbreak continued spreading out of its ground zero in Hebei province. China restricted the number of individual visit scheme (IVS) permits and tour groups to Macau, while Macau’s government mulled shutting its borders entirely to limit its potential exposure to COVID-19.

Following the conclusion of that shutdown period, Macau casinos began phased re-openings and the DICJ said Friday that only two casinos – Casino Taipa at the Regency Art Hotel and the Casino Macau Jockey Club in the Macau Roosevelt Hotel – had yet to resume operations.