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I actually have done (fairly) objective research on this. As a
college student I was a very dedicated (and very good) pinball
player. I was once part of a group who managed to stay on a machine
for 24 hours on a single coin. Me and my friends began to record our
scores every night and correlate them with how much beer we'd drunk.
The pattern was incredibly clear: my scores were higher with one beer
and higher still with two beers. After two they plummeted horribly.
I also investigated the effect of risky vs. conservative strategies
and discovered that I could increase my scores by a small but
noticeable margin by playing in a deliberately more risky way than I
usually did. The variance went up too, so I got higher scores and
lower scores, but overall the average was higher. It may be that the
alcohol encouraged riskier playing and this accounts for the result.
However I think there was a relaxation factor in there as well.
Another result was that although scores increased over time as we got
better, they did not do so steadily. They would increase, plateau and
then drop, before rising again to a higher plateau than before. This
was because having reached a certain level of performance, we would
try out new strategies, many of which were failures. However, once we
figured out which ones worked and which ones didn't, we could
incorporate the successful ones into our playing and increase our
performance.
Anyway, back to beer. It probably has different effect on different
people but alcohol is certainly a relaxant and it also depresses
inhibitions and thus changes risk taking behavior. At the beginning
of a show I am tight and conservative in the way I play and the two
beers obviously change this.
On 6-Aug-05, at 5:15 AM, Casey Cash wrote:
> Personally, I don't believe alcohol
> contributes much to anyone's playing - it only makes for a less
> critical listener - i.e. after a few beers you simply think you sound
> better. Casey
>
